This is my first woodstove after ripping out our fireplace so I am somewhat new to woodstove burning. The temperature has been fairly mild the last few days in the 40s and I can't seems to run this stove low enough to not bake us out of our house. I am not sure if we have too much draft even though we seem to have under the recommended stove pipe length of 15'. Or maybe this is just how hot these stoves are? My current setup is 10ft double wall stovepipe with 3ft chimney out the peak for a total of 13' I was actually gonna add another couple feet to the top of the chimney pipe to meet the recommended pipe length but Im starting to think I will need a damper especially if the chimney is longer. The manual for this stove says to run the air damper between 1 and 2 and I am usually running my damper at .5 to 0 but more often than not have been shutting it to 0 especially during the day. STT can easily reach 350 to 450 with the damper at 0. Should I be able to run this stove lower or is this about as low as this thing will run? I do pretty much fill the firebox to get a longer burn at night but it seems to run in the 450 stt range at night where I can get it running around 330 stt during the day just running a couple plits at a time. I'm just wondering if there is a way to fill the firebox and run lower and slower at night or am I asking too much?
Welcome to the forum Nitrover The weather we've been having is the worst for heating with wood so it is not surprising you are feeling bakes. We always end up doing a lot of re-lights in weather like this otherwise it gets too hot in the house. Overnight I've been putting in 3 small splits and they burn out probably around the mid-point of the night and it is still warm in the house when I get up. I'm not real sure about that draft setting as most have to run a real low setting on that stove. It's about like our Fireview. Ours has the draft settings from 0 to 4. Once we engage the cat we typically set the draft to around 1 but within 5-10 minutes that setting drops to near 0; actually maybe 1/4 between 0 and 1. It does not sound like you should need a damper and most times these stoves do not need one. I like it this way too. Oldhippie might come on here and give some good advice about running the AS.
House is around 1300 sq ft, cathedral ceilings, but poorly insulated at the moment and somewhat drafty, a bit of a fixer upper haha
I have an AS and quite a bit longer chimney, and my first thought when reading this was "I'll bet the guy has good wood too." I think what Backwoods Savage said is right on. 1300Sq. The AS is a BIG box, and you should probably not feed it to the top, and you'll still get an overnight burn. This time of year is a roller coaster in the Northeast for temps. I also do think the AS really likes to cruise for a steady-state burn at the 500'F mark and then slowly decrease over many hours. (temp gauge near the center in the rear of the stove next to the exhaust outlet on a top outlet stove.) I think you're doing everything right and you've got a great draft. If you're getting big flames over a long period with the damper closed completely, then maybe think about a damper but I think they are more trouble than they're worth on these cat/hybrid stoves. You want to burn hot enough to burn clean, so you want to be in cat engagement mode all the way through the gassing off stage, and then finally in the coaling stage it might drop off. Enjoy the stove. By the way, if there are no pics, it didn't happen.
