Sunday, January 11, 2015

Time for Another Wood Stove Post

Wood heat is great but most people do not understand how to use a wood stove. 
Start your fire with newspaper, then kindling which you can shave off your firewood if need be. Use progressively larger wood as the fire heats up. Most people do not burn a fire hot enough. You can burn a small hot fire if necessary but burn a hot fire. A hot fire will burn most volatile gases that cause creosote buildup in your chimney - if you burn the fuel, you get heat from it and it won't wind up in your chimney. 
Once you have a sustainable fire have the bottom, and maybe the top draft intakes wide open. When the fire is roaring and hot you can close the bottom intake some, but leave it open a bit. Keep the top draft wide open unless  the fire is really raging.  The idea is to keep the top draft open to burn the wood gases. 
If it gets too hot use smaller lengths, and some bigger diameter pieces of wood - essentially use half of your wood stove's burn area.
Most chimney fires start after a period of warmer weather when people have been burning a smoldering fire, then, when it turns cold they burn a hot fire which drys and ignites the deposited creosote in the chimney. Because of my set-up and method of burning wood, I have never had to clean my chimney in 35 years - a small amount of creosote does dry and falls to the bottom clean-out however
Since a lot of heat and fuel go up a conventional stove's chimney the most efficient stove would be a rocket mass heater, but few have been UL approved. 
BTW, wood stoves should not have a chimney damper - they help slow and cool the gases causing creosote to deposit in the chimney.

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