How hot does your wood stove get?

[Franny K]

Plastic Smoke alarm is melting.

There is no plastic smoke alarm in the picture. Only one of the two air intake things is open much the other is half a turn. Pretty tall chimney, not even super cold, not even one year seasoned wood. It is on that metal rod because the magnet doesn't work.

I guess I could also add that one point I had a sort of barrel shaped coal stove there and it would get red hot in the area of the coal. I did melt plastic bristles of a broom sweeping the concrete floor around it once.

 

[jacrider]

I would start with the basic analysis - has your stove been installed to code? Look up the make/model and find the manual online if you don't have a physical copy. It will give you the minimum distances from combustible surfaces. If you can confirm you are to code, then I would start to look at metal plates behind and other ways to circulate the heat. However, if the installation is too close to the walls, then you really have to fix that first.

We heat with wood at our cabin and love it. Our stove runs all day/night in the winter here in Ontario.

 

[CatMan Fetters]

Are you burning green wood?

 

[mudfly]

482 according to google

I was referencing an old book/movie Fahrenheit 451, wasn’t trying to be exact.

 

[PEK]

Pretty sure ignition temp of wood is a lot higher than 200F (in the neighborhood of 451 F perhaps) but yea that would concern me also if the wall was really 200F.

Our wood burner would make our wall behind the burner very hot but we got the reflective sheet behind burner and feeling behind it very low temp.
Sorry about photos.

 

[Franny K]

Are you burning green wood?

I am guessing you are asking me. It is close to 10 months seasoned mostly stacked under black rubber roofing. Maybe a little liquid comes out of the end of a low percentage of the pieces. Seasoned on this forum isn't the same as what is sold as seasoned which means it sits in log form for a few years then is run through a processor, up the conveyor and into the delivery truck. Maybe they make piles and use a loader into the delivery truck.

I should have left this thread alone as it is in the wrong section.

 

[Okie]

I do the same seasoning method for white oak and red oak, mostly split wood, approx 10 month covered with a heavy black roofing material, some call it rubbahide material.

 

[OM617YOTA]

I season 1yr+ after cut and split. If moisture is coming out of the ends of the wood when burning, it's way too wet. We burn whatever we can get around here, mostly coniferous softwoods. We have a big wood stove and a small, tightly sealed house, and most of the time four pieces of pine will roast us out. We use the HVAC fan on manual to spread the heat around the house.

Start fire, run wide open until the temp gauge is in the right spot, then choke it all the way down, good to go for 4+ hours. Slow lazy flames coming up from the wood, frequently blue. The critters love it.

 

[bwalker]

Covering your wood pile with roofing rubber or plastic which doesn't breath is not a good idea at all.

Seasoning time depends on climate and wood type. Western softwood will cure if split, stacked and stored out of the weather in a year. Red oak in Upper MI absolutely will not cure in 1 year stored the same way. With that said I burnt a ton of red oak in my OWB and it was burnt after 1 year. Even with that amount of time the ends had moisture sizzling out when it was in the firebox.

 

[Mad Professor]

Our wood burner would make our wall behind the burner very hot but we got the reflective sheet behind burner and feeling behind it very low temp.
Sorry about photos.
View attachment 1037494View attachment 1037495

You need to have an air gap between the sheet and the wall. USA National fire code states this.

That stove is way too close to wall. MINIMUM is 12" WITH proper wall protection, 36" without. You need 18" on all sides on the floor.

You are not in USA so I'm not sure of laws there?

 

[sean donato]

You need to have an air gap between the sheet and the wall. USA National fire code states this.

That stove is way too close to wall. MINIMUM is 12" WITH proper wall protection, 36" without. You need 18" on all sides on the floor.

You are not in USA so I'm not sure of laws there?

Depends on what type of stove or furnace you have. There's a big difference between a forced air/boiler and a radiant style of stove. The national fire code only assumes the radiant style, which needs the most distance to a flammable surface. The manufacturers published recommendations trumps the national fire code when they are specified.

 

[Smitty Smithsonite]

My dad burned wood for almost 40 years from when I was a kid, until long after I moved out. I'd frequently see stack temps at 900° (long before infrared thermometers) - never measured the actual stove.

Wood is way too much work for me. We burn coal. My handfired stoves I had years ago would never get about 350° stack temp, but the glass and body I've seen 700° or higher. I switched to a home-built coal stoker boiler in '13, then recently just pulled that one out of the basement, and lowered a 900 pound behemoth Fitzgibbon boiler from 1951 down there, fired by an Electric Furnace Man (EFM) coal stoker. Nice being warm again. Forgot what that was like for a bit. I never see stack temps above 240° on this unit. VERY efficient. Those old timers knew a thing or two!

I've got a stove in the shop - I call it, The Face Melter. Burns used motor oil. I built the stove from scratch out of precut steel a HVAC buddy of mine was making into coal furnaces and selling. My welding job sucked, so I didn't feel comfortable selling this one if I wanted to sleep at night, so it became my shop heater. Welded closed the brake rotor off my '07 Silverado 1500, then took 2 rear rotors off a '97 Camry, cut the faces off, and stacked them to form a spool of sorts (just more metal as a heat sink). Then I took a Beckett oil burner and gutted it - just left the fan, and ran a copper tube down through it and into 2.5" exhaust pipe that goes straight in, then down at a 90° angle into the brake rotors. This thing CRANKS! Sounds like a jet while I'm working, but beats working in the cold. Zero smoke once it's heated up. That one I've seen over 1,000° on the glass. I've also had flames shoot out front when somebody gave me a batch of oil diluted with stale gasoline. That was fun.

View attachment IMG_6945.mov





View attachment IMG_3945.mov

Some of the fun moving that 900 lb. boiler. It ended up sailing down my stairs at 100 MPH after tearing the plank I used for decades hoisting heating equipment up and down the stairs right out of the studs! That board sailed right over my arm and head, and I only got 2 tiny scratches! God was lookin' out that day! Saved us hours of labor at least. Not a scratch on the boiler, either, lol - thing is a TANK!!

 

[Smitty Smithsonite]

 

[Pioneer]

Whatever you use for wood, to get a good hot fire it needs to be dry. The quickest way to dry wood is to cut it into 4-5 inch thick cookies- if you cut up some wood in the spring, it will be dry by fall. Trees draw water through the grain, it's natural for them to dry out the quickest this way. Although it's a bit more wasteful than splitting and takes a bit longer for the bucking, you are reducing a step in wood processing and overall it's quicker. You also eliminate the need for a splitter which is necessary for some of the stringy hard to split wood species.

Wood split multiple times is the second fastest way, the worst are rounds with the bark left on. Bark really holds the moisture in, it takes forever for wood to dry like this. Even just removing the bark from a round will make it dry considerably faster.

You have to get used to stacking cookies, think of them as short splits and arrange so the air can circulate around them. Any wood I cut now that is over 10 inches in diameter gets cut into big cookies. Any pieces that are too big to fit in the stove get halved or quartered depending on their size. A piece dropped flat on existing coals burns readily, and one big piece can last several hours. Another bonus is that they split way easier with an axe if you need kindling, but I'm finding I rarely have to do this as the bark is pretty much falling off of them by the time they get to the stove, and that's what gets used for kindling.

I also enjoy using my chainsaws much more than splitting wood, so for me it's a win-win.

 

[Evan]

Man you guys run hot.
Ice been running stove plate about 350 400. This keeps wall temp 90-100 old fisher grandma bear.

 

[KASH]

FrannyK thanks for posting this thread a nice change from the arguements on the oil threads
Drop your trees on the ground in early spring leave them they will fill out with leaves when the leaves turn brown buck it up .It really speed s up the drying.
Kash

 

[PEK]

You need to have an air gap between the sheet and the wall. USA National fire code states this.

That stove is way too close to wall. MINIMUM is 12" WITH proper wall protection, 36" without. You need 18" on all sides on the floor.

You are not in USA so I'm not sure of laws there?

View attachment 1037724View attachment 1037735View attachment 1037736

Thanks for info. No laws here, maybe in the cities. The reflector is not fixed to the wall. woodburners here are very basic but well made, ours is a Prity we have 2 one in the summer kitchen which is a smaller stove with an oven at the top and one in the house is larger. We clean our chimneys twice a year, I use bendy rods and do it from the inside but the locals clamber on their roofs with a wire bush on a bit of rope with a weight on the end of it, sod that. Thanks for you advice. Stay warm.
Meant to mention its a solid brick wall and a slab of marble on the floor.

 

[Mad Professor]

Depends on what type of stove or furnace you have. There's a big difference between a forced air/boiler and a radiant style of stove. The national fire code only assumes the radiant style, which needs the most distance to a flammable surface. The manufacturers published recommendations trumps the national fire code when they are specified.

Granted, but the stove in question appears to be a radiant stove.

 

[PEK]

Thanks for info. No laws here, maybe in the cities. The reflector is not fixed to the wall. woodburners here are very basic but well made, ours is a Prity we have 2 one in the summer kitchen which is a smaller stove with an oven at the top and one in the house is larger. We clean our chimneys twice a year, I use bendy rods and do it from the inside but the locals clamber on their roofs with a wire bush on a bit of rope with a weight on the end of it, sod that. Thanks for you advice. Stay warm.
Meant to mention its a solid brick wall and a slab of marble on the floor.

Read thru what you said in depth, we are 10+ inches from wall, I might get a longer pipe which comes out of wall to the first bend. The woodstove is fire brick lined.
I wish we had this stove when we were in the uk, all we had was an open fire with a water jacket round it now I understand most of the heat was going up the chimney, saying that we did not own the property but onlyif we had had a burner instead.

 

[bwalker]

FrannyK thanks for posting this thread a nice change from the arguements on the oil threads
Drop your trees on the ground in early spring leave them they will fill out with leaves when the leaves turn brown buck it up .It really speed s up the drying.
Kash

Cutting in the early winter accomplishes the same thing as the sap is in the roots that time of year. Wood also splits better when it's near zero degrees.
When I lived in Upper MI I tried to get most of my firewood cut in January and February if I was taking down live trees.