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Woodburning Stoves
Over the summer I had a Lopi Endeavor stove installed in my new cabin. They used 6" stovepipe straight up through the roof with the top of the stovepipe 2'above the peak. The stovepipe is approximately 22-23'to the roof and another 4-5'from the roof to the very top. I'm burning hard maple which I cut last year and split in the fall. I'm getting an odor in the cabin and a black residue under the stovepipe on the roof. Should the wood be seasoned longer after splitting? Does anyone see a problem in the installation? The neighbors in the area say the wood is seasoned enough-the dealor that I purchased it from and installed it says "the wood should be seasoned for two years"(the wood he burns in the store looks as if its kiln dried)? Does the required seasoning differ in situations?
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Woodburning Stoves
My primary source of heat is my wood stove. Hardwood can take more than a year to season properly, but should be ok to use as you describe. The soot outside wouldn't concern me much, but the odor inside may indicate a fire that is not hot enough.
I find that if I burn soft woods I can use the input air control to keep the fire "quiet", but if I am loaded with california almond (seasoned one year)the stove barely gets enough air to create the necessary heat to burn this very dense, heavy wood. Sometimes I have to crack the door open to get it going good.
The fact that I live almost a mile above sea level does play into this. I have had to remove the catalytic combuster because it simply will not work at this altitude with very hard wood. Before I took it out I was getting sort of wet, smoky odors in the house and a very rapid build-up up of creosote in the chimney.
Try a couple loads of softer dry woods, like old scrap lumber, or open the damper and let 'er rip and see if that helps.
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The build up in the stove indicative of wet wood.
Wood in the round can take for ever to dry. Wood is not split for asthetics but to aid in the drying. I always try to split wood in situ (where it fell) so I don't have to deal with the bark waste and the wood begins to dry immediately.
Drying wood also depends on the climate. In Nevada the dry climate will help to dry the wood. Here in the south I am not sure they know what dry wood is. I have had wood sitting here 3 years or more and not really dry.
Wet wood is generally easier to split also.
With the long chimney, which I assume is uninsulate, the chimney will not heat up properly and will not burn up the creosode thus the reside.
Remember that it takes a lot of BTU's to evaporate a pound of water. The wetter the wood the less heat you are getting for the work that you have already expended.
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As you probably suspect from the good replies, you are burning wet wood. I burn mostly red and white oak, and it is not really dry until 3 years after splitting and drying under roof. I can always tell when around the wood burner if I have wood that is only two years old. There just isn't the same heat given off.
Keep working at it, but it sounds like your installation is okay. Straight up is best for a chimney. Burn as hot as you can, and with as little wood as you can get by with. You don't want the stove to get so hot that it shuts the damper down, as this just makes a smoldering fire and creates a lot of creosote from cool smoke in the chimney. Good luck, and keep working at it. It takes a while to learn the tricks for each stove. I'm on my third one, and thought I knew everything after the first one. Not! I have a Vermont Castings Defiant now, and I had to learn its tricks the same as the other two. Tonight I am testing out some dead elm that has not been drying undercover, but needed to be cleaned up. It seems to be burning okay so far.
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Thanks for your good input guys, it's greatly appreciated! I guess I'll have to buy some good seasoned wood.That hurts because the whole property is covered with hardwoods but none split! It's making sense,the cabin isn't insulated yet and it does seem to be worse when it's colder outside. We stayed in the cabin on new years eve and it got down to about 26 degrees F that night. The odor got kinda bad after we went to bed, when the stove was on a slow burn.So I probably shouldn't do that until we insulate the roof. It can't be too good for the body to breath in that odor for an extended period of time. We're very anxious to stay in the new cabin but maybe we should wait for spring when it's a bit warmer. Have you ever experienced the odor with your own stove? Do you find that woodburning stoves dry out items in the house such as woodwork or furniture? Do you keep a kettle on the stovetop to replemish some of the moisture? I'm pleasantly surprised to find that there's practically no smoke odor from the stove at all!
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Around here where it can get very cold most everybody who heats with wood use insulated chimneys. I know very little about wood stoves but I suspect that a good run of external insulated chimney would draw better than plain stove pipe when it's real cold if fire's not real hot.
People with actual experience would know better than I, but maybe a different chimney solve the problem when the only other solution is waiting a year or so for the wood to dry. But then maybe just splitting the wood more and stocking the stove differently would make a hotter fire, although maybe a hotter fire isn't a good solution when you want to go to bed.
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Kay
This is so ironic that this topic came up. I have a Vermont Castings Encore(next size down from the Defiant). I've had it for 4 seasons now and I've went through 3 catalysts! The first one went 2 seasons the second one. Now the third only went half a season! My wood is relativly dry, but it seems like the catalyst gets fly ash on it and over heats causing it to break apart.
Fortunatly all were under warranty, but this next one is not and it costs ~$140. Also Vermont Castings is hvaing huge price increases. It seems to me if they just put a metal grill on the catalyst it wouldn't crumble apart. I just noticed this last night.
P.S. I was cleaning the fly ash every 2 weeks or so.
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Glenn, if everything is as it should be, there should be no odor from the stove.
Experimentation is required here. With some types of wood (or maybe states of dryness) you can adjust the airflow so that it will run all night, others not.
With my current supply of hardwood I usually have to leave the damper open and I still get 5 or 6 hours of clean, odor free heat. I have not found it hard to get up once a night to fling some more wood in the stove.
If you get a cheap dial type oven thermometer and set it of top of the stove you can get some sort of gauge on how much heat it is actually producing.
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StephenR, we have two earthstoves in the family here.
Both came equipped with metal encased combustors.
They fell apart anyway. Now we have some real sturdy empty metal casings!
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Mark
I just talked with the Vermont Castings dealer. By what he told me, the only thing I can think of is that the wood was slightly wet from the rain. So I'm running it with out the catalyst and the glass is incredibly dirty. The dealer has told me that it is even more inefficient than the old wood burning stoves. He is willing to work with me about the price, which is now $179, since I just got it this year.
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