T6/Secondary Combustion stoves, tall chimneys, and cold temps

One thing that bothers me is my flue temps kind of match yours 106 but I am reading surface temps single wall.

 

Wow that's high. You should try putting a digital thermocouple inside the pipe and confirm what you the temps really are. If those temps are true then you wont have to worry about a dirty chimney

 

Didn't do as swell today. The temps dipped to -14° at the lowest this morning and never hit 0° outside until about 1 pm then hit 6° at about 5 and started cooling back off. Anyhow loaded at 5:30 this morning and came home at 6 this evening. The stove burned down great but the house temps had dropped from 74 to 62 and the stovetop was 200 degrees. I don't really think it was the stoves fault though it was just so darn cold it didn't stand a chance without a reload and 13 hours was stretching it way to far in below zero temps but it's just me right now and I couldn't get away from work any earlier.

 

For the life of me I cant find any info on why it might be so high.
The damper might be part of it, I did find a comment or two about a strong draft sucking the heat out of the stove into the flue.
My old stove did not do it what so ever and still does not with a different chimney.
The Summit has done it since day one with two entirely different chimneys.
This morning I had abut a 300 degree stove with nice coals and a flue temp of 200 or so and on the reload I hit about 700 degrees in 5 minutes with the stove bringing up the rear at 450 or so.
damm dry Oak.

 

My wife was home today to reload the stove and even though it was -18 this morning and only got to 16 late this evening, when I got home the house was 74! I love the fact my wife has no issues running the stove she is a champ at it! I never have to worry about it when she is around!

 

Blaze kings can get long burns but from what I have read when its really cold you run them harder and the burn times are not as long. There is only some many btu's in wood and when its minus temps you need alot of heat to keep up with old man winter. The blaze king king that gets the 30 plus hours burn is a really large stove also. Holds a big load of wood which helps. They are definitely a nice stove.

 

Well after a few days of playing with my damper I've found mine does best running it full open like normal. I came home the first day I tried it 90% closed and below 0F out and I had a slight smoke smell in the house bc the damper made the stove pipe to leak a little as it cooled down. It does help to close mine about 50% during the first couple hours of the burn but the last 6-8 hours burn best with the damper full open. I think I just don't have a strong enough draft to utilize the damper that way. My stack is 20' tall but I have 2 90* bends and most of my chimney runs outside of the house. Glad I got to play with it a bit and now I know a little more about how to optimize my burns. Thanks for the help Cert!

 

Sorry it didn't help you at all...... I knew for some it probably isn't needed. Like I said before though with my setup it is almost 30 foot straight up no 90's through the center of my house. When it was down near zero you could literally hear it sucking like you were running a shop vac even with the air completely closed down. The draft this thing has is insane! The crazy thing is it has never run away from me and I feel like I have control of it at all times it literally just sucks the heat out of it and you can't get the wood to flame as you have to shut it down to quickly causing the secondaries to look like a blow torch.

 

Sounds familiar. Only downside I'm getting to using the damper is the occasional slight smoke smell, which is probably operator error more than anything.

 

With this recent upswing in temps (25-35 degrees) I have not been using the damper at all and the stove is burning great with just the air position in the closed to 1/4 open position. I really think I only need the damper at really low temps so that I can open the primary air just a bit.

Last night I put a 3/4 load in the stove and at 7-8pm and at 6am it still had nice active coals in the back with a 300 degree stove top temp and the house was a comfortable 72 degrees. I didn't reload and my wife finally put 4 splits in the stove at 10:30 with the house temp at 70 degrees. My basement temp is back up to 45!

 

Instead of a damper anyone try messing with the primary air supply? Maybe cut off some of that dog house or boost manifold air? Seems like some of these big non cat stoves could benefit from this especially with taller chimneys.

 

I kinda gave up on trying to make the stove run like I want it to, I am going to just continue to make the house tighter.