Anyone burning the progress hybrid in this subzero snap?

Update: the overnight burn was good--glass clear as anything, coals pretty well burned down but nice enough to start up todays fire. Temp on the stovetop 260. This was about a 12 hour burn, which is fine with us. We don't need longer burns. The house was reasonable this morning in terms of heat, probably about 70 in stove room and maybe 60 in living room and library. I'll have to get thermometers to be accurate. I got flames within a minute, now 15 mins later flames filling firebox, temp starting to rise. How quickly do your stoves get up to the temp you want to hold? I engaged the cat at 350 (about 30 mis after loading), as talked about last night but left the airflow open. Now waiting for it to get up to 500 to close down the airflow.

Weatherguy, thanks for the tip about burning the leftover coals down--wish we had seasoned pine to burn--we'll see about getting some of the eco logs for doing that. Hopefully that won't be an issue now, since we hope we're entering a shoulder time (it IS March, after all!).

Good tip also about stacking the oak separately, and we also aren't such purists that we won't turn the furnace on when it's below zero in the morning--we've done that this winter, too. But with the cost of oil, we want to do it as little as we have to.

Machria, we haven't had black glass so opaque we couldn't see through it--I was just concerned that if we closed our stove all the way and left it, that it would get that way, since we did get some "dirty" window when it was 100% closed. From what Sherwood's said, she never closes it 100% either, so that won't be a problem. It seems like it would be nice if all stoves worked the same, but there are just too many variables for that to be true. We're happy if ours burns well at 1/4 or 1/8 open, and we'll work with it to find out what the "sweet spot" for our stove is.

Sherwood, we'll check out the solar kilns. Our wood is stacked out in the open and covered on top only with tarps. The barn was where the original wood from this year was stored. It was out in the open most of the fall. All the other wood has been out, too.

Thanks everyone! Any more suggestions/comments are welcome.

 

If you need more heat than the stove provides as it starts to cool down toward 350, have you tried opening the air a bit once it starts to drop below 400? That should heat the burn up a bit, keep the stove at 400 longer, and burn the coals down more, without opening the stove and adding fuel at 350, as it seems you are doing? You can experiment and see how much you need to open the air to keep the temp up. I would expect perhaps starting at 1/4 open, progressing to 1/2 open as the coals burn down. When adding air no longer keeps the fire buring well, then I would bypass the cat, open the air all the way, rake the coals forward, with a path down the middle, if there are still a lot of coals add a smaller dry split, close the door, close the air to3/4 open, wait a minute or two until the split is fully engaged and firebox has time to heat the room air you have introduced, and reengage the cat.

By the way, keeping that front air source clear should make a big difference in burning down your coals.

 

Thanks, Sherwood. Today we've been doing just what you suggest, although earlier we hadn't. Earlier, we had gotten the temp up to 500 and had to go out so cut the airflow to between 1/8 and 1/4. We were gone about 3 hours and on return, the temp was all the way down to 260 and a lot of the wood had burned down and the house had cooled noticeably. I then disengaged the cat, raked coals like you suggested, added a good number of splits and opened the airflow all the way. When it got to 360, I engaged the cat and closed the airflow a little. The temp continued to climb to 500, and then I closed the air down to around 1/2. The temp stayed pretty constant for about 3 hours, still just below 500. As it cooled some, I opened the airflow which kept it from dropping much. When it reached about 370, I disengaged the cat, raked the coals a bit, closed the door, and it's maintaining that. It seems like the second burn, which was about 4 hours, was more consistent, threw out more heat, and burned about the same amount of wood. A little puzzling, since if we turned the airflow down, it should have been more consistent and efficient? Now we need to figure how we can keep the heat coming for another 4 hours and then do an overnight load at about 9:00.

Keeping the front air source clear has made the difference you spoke of--we can see that that area is burning more and creating a little tunnel itself.

The burns today have been teaching us things, and we know that not having the build up of coals has also allowed us to fit in more wood and have longer, hotter burns. We're feeling much more optimistic about getting the most out of our PH.

 

I'm on my 3rd season with my PH and I'm still learning things and experimenting...

 

Quick question--if I load the stove, get the temp up, and see that I could put one or two more splits in because the original ones have settled, is it OK to do so? I had engaged the cat, and if I have it right, I'd disengage the cat, bring the airflow to max, slightly open door, wait a minute, open and put fresh splits in, close door, wait for splits to engage, then engage cat and reduce air supply again? Trying to get it set for a longer burn because we'll be away today.

Thanks!

 

Yes, I do that every once in a while when I'm trying to squeeze every minute out of a burn on cold days.... And your procedure is fine. The key is to open the bypass before opening he door because otherwise your allowing cold room air to enter and hit the cat which is burning really hot (1500), that temp differential can damage it as you can imagine... kind of like red hot metal dropped into a bucket of water....

 

I'm going to get this off track just a wee bit.
These guys will help you fine tune the way you burn the stove, but from the sound of it, your house is losing so much heat, and the stove can't really keep up.
Unless those windows are letting in streams of air, I'd strongly suggest you approach the heat loss differently. Your house is losing most of it's heat through the roof.
Do whatever you can to alleviate that heat loss and the result will be that you think the stove is burning differently.
When I sealed up a bunch of air leaks and (the big one) the attic stair hatch, it made quite a large difference in the way the house held onto the heat ( and also almost completely eliminated my ice dams).
The house is much easier to get up to temp, and it holds the heat longer too. I have a lot more work to do insulating the attic, but just the little bit I've done has been VERY noticable.
Too much heat loss in that house (mine too).
HTH

 

Yep, that's what it sounds like.

 

Hay, Papadave, all you have to do is pray for snow and bitterly cold weather. I have over a foot of light dry powdery snow on my steeply angled roof, three feet of the same on the ground all around the foundation, and I need hardly any wood to keep the home warm at the present time.

 

Papadave, ours is a two story house with two wings, and the second story stairwell is closed off at the bottom with a solid door--we don't heat the upstairs because no one uses it in the winter. So I think that having the attic and the second story closed off would be something like you're recommending, wouldn't it? The two ends of the house are 1 1/2 stories, but one end is over the stove room and kitchen and the other is over the bedroom, which we're happy to have colder. The two rooms we really want to heat are adjacent to the stove room (dining room), and have the full second story plus attic above them. We're hoping really hard that replacing all the windows will help a lot for next winter, because they are REALLY old windows (like from the mid 1800's!)--someone did put storms and screens on them, but they aren't very good and still let air in. There's not a breeze coming in on most of them, but you can stand next to them and feel the cold. The new ones will be thermopane, and the whole window frames will be replaced, too.

 

You'd be surprised how much heat loss there is with those old windows, new windows will help you out immensely. How's you insulation?

 

Our insulation is almost non existent, but it will be easier to replace the windows because someone long ago sided the house with asbestos siding, and trying to insulate it is opening a very large can of worms, one we don't want to touch!

 

Yikes!

 

You'll still end up losing some heat through the ceiling to the upper floor......how much, I don't know.
Can you get to the foundation sill? Lots of heat loss in most houses in that area.....new and old.
I should eventually replace every window in this house too (all 22), but the absolute worst are the 5 aluminum sliders in the stove room (they're all 44"x5').
I could write a book about those.

 

Sounds like my windows..... mine are 72" x 72", old aluminum leaky windows....

 

Seems like I posted pics at some point.
These things don't just leak....I could deal with that. It's the condensation that freezes, then thaws, and flows onto/into the sills and walls.
I don't dare put the walls back together until I put new windows in, because the water will just destroy all the work.

 

Yep, mine leak into the walls also....