Finally pulled the trigger...

My parents told me the same thing, so I brought home a “pet” juvenile trash panda from the woods out back. My mom wasn’t very happy Especially after I told her “it didn’t matter that we couldn’t afford a puppy. There’s lots of critters free for the adopting out in the woods mom.” Needless to say a puppy showed up at our house not long after that

 

Well we are supposed to have some single digit temps this week starting tonight. I was able to fit 11 medium splits in the stove for overnight. Two of those splits are hard maple with the rest white ash.

a look at the stt for posterity

I’ve been able to reliably engage the cat at 300-350 degrees so this reload should be ready to tuck in pretty quickly. The living room temp is currently 76

 

It’s definitely warmer than I would prefer it.

 

.
Penciled it in on my calendar

 

Well unsurprisingly Madam Fortuna’s crystal ball was wrong again. It didn’t get nearly as cold as was predicted. Forecast was for 5 degrees of the F variety.
It was 11.5 outside and 80 inside when I got up at 6 am.

here is the current coal situation


And stt

and todays load



At this point it’s fair to say the coaling issue is most definitely resolved. Would it have been an issue in the first place? If I kept the area under the andirons clean and had better than close to minimum stack height? That’s a couple question I’ll never be able to answer. Maybe, maybe not, but one thing is certain I remain very happy with the stove.

the Carny (weather guesser) is predicting -2 overnight. I don’t believe it will happen as the temp here has been regularly higher than the forecast, but I’ll probably post up another update anyway.

 

Wow, 80 when you woke up, thats impressive, don't think i could get it that warm here unless i set the house on fire.
Going through another below zero cold snap here.

 

its 81 I here now

that’s actually a bit of a trick though. That thermostat is less than 10 feet from the stove.

 

So since you don't like it that warm in the house...is this just proactive measures to make sure its not springtime 'til you see the wife in her skivvies again?

 

That doesn’t require proactive measures unless you count the insulated kind.

 

I see, mine is only about 5 feet and it reads high all the time also, 76 right now with only coals right now as i am doing a coal burn down.

 

Yeah, I have a thermostat in the same room as the stove, also about 5-6 ft. away from it; it reads ridiculously high anytime the stove is running. Which actually shoots me in the proverbial foot because once the stove is not producing enough heat to heat the house but is still radiating enough that the thermostat is reading FAR high, the water will not circulate in the baseboards even after the room is uncomfortably cold. I have been meaning to move that circuit to another thermostat located in the hallway but have not done it yet.

What I do go by is a thermometer on the coffee table which actually reads a bit low, so when it reads 75F, it is really a bit hot to be comfortable.

 

The thermometer in the kitchen I referenced earlier is much more accurate… the stove is having no trouble keeping the house warm with those outside temps.

 

I have the opposite problem- Until it gets down to mid- teens, every single fire makes the house too warm about 1/3 into the burn (when the combustor is really cranking). Almost all of my effort in burning wood has been to try and gain a more even, slower but still clean and efficient burn. Old smoke dragons actually worked better in the even output regard but they were very inefficient as well as clogging the chimney with some thick, shiny creosote. That is the exact reason why I build a gasifier, to be able to tame the burn but still have an ample supply of fuel in the burner as well as the ability to have a much wider burn range than conventional stoves. And it actually did that quite well though it had bad enough 'indoors manners' that it could not be used in a house (or anyplace indoors that was not either well ventilated or had no roof).

I would love to hang around a nearby Blaze King to see how they are regarding their temp. control output to see if they do a better job of more even heat output without making much, if any of a mess regarding smoke / creosote.

 

Oh make no mistake I’ve been somewhat struggling with this too now that the coaling issue has been cleared up. I’ve been able to moderate the temps in the house by careful planning how and when to load the stove given the forecast.

This is still a more even heat than the Drolet. In the drolet's defense it was a steel stove without the benefit of the soapstone or a cat. That stove liked to chooch and didn’t burn low and slow efficiently at all.

For me it’s all a part of the learning curve. Everyone’s journey there is bound to be different. I’m sure by now you’re an old hand at this!

 

If needed, can you reload the stove "in the middle" of a loads burn? As in, you loaded 3/4 stove full 4 hours ago, cat has been engaged burning, so you've still got a good but of fuel and time left on that load. But you need/want to load more now for some reason... Can you disengage cat, load more wood, let that char and re-engage cat (when time to do so)?

 

Never had a problem with my Nashua for dirty chimney for 30 years and its now in the shop, but I burnt with a flue temp that was always in the "safe" range, sounds like that would be too much heat for your application.

 

Been wondering about how I will operate the stove this spring in warmer temps, small fires can be tricky.

 

Yep you can reload in the middle of a burn no problem. I’ve done it twice when I needed to leave the house and knew I’d be gone for hours. Works just like you described.

 

Not answering for anyone else but..... Yes, absolutely. In fact, at the end of the evening I load the stove with whatever number of splits it will take and call it good. An advantage with a cat. stove is that if it is say, 1/2 full of coals, the bypass can be closed and the stove damped down to the normal running settings immediately after the reloading. The cat. will be kept hot enough to re-light immediately, reliably.

One thing I do not do is deliberately pace loadings in size or time. Not because it is not a good idea but just because I do not give that kind of time and effort to running a wood stove. I do spend a great deal of time and effort in learning how to run one, including gathering data 24/7 for the entire burning season. But altering my schedule for a stove is a proverbial bridge too far for me personally.