I came across a seems like pretty good idea on YouTube. It's called the wood stove insertee. The guy has two videos, but I can't find anything online besides youtube. It shows that you are able to only burn in half of the stove. Look up the video if you are interested or want to really understand what I am talking about. I screenshotted it. I can't find where to buy one, but it looks simple to make. 2 pieces of heavy gauge metal welded into a T. My question is this harmful to a stove? I have a Quadrafire 4300 millennium. Thanks for any opinions or advice.
Why is he/are you looking to only use half the wood stove? I can't tell you if it is harmful or not....just asking out of curiosity.
Soooooo? The guy obviously misjudged badly on proper stove selection and now decided he needs a much smaller stove Guessing? Dunno….
Could work good for a short shoulder season fire...I did something similar with my Yukon wood furnace years ago...stacked a bunch of firebrick in it to make the huge firebox smaller...it was intended to be there until cold weather came, but it worked so well I left it there. I would think any local fab shop could bend or weld up a metal "splitter" like that...if you don't have a welder, or don't want to mess with it. Might be easier to just pick the proper wood for a short fire...like poplar, or pine maybe?
This was my thoughts too. Maybe the guy who came up with the idea has a bigger home with a bigger stove, and desires to fire it with a smaller fire in the shoulder seasons? I'd say if that's the case, you'd probably want to insulate the divider with firebrick. One issue I see with doing this is it may possibly warp or crack your stove. Only one side of it is taking all the heat. In normal operation, the stove heats up evenly (theoretically) all at once. Expansion/contraction would be pushed to only half of the stove....
Good point...when I did this on my Yukon furnace I made the firebox narrower (it loads N/S) so it would not have the cold/hot side like with that stove above...
Seems like an answer to a question that wasn't asked to me. I would say another row of firebricks (or shield of sorts) on each side, and possibly a row to the back while leaving the secondary air preheat chamber exposed would work better. I can't say if a fire on one side only would stress the stove, but you'd have to expect more even heating with the doghouse air blowing in the center of the fire.
Much less time, if any, with secondaries in that stove. That means much less efficiency-- which probably defeats the purpose.
