At What Stove Top Temperature Do you Start to Worry?

My 13NC; with a full load, likes to cruise at 650-700*. In fact it's hard to keep it under those cruising temps with a full load and the outside temperatures where they are right now........................-11*F two nights ago..............-3*F last night..............highs during the day in single digits.

 

I always knew when the 30 was starting to run over 600+ as the paint scent would start to permeate the area. Got up 700 area a few times , somewhere I though I read something by Englander that was about max on the 30.

 

The hottest parts of my IS get into the low 600’s but much of the stove is still below 500 by IR gun. At that point it is already putting out too much heat for low single digits and windy outside. I am worried about the house getting too hot long before I worry that the steel in the stove may overheat.

 

Well it' still 15 below here with 20mph winds at a minimum. I've been trying to keep my STT between 500 and 650 and this is probably the hardest I've run it. It is cold and I want HEAT.. My stove starts over fire zone at 700.

 

Two things I've come to the conclusion of:

- I need another thermometer, preferably IR to compare with my current stove top one

- If some of you are getting away with heating your house with a 500 degree stove top, not only am I jealous but it pushes the issue of needing to improve my house's insulation that much more. The ceiling I have in the stove room is a drop ceiling with about 4" at most of fiberglass batt insulation over it in an attic space. The amount of heat being lost through that ceiling and attic is probably ridiculous.

 

I worried when my old earth stove would glow red on the door.....

Stove temps and house warmth also depend on how cold it is outside(or where you live)If it's only 20 or 30 out I can run my stove at 300 and keep the house toasty.
The colder it gets the hotter I havta run it! With the negative temps 5-600 is putting my house in the 80s pretty easily.

 

I have shut mine down when I can sense that it has gotten to a temp. Usually I can smell a temp change at 500° or within 10 mins or so of starting a fire. But I build smaller fires and pack the stove far less than Anyone here I reckon as I prefer the fire just enough to heat the house. Of course its much easier getting the house up to “comfortable” temps at 60° than at 40° inside. I just use the IR gun when I’m detecting a heat heavy Fire. It happens when I burn birch with the flammable bark but other woods do pretty good. Alder especially.

Neither are fireplaces! But seems like they built enough of them around here and still tolerate them.

 

There are several factors that can contribute to different STT’s being required to heat a house. And then there is the measurement error.

You touch on insulation, and also size and layout of the house will determine BTU’s needed. As will outside conditions obviously.

Stove size is also a factor. A much larger surface area at 500 may be transferring more BTU’s to the room than a smaller surface area at 700.

And then there is the efficiency of heat transfer out of the stove. A room with a lot of air circulation, or fans blowing directly on the stove, will whisk away heat faster resulting in lower STT’s at the same or higher BTU outputs.

My stove is heating about 2200 sqft of my house which is mostly old and mostly poorly insulated. That would suggest I need higher STT’s while we are in the low single digits this week. But...

The IS is a big stove with a lot of surface,

And I have a ceiling fan in the stove room blowing on the stove and two wall fans above the stove pulling hot air to the second floor (and drawing cool replacement air into the room).

End result, the front of the stove top (coolest portion) is currently about 310, with the hottest reading 426 (ir). The stove room is 81, the two bedrooms fed by the wall fans are in the upper 70’s and the coolest parts of the house are 71. This is with a current outside temp of 6 with light winds at about 5mph (windchill -3). When it was colder and the wind was blowing over 30 mph I had to keep the stove 100-200 degrees hotter to keep the same temps indoors.

Adding insulation is almost always a good idea, but if your stove tops temps are getting higher than you are comfortable with, the cheapest and quickest thing to try is adding airflow. A couple well placed fans may make a big difference for you. And yes, get an IR gun, just make sure to get one that can read high enough. One of mine only goes to the low 500’s and the other reads up to around 1000. There wasn’t much price difference either, so get one that at a minimum goes to 900.

FWIW, the stove top thermometer from WS is reading 495 ish right where the IR gun is reading 426. As the temps get higher, the error grows until the spring unit is reading about 120 degrees high when the max STT’s hit 600. Every one of those spring thermometers is different so unless you have calibrated it to another source, it really only tells you relative temps and could be reading 100+ more than your stove is really running.

 

Oh no, fireplaces are exempt. So you can build a new one legally. Loophole just like wood furnaces used to be.

 

Wow you guys run them hot!

With our Ideal Steel, 320F overheats the house and I think the highest I've seen it to is around 360F. In the last two days when the nigh time temps have been 2F and 5F, keeping the stove top between 280F and 300F has held the bottom floor of the house at 72-74F and the top of the loft at 88F!

 

Well to be fair I have sections of the house still uninsulated 150 square feet or so from fire and electrical replacement.. I can' fix before insurance sign off and it's 13 below now. House is also a large split-level with center stairway.. So stove room is 80 kitchen is 72 and bedroom 68.. Soon run it hard!

 

Good points. I'm in a split level home which are notorious for being difficult to heat evenly. Stove is at the far end of the house in a living room where the garage is off of. The heat from the stove is brought down a hall from that living room into another fairly large room, and drifts upstairs into the kitchen/upper living room with the help of a tower fan at the bottom of those stairs. Without the fan at the stairs (blowing towards the stove room) none of that heat will make its way upstairs. This is basically a convection loop. I also have a small window fan at the doorway of the stove room on low that blows cooler air from the ground right at the stove. This is about 15-18 ft from the stove. Running these two fans makes a world of difference as far as heat distribution. The stove does surprisingly well in these cold single digit temps at keeping the upper levels of the house in the lower to mid 60's. Once the house gets tightened up with added insulation I'm HOPING this will improve.

Running a 700 degree stove top doesn't worry me much, especially with how easy it is to control the T5. It did get me thinking though, as others have mentioned getting worried at 600, or barely ever going above 500.

 

320F is a temp I have on my stove top after a good 8 hour over night burn. If your TOP is running at 320 max, what is your flue temp?? Are we talking about the same thing here?

 

the simplest method is , when fairly dark outside or darkened room if any part of stove or flue is starting to glow , you are too hot. ( double hot if your inside flue pipe is double wall and starting to glow, got the Tshirt)

 

Good point woody5506 I also am reloading at 320 if not before.

 

Flue I run up to 750F (measured with a thermocouple probe through the pipe) and throw the cat in, which usually knocks the flue down into the mid-500s, then let it build back up to a 600F flue. I keep shutting the air down each time the flue reaches 600F until somewhere at or just below the first big tick it settles in between 550F and 600F and stays there for 8-10 hours.

 

So your flue remains about twice as hot as your stove top? Does that mean the majority of your heat is just going out the chimney?

 

I believe he is measuring flue from probe so a real temp where STT is a magnet thermometer. Large difference being inside measurement versus outside.

 

Yes, as I already said, the flue temp is from a thermocouple probe in the pipe.

The STT is a thermocouple measurement as well. You can see it (well, two of them) bolted to the bonnet here:

 

I think you would want to get rid of that drop ceiling and put drywall up.
The heat/air is going right through it.