Question for everyone in tube stove land... What is the most efficient way keep the stove on the high heat band? For me that's 550+. Needing the high heat lately with the negative temperatures. A top down fire works great for a full evening of medium heat or overnight burn, but high heat only lasts 3. 5 hours or so in high range. Seams wasteful to burn up a firebox full of wood that quickly. What seems to work best for me is reloading with just two splits set cross each other once the stove drops below 500, after they catch, reduce the air a little and repeat as needed. Seems to use slightly less wood than a full load over the course of the evening and I stay on the hi heat band that whole time.
Believe it or not; I'm going with smaller loads in my stove, and letting the STT get up there. This seems to help with excessive coaling. For me and my 13NC, that's 3 ash splits now, which only lasts about 3 hours. Not a problem as I'm home because it's too cold to "shoe horses" in this weather!!!
If you’re home and willing to feed it, less wood and more open dampers allows you to keep the heat up, glass clean, and coal pile down. I am not sure it is more efficient though. I don’t know if running a smaller fire will allow more air to flow through, but if it does, it may outweigh chimney temps impact on efficiency. More airflow (mass flow rate) means more BTU’s up the chimney and more cold make up air if you don’t have an OAK. If you really want to test efficiency, you need to be able to accurately measure exhaust temps (thermocouple) and flow velocity (usually a pitot setup). Mass flow can be calculated from there, and then the rate of BTUs flowing out the stack. Not really a worthwhile home engineering project for most of us. Just burn the wood in a manner that keeps you warm and keeps the chimney clean and not on fire. At least those are my priorities.
Yeah it's a different scenario than we would normally run... Two much fire is a waste and too little allows the stove to cool down below the point I need. Point taken about the OAK. I think that this summer I will be installing one.
Sorry, but in my book, it is unreasonable to want to keep a wood stove at a constant temperature. It's just not the nature of the thing. However, there are some who work on this idea from time to time. I remember at the Popular Science project or wood stove challenge in DC, some had attached all sorts of electronics to try reaching this goal. Some were very close. But in the normal scheme of things, that is not how a wood stove works.
I seem to get more smoke if I run full throttle. I don't have to close it much, but it seems like at full throttle the reburn air just isn't enough to keep up and unburned smoke goes up the chimney. I can't tell that I'm getting more heat at full throttle either: I think what I gain in burning the wood faster is more or less lost on the heat I lose not burning the smoke. I'm with Backwoods Savage on this one. It is pretty hard to keep a constant temperature. Good insulation and thermal mass are your friends to smooth out the ups and downs.
I don't want to keep it exactly at the same temperature, but I do want to keep it on the hi end of its operating range on days like we have had as late, but in and efficient manner.
For sure much of this depends both upon the stove and the fuel. I not so fondly remember our last stove and at this time of year we closed off as much of the house as possible, kept curtains and drapes closed (and doors too!), we even moved the kitchen table right in front of the stove and that is where we spent most of our time in the house. Shower time was never pleasant because we had to run heaters to get it warm enough to take a shower. Yes, we even dealt with frozen water pipes many times. We kept that stove humming and many times had red showing on the stove and even a few times on the flue. Not good... Fast forward to our getting a first class stove. We were originally scared with the new stoves and especially with the cat stoves as we'd heard horror stories. However, we also realized that most folks at that time really did not know much about heating with wood so eventually just used our own judgement. Fortunately we made the right choice and even bought a cat stove from Woodstock Soapstone Co. It was a lot smaller stove too than what we were accustomed to using. In the end, it worked out fantastically and much better than we expected. The biggest point is that we were once again warm in our home (we keep it around 80 in here). In addition, we cut our wood useage in half and also quite cleaning our chimney so often. We rarely have to clean the chimney now thanks to a clean burning stove. Our fuel has been split and stacked at least 3 years and at present most of it is from dead white ash. The combination of good dry fuel and clean burning stove has been a great thing for us. So how does our stove heat? Typical in daytime burning we put in 3 or at most 4 splits a couple times during the day. Our stove draft has a setting from 0-4. On refills, we set it on 4 for from 3-10 minutes (typically), then drop the setting to around 1. But this also is determined by the outside temperature. When it is, say, below 15 degrees, we typically have it set on 1 and if colder just a smidgen above 1 (so there is just a little flame in the firebox). Warmer has the setting below 1 to about 1/2 to 3/4. Before bedtime we then fill the stove. Again, on the fill up the draft is set full open from anywhere from 3-10 minute then the draft is dropped to about 1 to 1 1/4. After about 10 minutes we give the final setting of from 3/4 to 1 or maybe 1 1/8. We go to bed. Much is made about the buildup of hot coals and at first with this stove we did have that problem. I read about others having the problem and how they dealt with it. Some of it works at least partially but we still were not happy and could not get the right answers, so, we experimented. On our stove, what seems to work good is when the stovetop temperature reaches from 350-400 we then open the draft full and let it cook. The stove seems to hold at that temperature which is usually enough so that the house does not cool and when the coals get burned down then we refill. We may once or sometimes twice, rake through the coals with the poker to stir and loosen them which helps to get them burned down. Different stoves can be operated in different ways but if one follows somewhat the above, most stoves will do very well. Perhaps the biggest difference will be on draft settings because some stoves operate best with lots of flame in the stove while a cat stove many times can be run with even no flame. But a little experiencing will get one on track quickly. Even if one has to take a weekend to spend with the stove, it is time well spent and you will be much more comfortable with the stove.
