I am having a new stove fitted next Thursday and this video has been really helpful. I am sure the fitter will give me all the information too, but it is great to know I have a video to come back to. 🔥
I swear I've heard you doing something else before as a commentator or a announcer you have that Golden Era voice that sounds like you could describe anything
A friend gave me a compressed sawdust log and the thing broke up while burning and over fired in my log burner, distorting the back plate. That was with all air vents completely closed down. Never again. A great post mate by the way, very informative. FYI, I have never in 50 years of use, lit the fire upside down….but I do now. What a difference!
Great video. As someone who is new to wood burning stoves I found this so helpful. Recently moved to a house with a wood burner and didn't really have a clue about how to burn efficiently and correctly. Will certainly check out your shop. Thank you.
Very comprehensive and informative as usual the videos and reviews really help me know what I'm doing wrong or right and how to correct it. I shall be watching the stove rope installation video soon as the tortoise rope kit will be going on at the end of this season. Thanks Guys 🔥
Getting my new log burner installed in January and these tips are helpful. As for the coal, i do agree that the man-made stuff is rubbish from experience. But the welsh steam coal is alot better and also a smokeless coal. Even the clear view manual says to use that instead of the briquette coal.
Definitely want it out of the bag sadly. It is certainly best to stack it on the pallet, you could cover it, but it’s very important that the wind can rush through it.
Brilliant video -thank you for sharing. I wonder if there might be a follow up FAQ video - with us submitting some questions?!? Obviously each woodburner is unique and I expect some of this is experimenting but some additional questions I have: 1. How much impact do fans have - is it better to have 2 rather than 1 if there's the space? 2. What is the easiest way to raise the temperature of a woodburner (e.g. simply more fuel?) 3. What is the best way of using the vents (e.g. our woodburner has two - one to do with circulation the other to do with allowing more/less air in)? 4. Is it ok to stack a woodstove for burning overnight - and how do we get the longest burn e.g. closed vent, coal (if multifuel)? 5. Does the size of the recess have an impact on the amount of heat going into a room (we have a large recess and wonder if this is impacting on our ability to heat the room?). A few questions for consideration - but thanks again for the video!
Brilliant video ! My stove was fitted a month ago and now SO enjoying the bone warming heat and comfort throughout the house. I have been an open fir/stove woman almost my whole adult life, but I still learnt much from your clear and sensible advice. I suspect I always refuel too soon ! Uses much more wood too. At the moment here in the north east it is more tricky to source kiln dried hardwood, so I am, for the moment, using kiln dried soft…….I will find some eventually ! Many thanks for this ! 👏👏 PS The advice for storing….was that for drying your own wood, or for bought and already kiln dried ? I store my bought in wood in a log store not in the outside ? Is that correct ?
Wow! Bit harsh on the smokeless. So, my 5kw Dunsley burns 70kg of Red smokeless per week, on 24/7, costs £40. Clean as a whistle and burns beautiful. The same stove would burn a 40 litre net of kiln dried birch in about 12 hours, cost £8, so £16 a day or £110 a week 24/7 approx. Each to their own, but I'd hardly call smokeless rubbish. Your videos are great though, and have been very helpful with anything wood related. Keep up the good work. 👍
You’re right I have become a little one sided 😬. There are a few reasons though. I wouldn’t recommend buying kiln dried logs in nets, I do (because of what I do) but they are costly and not ideal environmentally either. Local wood dried yourself is incredibly cheap (often free if you put some work in, due to ash dieback), and very ecologically sound too. Smokeless fuel by comparison will struggle a bit more on the “green” side of things, is costly when compared to those sources of fuel, and is also unbelievably corrosive. I’m not knocking what you do, because it definitely sounds like it’s working, but that system will unfortunately increase breakdown and failure in your chimney or liner, and in a lot less time. So not only are the fuel costs potentially higher, the installation and maintenance costs tend to be several times the cost, as repair and replacement will typically be required significantly more regularly. Interestingly old school coal did not have the issues with corrosion, and if you bought it locally it was (not clean enough for todays standards) from a world stage point of view, pretty green too! Welsh Steam coal can still be used, and is relatively local to me. That stuff is amazingly good, but the renewable, and carbon neutral nature of wood, has very much captured my loyalty.
Fantastic video guys, this will really help people that are new to the joys of a log burner!! Everything I now know is down to this channel, I even picked my stove based on your recommendation and I am absolutely in love with it, what a fantastic winter I had, only put the central heating on 3 times, absolutely love my burner and the interaction I have with it. The one element I still don’t really understand is the overnight burn. For example, I go to bed about 11 ish, I load the stove up so it’s quite full, I turn the stove down to its lowest but obviously not shut, when I wake up at 6am what should I expect to see, all I have found is coals once I give them a rake over and open the vent, is that correct???? Thank you for what you do. Kind regards Tony
There are so many variables, and I get different results on every occasion with every stove. Sometimes I will move the ash with a log, push the charcoal to the middle and stack logs on top. Other times I will open the vent and the whole bed will immediately glow into life. But in either case I will often find that my fan is still turning and most importantly the house is warm and the glass is clear.
That was a fantastic video, after about 20 years you can still learn something with stove, I am on my second multi fuel a stovax view, T5 about 6 years old, I have it swept every 12 mouths and last year had the glass changed because of crazing patches and after about 3 months it's doing it again, when I spoke to chimney sweep he said it's the smokeless coal so I stopped using it an😢d just using dry kilm wood but it seems to getting bigger. Have you any thoughts on it? Glass was expensive 😢
Thanks. With regard to your glass, this is caused by moisture mixing with the gases from wood and mainly smokeless fuel. The most common cause of moisture is the condensation build up on the inside of the glass during lighting. If you use dry fuel, leave the door ajar during lighting and periods of disuse, then you should minimise any occurrences of moisture mixing with burning gases that can combine and cause acid damage to the glass.
Ah, an uncontrollable stove needs replacing the rope. You mention it casually, but it’s a very important notice! Thanks for that. While replacing the rope I managed to break my glass. I put the door carefully on some cardboard, but there’s a pin that controls a grille for allowing air along the glass, and apparently that pin touches the glass, as the moment I put some pressure on the old rope it cracked. Yes, my fault, I know. 😢
Some TV channel somewhere is missing a presenter! Anyway, I've tried the top down method and it's slower, a lot slower, to get up to temp, but I have to admit it is a lot cleaner. Everyday's a school day. And I have a lovely thump sized mark on the front of my stove from touching it while it was curing. 😢
Thanks for all the guidance. Should I worry about touching the stove before the finish is cured? My new stove arrived today and I unpacked and checked it without giving any thought to how I was handling it. Ran my hand over the top, realised I'd left finger marks, then ran a microfibre cloth on it and it looked worse. Is there anything I should do to make sure it's looking it's best before it's fired up for the first time? It's a Woodford Lowry 5X if that matters - and I did watch your videos on it before I bought it! Thank you
This is tricky, because generally handling the stove before firing shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but it sounds like you may have marked it. If you think it’s not that bad, then just install it and fire it to cure the paint, and that will probably solve most minor marks (the key thing is don’t touch it, whilst it’s curing). However if you think it is marked badly, then it may be worth rubbing it back with wire wool and then re-spraying it. Generally curing will solve minor issues, because the paint will completely soften and then properly harden afterwards, so the surface gets smoothed out a bit during that process.
@@TheTortoise Thanks for this. I hate to think that I'm already that person who has no-one to blame but myself! Re-spraying sounds like it has the potential to go badly wrong - I guess I have nothing to lose by curing first, because re-spraying can always be done later, is that right? I do have an older stove in another room that's seen a lot of use and could do with some touching up, so a video on how to refurbish an older stove would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for your help
It’s certainly a bit smaller. The width of this is around 560mm and the Jotul is 670. The Jotul is also taller and significantly deeper. Output wise, the Jotul is perhaps capable to close to double the output, but generally the Huntingdon in the video is a 4-5kw and the Jotul F400 is a 9kw
Mate if you want to review something completely different to anything else you should try get a Pyroclassic stove in. They are made here in NZ but sold in the UK now. Would make a great review. Check them out. Cheers
50 Kilo sacks of coal are only £27 in my area, far cheaper than logs I use 4 50 kilo sacks every 40 days, 5kw stove is lit all day, when very cold it's lit all night
I have a question, if anyone could answer I would be very grateful, we have just had our stove fitted our first one ever, there is a lot of dust and finger marks on the stove, due to plastering but our installer says not to try and clean the stove until its been fully cured as I could damage the paint, will the dust and finger prints go away after I've done the curing process and if not how do I actually clean the stove as I've read not to use a wet cloth as it could rust, using a hoover with the brush attached will not remove finger prints I would have thought,
Wiping the stove over with a damp cloth is not an issue if you’re lighting the stove immediately. But generally the curing process will solve most things, as the paint will fully soften (most likely move slightly, which will get rid of the finger prints), and then harden. The key thing is that during the curing process, you do everything you can not to touch any painted surfaces!
I’d typically get a stove up to 400°F and then if I was wanting to run whilst I was there (on a low and slow) I’d rein it down to 300. If I was wanting to leave it then I’d want to get the stove hot, and have all the wood blackened and on fire. Then I would shut it down to the point that (through trial and error) I had worked out would stay clean on the glass right through to the fire going out. If it goes black at all, then I’ve shut it too far. FYI the reason I trust the glass is because this will be the coolest part (on the inside of a stove), so it is always the first thing to reveal a problem.
Ok so you look more at stove top temps and glass than flue temps when adjusting down the fire? I’ve been going by flue temps because it’s a little quicker than stove temps and I don’t want to send too much heat up the flue while waiting on the stove temps to come up. Usually start adjusting down when my internal flue temps reach 400f and try and keep them between 400-600 for most of the burn. I thought about trying a higher flue temp then bring it straight down to low instead of stages. Like you said trial and error.
The book Norwegian Wood by Lara Mytting is really helpful on this subject. You can go further with drying, but the vast majority is done by raising the wood above the ground, stacking it with gaps and outside in the wind and weather. I immediately thought this was madness because the rain would surely render your efforts irrelevant, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
If your burning wood properly, then softwood split needs 6 months minimum under cover but with full air circulation, hardwood 9 to 12 months same. Stacked outside with end grain to weather pointless, endgrain absorbs moisture easiest so will always be damp unless in sunny weather. Tarpaulin are a waste of time as are open sided B&Q wood stores and the like. You need a Yorkshire boarded shed/store that has raised floor. Now once you've done all that you have to find a cheap supply of suitable firewood. Not all wood burns equally. If you have the space a 25 ton lorry load direct from the forest is best. If not maybe share one with a few freinds. If not then the price rises because your not cross cutting or splitting. Its not for the lazy in fact its bloody hard graft, but it also keeps you fit. Happy wood burning😊
It’s a common misconception that wood cannot dry out in the open. The moisture content of the wood is relative to the ambient moisture whether it is covered or not. Water on end grain will go into the wood and then dry out very quickly, but this won’t affect the seasoning of the wood.
@@TheTortoise It's not a misconception at all, equilibrium moisture content is only part of the story of how wood uncovered to the elements will not dry properly. In our northern climate the best outside moisture content of any stacked wood generally would be around 25% mc. This is a absolute best case scenario and very rarely achieved other than in a hot dry summer. Every time it rains uncovered wood absorbs water at different rates depending on its mc, the dryer the wood the more it will absorb. It's simply a cycle you cannot change other than giving some protection from the rain, wind is OK it creates surface friction that helps dry out the wood. I've been drying firewood for 40 years on a dependency basis as a fuel source and tried all ways to achieve acceptable results no outdoor system has produced acceptable results for me. If you live in Spain you would of course have different results. Everybody is welcome of course to find out the hardway if they want It's no skin of my nose and not learn from others trials and tribulations.
@@TheTortoise I don't live in Norway, I Don't need to read anything based on Norwegian climate, I've lived it and learnt by experience, and rely on my knowledge gained through experience as a user of wood being a single source of heating. Clearly you haven't. No doubt having read a Norwegian book by a author sharing experiences of Norway you consider yourself an expert. What other books have you read that also makes you an expert on the subject, please tell?
I can give you some free advice you should never use that size brush head and drain rods on a log burner that has most probably got a 5 or 6 inch liner down it. Always use a qualified sweep 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Upstairs apartment neighbour shakes and shakes the grate of his multi-fuel stove every single day for 15-18 minutes. I have no idea why he does this. The noise is just awful, it's like he's hammering my ceiling. They should be banned in such accommodations, in my opinion.
Your neighbour should be banned! What a nuisance. You’ve gotta speak to him, because 15 minutes is obscene. Either that or buy him an ash hoover for Christmas 😅
quick question. are multi fuel stoves that have a bed of ash above the ashpan as efficient for burning wood as a dedicated log burner ? i want a multi fuel stove but will probably be burning wood more than coal
Buying a multi-fuel stove is often a mistake in this situation. Some would say this is like buying a Ferrari, and then fitting off-road tyres as a just in-case. You end up with a car which remains poor at driving off-road and now also destroying it’s on road capability. That said, if you do decide to do this, then essentially anything you can do to reverse the affects of a grate will benefit you eg: Allowing a bed of ash Shutting lower air Allowing the ash pan to fill with ash. Of course the other big factor is how you plan to use the stove. If it is primarily for evenings, then generally this won’t cause an issue, as you’re not asking much of a stove anyway. You can also improve performance with your stove choice, as there are some big differences between them.
Well, thank you. My wife came round the corner asking why Clarkson was talking about making fires 😂
Glad I could help 😆
This is the best woodstove video for beginners I have ever seen great job 👏
Glad it was helpful!
I am having a new stove fitted next Thursday and this video has been really helpful. I am sure the fitter will give me all the information too, but it is great to know I have a video to come back to. 🔥
I swear I've heard you doing something else before as a commentator or a announcer you have that Golden Era voice that sounds like you could describe anything
You’re too kind. Sadly I haven’t done too much else yet, but who knows where life takes us 😅👍
A friend gave me a compressed sawdust log and the thing broke up while burning and over fired in my log burner, distorting the back plate. That was with all air vents completely closed down. Never again.
A great post mate by the way, very informative. FYI, I have never in 50 years of use, lit the fire upside down….but I do now. What a difference!
Great comment, thanks for the information. Sorry to hear of the issues, but it’s really useful to hear the feedback of potential problems.
Great video. As someone who is new to wood burning stoves I found this so helpful. Recently moved to a house with a wood burner and didn't really have a clue about how to burn efficiently and correctly. Will certainly check out your shop. Thank you.
Very comprehensive and informative as usual the videos and reviews really help me know what I'm doing wrong or right and how to correct it. I shall be watching the stove rope installation video soon as the tortoise rope kit will be going on at the end of this season. Thanks Guys 🔥
Awesome!
Glad to hear it!
Great video thanks
Nice job Gabriel 👍
Thanks, I’m hoping it will be helpful for particularly those new to things this Autumn 🤞😄
@@TheTortoise Yeah, i actually have an heavy stonestove with a slightly different functioning but... Always good to remind the standard instructions👍
Getting my new log burner installed in January and these tips are helpful.
As for the coal, i do agree that the man-made stuff is rubbish from experience.
But the welsh steam coal is alot better and also a smokeless coal.
Even the clear view manual says to use that instead of the briquette coal.
The best 101, You could present anything
😅 thanks a lot!
I love the way you explain things. You are so helpful. Thank you 🙏
You are so welcome!
You doing a great job explaining everything, may our Lord bless you.
Thanks 👍
Can i store wood outside long as it's covered over ,it's in a big massive bag ,r do I have to stack it etc
Definitely want it out of the bag sadly. It is certainly best to stack it on the pallet, you could cover it, but it’s very important that the wind can rush through it.
Brilliant video -thank you for sharing. I wonder if there might be a follow up FAQ video - with us submitting some questions?!? Obviously each woodburner is unique and I expect some of this is experimenting but some additional questions I have:
1. How much impact do fans have - is it better to have 2 rather than 1 if there's the space?
2. What is the easiest way to raise the temperature of a woodburner (e.g. simply more fuel?)
3. What is the best way of using the vents (e.g. our woodburner has two - one to do with circulation the other to do with allowing more/less air in)?
4. Is it ok to stack a woodstove for burning overnight - and how do we get the longest burn e.g. closed vent, coal (if multifuel)?
5. Does the size of the recess have an impact on the amount of heat going into a room (we have a large recess and wonder if this is impacting on our ability to heat the room?).
A few questions for consideration - but thanks again for the video!
Thanks for the suggestions, I will certainly stick them on my list!
Brilliant information. Really interesting.
Great information from you Gabriel. I am so happy with our Jötul F500, a cast iron power-house.
Sounds awesome!
Thank you so much for this. So informative and helpful
We do our best 😇
😅
Brilliant video ! My stove was fitted a month ago and now SO enjoying the bone warming heat and comfort throughout the house. I have been an open fir/stove woman almost my whole adult life, but I still learnt much from your clear and sensible advice. I suspect I always refuel too soon ! Uses much more wood too. At the moment here in the north east it is more tricky to source kiln dried hardwood, so I am, for the moment, using kiln dried soft…….I will find some eventually ! Many thanks for this ! 👏👏 PS The advice for storing….was that for drying your own wood, or for bought and already kiln dried ? I store my bought in wood in a log store not in the outside ? Is that correct ?
Yes. What I was saying is about seasoning your fuel. With your ready dried stuff it is certainly best in-doors or in your covered log store.
Wow! Bit harsh on the smokeless. So, my 5kw Dunsley burns 70kg of Red smokeless per week, on 24/7, costs £40. Clean as a whistle and burns beautiful. The same stove would burn a 40 litre net of kiln dried birch in about 12 hours, cost £8, so £16 a day or £110 a week 24/7 approx.
Each to their own, but I'd hardly call smokeless rubbish. Your videos are great though, and have been very helpful with anything wood related. Keep up the good work. 👍
You’re right I have become a little one sided 😬.
There are a few reasons though. I wouldn’t recommend buying kiln dried logs in nets, I do (because of what I do) but they are costly and not ideal environmentally either. Local wood dried yourself is incredibly cheap (often free if you put some work in, due to ash dieback), and very ecologically sound too. Smokeless fuel by comparison will struggle a bit more on the “green” side of things, is costly when compared to those sources of fuel, and is also unbelievably corrosive. I’m not knocking what you do, because it definitely sounds like it’s working, but that system will unfortunately increase breakdown and failure in your chimney or liner, and in a lot less time. So not only are the fuel costs potentially higher, the installation and maintenance costs tend to be several times the cost, as repair and replacement will typically be required significantly more regularly.
Interestingly old school coal did not have the issues with corrosion, and if you bought it locally it was (not clean enough for todays standards) from a world stage point of view, pretty green too! Welsh Steam coal can still be used, and is relatively local to me. That stuff is amazingly good, but the renewable, and carbon neutral nature of wood, has very much captured my loyalty.
100% excellent video
I like this guy.
Fantastic video guys, this will really help people that are new to the joys of a log burner!!
Everything I now know is down to this channel, I even picked my stove based on your recommendation and I am absolutely in love with it, what a fantastic winter I had, only put the central heating on 3 times, absolutely love my burner and the interaction I have with it.
The one element I still don’t really understand is the overnight burn.
For example, I go to bed about 11 ish, I load the stove up so it’s quite full, I turn the stove down to its lowest but obviously not shut, when I wake up at 6am what should I expect to see, all I have found is coals once I give them a rake over and open the vent, is that correct????
Thank you for what you do.
Kind regards
Tony
There are so many variables, and I get different results on every occasion with every stove. Sometimes I will move the ash with a log, push the charcoal to the middle and stack logs on top. Other times I will open the vent and the whole bed will immediately glow into life. But in either case I will often find that my fan is still turning and most importantly the house is warm and the glass is clear.
That was a fantastic video, after about 20 years you can still learn something with stove, I am on my second multi fuel a stovax view, T5 about 6 years old, I have it swept every 12 mouths and last year had the glass changed because of crazing patches and after about 3 months it's doing it again, when I spoke to chimney sweep he said it's the smokeless coal so I stopped using it an😢d just using dry kilm wood but it seems to getting bigger. Have you any thoughts on it? Glass was expensive 😢
Thanks.
With regard to your glass, this is caused by moisture mixing with the gases from wood and mainly smokeless fuel. The most common cause of moisture is the condensation build up on the inside of the glass during lighting. If you use dry fuel, leave the door ajar during lighting and periods of disuse, then you should minimise any occurrences of moisture mixing with burning gases that can combine and cause acid damage to the glass.
Thanks I will try that
Hmm...i am going to try the upside doen fire technique next time 👍
The way you filled the log burner up - does that apply to a multi fuel log burners as well? Thanks
Ah, an uncontrollable stove needs replacing the rope. You mention it casually, but it’s a very important notice! Thanks for that. While replacing the rope I managed to break my glass. I put the door carefully on some cardboard, but there’s a pin that controls a grille for allowing air along the glass, and apparently that pin touches the glass, as the moment I put some pressure on the old rope it cracked. Yes, my fault, I know. 😢
Nightmare!
We sell glass and rope if it’s useful though 👍
@ I know, thanks! But I’m in Spain and in a hurry :-) (Lots of wood stoves in Spain!)
@ Fixed it. Expensive.. 600x300 mm , 100€ 🙄
😅 at least it’s solved!
Some TV channel somewhere is missing a presenter!
Anyway, I've tried the top down method and it's slower, a lot slower, to get up to temp, but I have to admit it is a lot cleaner. Everyday's a school day.
And I have a lovely thump sized mark on the front of my stove from touching it while it was curing. 😢
Shame about the thumb print, nightmare!
Thanks for all the guidance. Should I worry about touching the stove before the finish is cured? My new stove arrived today and I unpacked and checked it without giving any thought to how I was handling it. Ran my hand over the top, realised I'd left finger marks, then ran a microfibre cloth on it and it looked worse. Is there anything I should do to make sure it's looking it's best before it's fired up for the first time? It's a Woodford Lowry 5X if that matters - and I did watch your videos on it before I bought it! Thank you
This is tricky, because generally handling the stove before firing shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but it sounds like you may have marked it. If you think it’s not that bad, then just install it and fire it to cure the paint, and that will probably solve most minor marks (the key thing is don’t touch it, whilst it’s curing). However if you think it is marked badly, then it may be worth rubbing it back with wire wool and then re-spraying it. Generally curing will solve minor issues, because the paint will completely soften and then properly harden afterwards, so the surface gets smoothed out a bit during that process.
@@TheTortoise Thanks for this. I hate to think that I'm already that person who has no-one to blame but myself! Re-spraying sounds like it has the potential to go badly wrong - I guess I have nothing to lose by curing first, because re-spraying can always be done later, is that right? I do have an older stove in another room that's seen a lot of use and could do with some touching up, so a video on how to refurbish an older stove would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for your help
Neat idea. I happen to have something that would be perfect for this!
is the stove you have behind you most of the time comparable in size to the jotul f 400?
It’s certainly a bit smaller. The width of this is around 560mm and the Jotul is 670. The Jotul is also taller and significantly deeper.
Output wise, the Jotul is perhaps capable to close to double the output, but generally the Huntingdon in the video is a 4-5kw and the Jotul F400 is a 9kw
Mate if you want to review something completely different to anything else you should try get a Pyroclassic stove in. They are made here in NZ but sold in the UK now. Would make a great review. Check them out. Cheers
There isn’t a lot of information about them in the UK, but they do look very interesting!
I wonder whether they’d be up for it?
50 Kilo sacks of coal are only £27 in my area, far cheaper than logs
I use 4 50 kilo sacks every 40 days, 5kw stove is lit all day, when very cold it's lit all night
Is that the oldschool coal?
Sounds great!
@@TheTortoise It's "Burnwell" smokeless coal, can't buy proper coal anymore
I know 😢!
Sounds like it’s doing a good job though!
I have a question, if anyone could answer I would be very grateful, we have just had our stove fitted our first one ever, there is a lot of dust and finger marks on the stove, due to plastering but our installer says not to try and clean the stove until its been fully cured as I could damage the paint, will the dust and finger prints go away after I've done the curing process and if not how do I actually clean the stove as I've read not to use a wet cloth as it could rust, using a hoover with the brush attached will not remove finger prints I would have thought,
Wiping the stove over with a damp cloth is not an issue if you’re lighting the stove immediately. But generally the curing process will solve most things, as the paint will fully soften (most likely move slightly, which will get rid of the finger prints), and then harden. The key thing is that during the curing process, you do everything you can not to touch any painted surfaces!
@TheTortoise brilliant thank you so much
What flue temps do you shoot for before turning a stove down for a low efficient burn? Do you shut it down in stages or just shut it straight away?
I’d typically get a stove up to 400°F and then if I was wanting to run whilst I was there (on a low and slow) I’d rein it down to 300. If I was wanting to leave it then I’d want to get the stove hot, and have all the wood blackened and on fire. Then I would shut it down to the point that (through trial and error) I had worked out would stay clean on the glass right through to the fire going out. If it goes black at all, then I’ve shut it too far.
FYI the reason I trust the glass is because this will be the coolest part (on the inside of a stove), so it is always the first thing to reveal a problem.
Ok so you look more at stove top temps and glass than flue temps when adjusting down the fire? I’ve been going by flue temps because it’s a little quicker than stove temps and I don’t want to send too much heat up the flue while waiting on the stove temps to come up. Usually start adjusting down when my internal flue temps reach 400f and try and keep them between 400-600 for most of the burn. I thought about trying a higher flue temp then bring it straight down to low instead of stages. Like you said trial and error.
HI, what would you say is the best value for money woodburner and muti fuel stove? any size...many thanks
Hamlet series 5
@@chrischristofis8501 thanks I will check it out
When storing logs,if it’s not covered surely snow and rain will keep the wood damp.I store mine
With plenty of air but have a covering when it rains.
The book Norwegian Wood by Lara Mytting is really helpful on this subject. You can go further with drying, but the vast majority is done by raising the wood above the ground, stacking it with gaps and outside in the wind and weather. I immediately thought this was madness because the rain would surely render your efforts irrelevant, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
🔥👍👍
If your burning wood properly, then softwood split needs 6 months minimum under cover but with full air circulation, hardwood 9 to 12 months same. Stacked outside with end grain to weather pointless, endgrain absorbs moisture easiest so will always be damp unless in sunny weather. Tarpaulin are a waste of time as are open sided B&Q wood stores and the like. You need a Yorkshire boarded shed/store that has raised floor. Now once you've done all that you have to find a cheap supply of suitable firewood. Not all wood burns equally. If you have the space a 25 ton lorry load direct from the forest is best. If not maybe share one with a few freinds. If not then the price rises because your not cross cutting or splitting. Its not for the lazy in fact its bloody hard graft, but it also keeps you fit. Happy wood burning😊
It’s a common misconception that wood cannot dry out in the open. The moisture content of the wood is relative to the ambient moisture whether it is covered or not. Water on end grain will go into the wood and then dry out very quickly, but this won’t affect the seasoning of the wood.
@@TheTortoise It's not a misconception at all, equilibrium moisture content is only part of the story of how wood uncovered to the elements will not dry properly. In our northern climate the best outside moisture content of any stacked wood generally would be around 25% mc. This is a absolute best case scenario and very rarely achieved other than in a hot dry summer. Every time it rains uncovered wood absorbs water at different rates depending on its mc, the dryer the wood the more it will absorb. It's simply a cycle you cannot change other than giving some protection from the rain, wind is OK it creates surface friction that helps dry out the wood. I've been drying firewood for 40 years on a dependency basis as a fuel source and tried all ways to achieve acceptable results no outdoor system has produced acceptable results for me. If you live in Spain you would of course have different results. Everybody is welcome of course to find out the hardway if they want It's no skin of my nose and not learn from others trials and tribulations.
It may be useful to read Norwegian Wood by Lara Mytting.
@@TheTortoise I don't live in Norway, I Don't need to read anything based on Norwegian climate, I've lived it and learnt by experience, and rely on my knowledge gained through experience as a user of wood being a single source of heating. Clearly you haven't. No doubt having read a Norwegian book by a author sharing experiences of Norway you consider yourself an expert. What other books have you read that also makes you an expert on the subject, please tell?
Cool 👌
I can give you some free advice you should never use that size brush head and drain rods on a log burner that has most probably got a 5 or 6 inch liner down it. Always use a qualified sweep 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yea. 😆
I probably should have clarified that 😬. They were some old rods and brushes for open fires, that I nicked out of my brothers van.
Upstairs apartment neighbour shakes and shakes the grate of his multi-fuel stove every single day for 15-18 minutes. I have no idea why he does this. The noise is just awful, it's like he's hammering my ceiling. They should be banned in such accommodations, in my opinion.
Your neighbour should be banned!
What a nuisance. You’ve gotta speak to him, because 15 minutes is obscene. Either that or buy him an ash hoover for Christmas 😅
quick question. are multi fuel stoves that have a bed of ash above the ashpan as efficient for burning wood as a dedicated log burner ? i want a multi fuel stove but will probably be burning wood more than coal
Buying a multi-fuel stove is often a mistake in this situation. Some would say this is like buying a Ferrari, and then fitting off-road tyres as a just in-case. You end up with a car which remains poor at driving off-road and now also destroying it’s on road capability.
That said, if you do decide to do this, then essentially anything you can do to reverse the affects of a grate will benefit you eg:
Allowing a bed of ash
Shutting lower air
Allowing the ash pan to fill with ash.
Of course the other big factor is how you plan to use the stove. If it is primarily for evenings, then generally this won’t cause an issue, as you’re not asking much of a stove anyway. You can also improve performance with your stove choice, as there are some big differences between them.