A dream come true. Finally fired up the wood stove this afternoon. Going to be in the upper 30s tonight. Tried the top down method 2 oak pieces in the bottom and smaller cedar above. Used 3 cotton balls with a little vaseline on them so i wouldn't need paper. worked better than expected. First couple of minutes smoke started to build up but then it cleared and went up the chimney. No smoke got into the house, amazing. Fire started burning well and temps crept up to 460 on the stove and pretty much stayed there. I closed the air intake to a little over half and it slowed the burning some but the temp stayed at 460. Added a couple smallish oak pieces after pulling the hot embers forward some. the whole house is now at 74, a bit too warm actually but the temps will drop soon and that should be perfect. Here are some pics. Tell me if i need to improve or change some of what i did. I can monitor the stove from my bed in the cabin on the camera. Works out really great.
It keeps burning rather hot. closed the air intake completely and even closed the damper halfway. Added 2 more pieces of oak so I can do my chores and check later. Still burning at 460. Had the door standing open for a while.
If by hot, you mean 460....it isn't. That stove will handle quite a bit more than that. Your OAT is a bit warm to have much of a fire, without the house getting quite warm.
Exposed foam eh? You know why you aren’t allowed to leave foam exposed in a living area? That stuff burns like crazy, spreads fast, and bellows clouds of Black Death smoke. At least be careful!
Highbeam, no worries there. we are still in the construction phase and the walls and ceilings will close all the foam areas. On the other hand this is industrial strength foam very highly rated. Doesn't need moisture or burn barriers. When you hold a torch to it it will not ignite it blackens but won't burn. Its self-extinguishing. Open cell foam is mostly what burns really badly. but closed cell also varies. We needed to get the stove installed now so we can work through the winter and some of the dogs sleep in there already. The cabin i live in is pretty small and i also use the house for a kitchen.
the thermometer you have looks like its a chimney thermometer from the zones on it, if you're using it on the stove top don't be afraid if it climbs above 550F
I usually put a thermometer on the stove pipe about a foot up from the stove, and then a 2nd temp gauge right on the top of the stove. When you close down or engage the cat or the secondaries you hopefully see the temp of the stove pipe decrease as the temp of the stove top increases. At least you see that with a cat stove. I'm not sure if you see that with a secondary burn stove.
Yup, same thing on a tube stove. Just FYI, that looks to be a steel stove so stove top temps (STT) will run 600*, even 700* commonly. 800* is getting up there, but probably won't hurt anything, 900* is getting dangerously close to the point where steel starts to glow a dark red in a dark room...you may or may not have some damage after a run like that.
by the "zones" on the face, flue temps in singlewall stove pipe are roughly 1.5 - 2 x the surface temps. so 500F on the gauge, which is fine for stove top temps, is hotter than you want to see in the flue. Cheap Stove Top Thermometer, find Stove Top Thermometer deals on line at Alibaba.com shows a few with different zones, either will work, if you just go by the temp it shows and not the zone
