Slowing down my stove.

[AngelofDarkness]

I have a small freestanding wood stove in my shop, it was made by US Stove in the late 70's and it's about 2 feet square. Anyway, this stove has no type of air control on it whatsoever, I can't close off the combustion air anyhow. The only control I have is the 6" damper in the flue pipe. The biggest problem I have faced is that by not being able to control incoming air I am always burning wood very fast, I couldn't load it up with medium sized chunks of wood without it burning it up very fast and hot and an hour later all I would have is coals.

Anyway, I think I figured it out. I burn for awhile until I have a good pile of coals in the bed of the stove, then I take a single, very large chunk of hardwood, one that's at least 4" thick and barely fits through the door and I lay it right on the bed of coals, and then damper the fire back down. This is the only way I can get a decent 3-4 hour burn out of this stove.

Does anyone else use this stove?

 

[Spotted Owl]

Sounds like you have it figured out already. We had a stove for our wall tent that was the same way. Instead of one big slab chunk, we had to use quite afew smaller ones. Seems like the wood on the coals keeps air from getting underneith to fast and speeding up the burn. Damper way back at let it for the most part smolder into a fire. Not terribly good for the chimeny build up but it is the only thing we have figured so far.

Now we have a stove that we use for back up. We welded the airflow intake shut to stop it. Then we cut holes in the sides toward the fron and put on the crank shut knob type things you see on fisher and shrader stoves. No more problem. You control the draft intake and the flue damper.

Just what we have had to deal with and the fixes we came up with that worked well for us.


Owl

 

[AngelofDarkness]

Yeah I imagine it's not the best thing for my chimney, but about twice a week I get a hot fire going and bang on the stove pipe with my poker. I also only have about a 15 Ft. chimney and its a straight shot. I have a flat roof too, so its easy to get up there and ram a brush down it. I need to make that a monthly job and I should do it before my flat roof has a foot of snow on it.

 

[RaisedByWolves]

Our cabin has a stove like this and even with the factory air inlets shut, the only way to controll it is to throttle the stack damper back to about 20%.



.

 

[AngelofDarkness]

I am closing the stack damper all the way, it does not fit really tightly in the flue pipe and theres little slots cut in the damper itself to let a small amount of flue gases through.

I have been having luck with feeding it large blocks on top of a hot bed of coals, chunks of log that barely fit through the door and have to be angled across the firebox seem to work best, last night I threw in a massive 20 Lb. chunk of maple that burned steady for a good 5 hours. I have to have good coals going first and I have to angle it a bit to let air under the log or else it tends to smother the fire.

Every stove is different and I am just now learning the "quirks" of this one.

 

[Bowtie]

I am closing the stack damper all the way, it does not fit really tightly in the flue pipe and theres little slots cut in the damper itself to let a small amount of flue gases through.

I have been having luck with feeding it large blocks on top of a hot bed of coals, chunks of log that barely fit through the door and have to be angled across the firebox seem to work best, last night I threw in a massive 20 Lb. chunk of maple that burned steady for a good 5 hours. I have to have good coals going first and I have to angle it a bit to let air under the log or else it tends to smother the fire.

Every stove is different and I am just now learning the "quirks" of this one.

I have been using my old El Fuego insert for 2 years now, and am still fine tuning it. Little tips and tricks like posted above are invaluable to people new to using inserts and stoves. Good Posts!!!

 

[AngelofDarkness]

I just put in two very large chunks of maple, I barely got the door closed and theres not room for much airflow inside. It seems to be burning nice and hot now, but the size of the chunks should keep the fire from getting too hot and consuming the wood too quickly. One is very very thick and should burn for hours.