Please post your favorite tip for home heating with a wood stove....

IF this is out there already, the almighty ARFCOM search engine did not find it.

I don't own one but I know people who do and they swear by a soapstone wood stove with catalytic reburn.

Use dry wood.

If installing a wood stove use double wall chimney with packed insulation.

Keep your wood supply out of and away from the house unless you like mice, rats and termites.

wood burning for house heat covers a vast area of knowledge.

can you narrow your request down a little?

what type of stove/fireplace/heater are you looking at?

what's the sq ft of your house, insulation level, ceiling heights, current heating, location of wood stove/fp etc etc

you cutting your own wood or buying?

already have a chimney? what type? how tall? what size?



if your just looking for random tips:


when your stove is red, it's prob too hot.

and for a slightly more helpful tip:

go here:http://www.arboristsite.com/firewood-heating-wood-burning-equipment/

read everything.

also hearth.com

Load that sucker up before you go to bed, use plenty of covers, and decide in advance who has to venture first into the cold to fire it up again.

Tj

Bring home anything burnable if it is easy to get ahold of. At least were we live its pretty tough to be a wood snob. Cotton wood, elm, pallets whatever. just dry it out first it all burns.

Fire it hot every 24-48 hours with dry wood. Will keep creosote to a minimum.

Use dry wood for most burning. Will prevent most creosote buildup.

Stock the stove and damper it down before going to bed. Throw a green log or two on the fire along with the dry wood. That will help the fire last throughout the night. Then, fire it hot in the morning to bring up the temp of the house and burn off any built up creosote.

^^^ all this needs to be answered.

i will provide a general tip... don't build a roaring fire in a cold cast iron stove. it may make your wife and houseguests happy in the short term, but sooner or later you are going to crack the stove due to thermal stress.

ar-jedi <–– has 30 year old Vermont Castings Defiant

Best tip?
I'd say find and use some of these SureStart Firelighting squares:



By far the best firestarters I've used.

We started using an Imperial wood stove this year for a primary heat source. I cut and split a cord of wood about 3 weeks ago. Being a stove, I split it down to a full 2" by roughly 4-6" and stack it deep. I am constantly hearing: "Daddy says..." On the topic of splitting, "Daddy says split the log in quarters and stack it." I have already told her that if she don't like it, she needs to get "Daddy" on over to split the next cord.

Who is right?

Wife is right. Wife is always right. That's a no brainer.

Tips.....

––If you're heating solely with wood in a freestanding wood stove, you'll make your life easier if you make it a point to stock the best wood you can put your hands on. Sometimes "free wood" is too expensive.

––Learn to use the air control minimally and to not futz around with the flue damper except in rare circumstances. Do not get in the habit of closing the air control at bedtime because you get a "longer burn."

––Wood that's sold as "ready to burn" is rarely ready to burn.

––Try to get two years ahead on your wood supply. Where I am in PA the rule of thumb is you need 1 cord for each "cold month."

––Don't burn your kids out with "wood chores."

––Fire starter squares are indeed your friend if you heat primarily with wood. Leave the micro-split kindling wood to the folks who are burning for "ambiance."

––Make NO assumptions about the state of your chimney when you're just starting out. Have it looked at by somebody who knows what they're doing and knows the installation codes.

––Buy good axes and saws. Buy once, cry once.

I have a Osburn 2400 with a 8 inch exposed cook top. It has two 130 CFM fan. It is rated to heat 2700 square feet. I have a 2900 sq ft house. I have as much access to wood as possible but an hour drive from here. If i fill the dump trailer with cut logs then it is worth the gas money but it costs me about a cord of wood in gas to get there and back. Shagbark hickory is my best wood there but cherry is plentiful as well.

I have a 10 x 16 shed roof to store split wood under. I own a Gransfors Brux heavy maul and their small woodsman axe. I am addicted to hand splitting wood and I own a wife unit that doesnt mind to pitch in and help stack or cut kindling.

I want to know specifically tips to get the most out of this unit given it price and capability. I wish I had the room set up to free stand the stove but the carpet and tile area make that difficult.
I also want to know tips on making sure your wood is dry as possible.
I am using firestarter squares and have put up the newspaper for rougher times.
I carry (tractor) seasoned and split wood to the garage at about 3 - 4 days worth at a time.
I have a metal coil thermostat on the cook top and have had it to 575 so far.
I do build a small hot fire until almost coals, Then I gradually build bigger.

Any further tips appreciated you guys are great!

Buy your own brush and sweep the chimney yourself. It's easy, and you learn how the different wood effects creasote in your pipe.

I agree that if it's all new to you have a pro check everything out for you the first time.

Also a good chimney fire works great at getting rid a excess creasote build up, and apparently often stays contained in the pipe. although a little scarry while in progress. Don't ask how I know.

So my last suggestion, change the batteries in the smoke alarm prior to every burning season.

Duh, didn't notice your name as OP WH. I already knew most of your setup from your other thread.

I like to plan my night fire so it's enough to make a bed of coals about 3-4" thick across the whole fire box, then right before bed I usually put in 4-5 hardwood logs (about 5x5" splits) placed front to back orientation, packed tight, and then I cut my air intake down to "almost" closed.
My house is about the same size as yours, we've got 26' vaulted ceiling on 1/3 of the house that really messes w/the heat. I keep the two ceiling fans on and the blower on the stove on all the time.

The thermostat (elec heat) is set at 70* and usually only comes on at 5-6am. And that's been with the outside hitting low 30s.

I think you'll get a lot out of it by juggling around your fans and air flow until you figure out what works best for your exact house.

What also has worked very well is putting a box fan on the floor in the door of the colder room(s) and pushing the cold air toward the stove, then the warm air goes in the top of the door to replace the cool, and you end up with the overall temp in the house being warmer before bed time, instead of a warm front room with cool bedrooms and a slowly dying fire all night.

As far as dry wood:

general rule of thumb is to dry for at least a year, so you cut your wood for next year.

for most folks it takes a little time to figure out how much they use on an average year, and to build up to that. Plan your layout of wood stacks. Often a stack that is out in the weather with a piece of tin on top of the stack will dry quicker than one that's in a building with walls. The air passing between the rows, and hitting the non bark surfaces is what drys the wood quicker (unless you try to heat/kiln dry it)
If you use a tarp, just tarp the top, not the sides/ends

You can get a moisture meeter to measure your wood, but you can get a good idea by holding two pieces by the end and hitting them together, they kind of ring if dry, and thunk if not.

Standing dead wood is not usually to be considered 'dry' and ready to burn, however it often does dry quicker than live trees.

softwood (pines etc) dry quicker than hardwoods. Most Southerners will tell you it'll kill your stove to burn softwoods, but in other parts of the country, thats all they have to burn. I mix in about 15-20% softwoods.

Firestarters:
I never use the pre packaged things. I use leftover news paper ripped in thin strips and pine kindlin that I split w/a hand ax. Burns quick and is free. Usually have plenty of coals the next morning to get everything going and actually only start a fire from a clean/empty fire box about once a week or so.

Coal is good if your stove can handle it. When it gets really cold I throw a couple handfulls of coal in before bed. I have a brick lined stove and it's supposed to be ok.

CO (Carbon Monoxide) and smoke detectors. Battery backups for same. Best tip I can give you right there. CO poisoning is a godawful thing, and it kills way too many people given how easy it is to prevent and detect.

As mentioned, clean out your chimney frequently (with a brush, yes, burning cans and "cleaning" logs just doesn't cut it). Chimney fires are NOT nature's way of clearing out creosote.

Be thankful you live in an area of the nation with lots of readily available hardwoods. Oak, maple, etc should be your go-to woods when you have a choice. Much cleaner, longer burning, and more efficient than the pine and scrub lots of folks out west have to use. As mentioned, make sure it's seasoned well. Keeping your cords of wood off the ground, with good airflow, and sheltered from the rain will make your life a lot cleaner and easier.

Duh warning here, don't forget good boots and gloves when hauling your wood around. Some folks just like to bust up fingers, knuckles and toes though I guess. Oh, out in your neck of the woods if you let the wood pile sit for a while you may get some black widows out there too eventually, just look before you stuff your bare hand anywhere and warn the kids to be careful.

If it's going to be used as your main source of heat, get a chainsaw and a hydraulic splitter: life's just a hell of a lot easier that way.

I'm not familiar with your particular stove, but lots of folks simmer a pan of water on the top of their stoves to put a little but of humidity back into the air.

Get a feel for the burn times of your wood and the controls on the stove, it'll take a while before you can avoid heating yourself out of the home AND can get a good burn going through the night. If that's one of the new EPA stoves, the latter might not really be possible for you.

Learning how to control your stove would be the best tip I could give you. Ive seen alot of posts and talked to alot of people who just plain dont know how to properly control their stove. Not only does it waste wood but the opposite end of the spectrum it becomes a hazard and can load up your chimney and risk a chimney fire too.

ETA Ive burned two full cords in my shop and when I pulled my pipe thinking it is well past cleaning time .... It was clean as can be. Good wood and good control of the stove is the only reason I can think of.

Anyone got a favorite recipe for making your own fire starting squares?

Place air intake for central heating system near wood burning stove or fireplace and use furnace fan to circulate the heat throughout the house. Works like a charm. The fan is the only part of my furnace I even bother to use now. Also installed cold air intake near floor of basement and use fan in the summer to cut down on Central Air use. Good luck and Good burning

1. A cordless dustbuster is very helpful with clean-up, mount one on the wall close by.
2, We would burn lump coal as well as wood in our Buck Stove. Dad was Safety Director in the mines so coal came easy.
3. If you have a electric blower buy an extra motor/blower unit now, may save you later on if you have to replace yours and all they offer for your unit is a universal fit.

ETA: Dad installed a removable plate on the back of the chimney in order to access the blower unit. It came in handy when it had to be replaced. We didn't have to pull the insert out of the wall or remove any of the trim.

Paper egg cartons, fill them with pine or cedar wood chips (the kind you get for animal bedding). Get paraffin wax from the canning section of the grocery store, melt it and pour over the egg carton full of chips. Once it dries, you have a good starter that will burn when wet or damp and breaks off in nice neat blocks. You only use the egg holder or bottom part of the carton.

-When you are using the stove leave a few inches of ash in the bottom - this acts as an insulating blanket for your coals and help you to get your overnight burn. Clean it out completely at the end of the season when you will not be using it. It will take about a week of burning to build this back up if you completely clean it out.

-You can tell seasoned wood by the weight of it, one way to tell if its ready is to look at the cut ends of the wood, it should be gray in color and have plenty of cracks running through it. You can never season wood past the relative humidity in the air, unless you have a kiln and someway to store it. If you open the door and hear "sizziling" your wood probably isnt real dry.

-As said before just cover the tops of your stacks and let air get to all the sides to promote the drying process, I find in my area I need to be a least a year ahead to have good wood.

-If you are burning a newer EPA woodstove with an airwash system on the glass it is your best indicator to tell you if you are burning your stove properly, if your glass is staying clean so is your chimney, hopefully it has a proper sized liner for the stove, if it is turning black its telling you to burn it hotter - open your air up a little.

-If you burn your stove alot get in the habit of changing your door gasket once a year - it is the item that will wear the most opening and closing the door. Best way to check you have a tight seal when its cool use a dollar bill, shut the door on it and you should barely be able to pull it out, dollar bill is stronger than paper, try it all the way around the door. If its loose your losing efficiency and over time can crack or warp the stove, steel stoves will usually start to split in the upper door corners - cold air rushing in with hot metal. $20 dollar gasket kit once a year is cheap insurance.

-Use old newspaper, junk mail and cardboard boxes , scrap wood etc = cheap free kindling. I never buy firestarter, a trigger start LP torch is great for starting one cylinder last me the whole season.


- Free glass cleaner =wet a piece of newspapaper and dip it in ash it will clean your glass.

-If you have a newer stove with ceramic glass (pyrex) dont use any cleaners containing ammonia you will etch the glass.

-Having problem getting heat to a certain spot in the house crack a window in a room upstairs farthest away from the stove , heat naturally seeks out the coldest point in the house.

-Reverse the rotation on your ceiling fans to help pull the heat through out your house, if your central heat has a fan setting run that to move the heat throughout the house .

-You will need humidity a stove top steamer helps but to really make any difference the average house will require approx. 4 gals. of water per day to make a difference look into either a whole house console unit or one the hooks into your duct work.

Just my .02 hope it helps probably have more but this will get you started. Good luck.

When getting wood to last the winter, figure out what you think you will need and then at least triple it.

Keep the wood-pile close to your house, having to carry enough wood 50-100 yards to keep your stove going for a few days gets old fast when there is a couple of feet of snow on the ground.

Clean/inspect your chimney at least once a year.

When you take the ash out of your stove, put it in a metal container and bring it outside immediately. My father in law is a fireman and you would be surprised how many fires start from an improper containers and leaving the hot ash inside.

One lesson I learned from a neighbor. If the power company is replacing poles in your area and you ask for the old ones, don't cut them up and burn them in your stove. He got a chimney fire by doing this, whatever they used for a preservative on them burns hot!

Before you even install a stove consider having a brick or stone hearth under it and on the wall behind it. This will not only help protect your home from some mishaps, but will also help keep it toasty warm.

Is there any way to get a stove to burn longer through the night? I know you shouldnt damp it down at night to get a longer burn but then I dont like getting up at 2 am to throw more wood in the fire.

(just posted this in another forum):

if you keep a small fire going, but it's not enough to get usable heat out of, you aren't seeing any benefit. Smoldering fires are NOT the best way to heat your home.

What I do w/my freestanding osburn 2400 in my 2500+sqft house w/BIG vaulted ceiling, two hunter ceiling fans set on low, stove fan set slightly above low, box fan in floor of coldest room pushing cool air toward stove:
I start my "plan" at around 6-7pm and try to end up with a 3-4" base of very hot coals in the bottom (with very little ash), then around 10pm, I double stack the stove full of dry split oak with minimal gaps between the wood, and then shut the intake down to almost closed.

This method has allowed my electric heat to stay off (thermostat set at 70*) until I get up in the morning at 6am. It's worked down to 30* outside temp so far.

Your mileage will vary based on your setup/house/insulation/wood/etc

Buy a bundle of slabs from a sawmill for $10. Screw cutting down trees

and if you don't like killing cows, you can buy your meat from the grocery store...

I disagree. You should close it down for the night. When I last lived in a house with a wood stove, we would fill the stove just before bed and throw on 2 green logs. Then, close down the air intake and go to sleep. Next morning, stir up the coals and throw on dry wood and then run the stove wide open. Get a nice HOT fire going and that will bring up the temp inside the house as well as burn off any creosote in the chimney that formed overnight. We did it this way for years and it always worked great and we never had a chimney fire or even much creosote formulation at all. The secret is the hot fire in the morning.

Great stuff here. This forum is awesome and I am learning by doing and past experiences of you all. Thanks.

Stove is running good. I am thinking about getting a moisture probe to check the dryness of the wood I have stocked. Reason being, I cut down a white ash two weeks ago and the ends are already cracked as much as the 1 year old hickory. The ends are facing the sun and it has been really dry here but? I need a dependable cook top thermometer as well. I think this one is full of b.s. I have not had it read hotter than 475 in a week. The first week I reached 600 and had to damper down quite a bit. I am still stoking it as much with the same amount of wood. Hmmmmm.

Lmao!!! Can't argue with logic like that!

Actually if you can get debarked hardwood slabwood delivered cheap, they are a great source of firewood. (Bark slabs-not so much.) We used to buy 20-bundle semi-loads of de-barked, mostly red oak and that's all we burned for several years. The local mill delivered with a clam truck and stacked the bundles three high next to the shed.

They were steel-banded bundles about three and a half feet in diameter, and the sticks were eight feet long.

Nice thing is it seldom requires splitting and if you have a long bar on your saw, you can sort of cut through an entire bundle at once, more or less.

Easy firewood.

one of my best tips I could pass on is one that I've practiced some in the past, but only recently paid close attention to it (with the change from fireplace to wood stove).

It's very akin to "a penny saved is a penny earned"

Keeping your house warm is MUCH easier than making your house warm.

Watch your thermostat (mine's set at 70*), when it gets to 72* no matter what time of day, I lay enough wood on the fire to keep it there or above. About 5-6pm I start working on the heat for the night and get the thermostat up to around 77-79* by around 9-10pm (very warm, but not uncomfortably so in the front room) and then usually shut my damper down to about 10-15% open and lay a cross hatch of 6-8 logs on to carry us thru the night. I usually wake up around 6-6:30am and find the thermostat around 72-73* and a good bed of coals in the fireplace.

While it sounds like a lot of work, it's not really. Your house/settings/fires will be different, but it's very much worth paying attention to as it's a whole lot more difficult to get the entire house volume from <60* up to 75*.

I have a problem in that i occasionally get nasty creosote water under my stove. The stove is in the basement and has a short run of metal pipe into a brick chimney. The chimney flu starts on immediately where the hole in the wall is meaning that there is no room for soot to drop down without blocking the chimney. Now i know that i have used some wet wood and got the water issue but just to tonight i used some apparently dry wood and got th issue. My house stinks like creosote a bit now...

Get a good heavy cast iron or cast aluminum kettle and keep it full of water on top of the stove. Helps put moisture back in the air

We use several small fans (3"x3" computer fans) to help guide heat to colder rooms on the far end of the house

Ensure you show your children how to use it properly. Show them it is HOT and not to play around it.

Watch out if you have cats! Ours always curled up under the stove and basked in the heat. We have had some singed hair a few times.

Don't be afraid to ask questions or ask for help

They make fans that mount in the corner of archways and doorways.....

My favorite thing is to keep a few bricks on the stovetop and about a half hour before going to bed I wrap 2 bricks up in an old towel and put it under the covers at the foot of the bed.
Feels like I died and went to heaven when I get into bed.

Any links to corner fans that you have used and would recommend. Thanks!

I was visiting an aquaintance from NH and saw an example of that. Each doorway had a little computer fan above it, circulating the air. The whole house was evenly cozy. It was warming than mine in savannah!

We use these in a couple places and they actually work. If you poke around you can probably find them cheaper.

Super Quiet

Thanks for all the wood stove advice. Over the last six weeks I have fine tuned this sucker pretty good. A few burns have went up to 700 degrees but not for very long. I have been able to keep the house up to 70 over three rooms away. The upstairs is warmer than with the furnace on 70 because of the way heat raises.

I am not sure of my wood consumption but it is cheaper than the equivalent in propane that's for sure. If you factor in sweat equity no way, but being my own man is worth a ton to me. This summer, I plan to get a solar setup for the fan and I want to switch my gas water heater to electric as well.

Cherry wood smells so good but is inferior BTU's to the ash and hickory I get. I cut down an ash tree the other day. It took me 5 hours to drop split stack and burn the whole sucker. 2 weeks worth of wood for the effort though. Damn my shoulders are looking good!


Thanks again SF.

This is why I pay $10 for 4 tons of dry hardwood with no tops to deal with

Hickory, hard maple, oak are the best high volume woods to burn. Others have more btus but you can't drive up an get a bundle of slabs whenever you want one.

Please explain how you get that much BTu for $10 bucks. I want logs from a tree company I dont care if they are split or not. Id rather use my maul than pay the processing fee.

It's easy. Call around until you find a sawmill that does not chip their slabs. Hook up your trailer and go fetch a bundle or 2.

Around here they use slabs to smoke tobacco and the smoking barns have 9' or so doors. Since they move them with loaders with forks a bundle of 10' or 12' slabs is less valuable to the mill operator than the 8' because the tobacco guys don't take the long ones. They aren't going to hand-carry them into the barn.

They will easily accumulate straight bundles of hickory or oak when sawing since most saw a single species for days at a time and lumber is usually sold by the semi load and that is a lot.

We also gave cut-offs from the end trimmer away for free. We generated about a pick-up load every hr or so. They had $0 value to us and were just a nuisance to us. All summer long we'd pile them into a mountain then shove them off the hill with a dozer. The local morans would wait until it got freezing and snowy before thinking about coming to get some. They had to take green ones because the seasoned ones ended up 20' down under the fresh cut ones. They should have come in the summer but they never would.

And most slabs don't need split

There are no places like that around here. (wink) Thanks anyway.

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