How to use a Wood burning stove 101
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- Опубліковано 23 лип 2024
- This is a full 101 of how to use a stove, taken from common questions and the key bites of information any budding stove user will need:
0:12 Can I use my stove straight after installation?
1:19 How do I season or "bed in" a stove?
3:47 How do I cure the paint?
6:41 How do you light a stove?
9:45 What fuel should I be using?
12:06 How do you store and dry fuel?
13:19 When and how much should you re-load?
15:07 What do I do if smoke comes into the room?
16:13 What if a firebrick breaks?
17:57 What if my glass breaks?
20:14 When do I need to replace the rope?
22:33 When and how does the ash need emptying?
25:00 Is there any monthly/occasional maintenance required?
27:30 When does a stove need sweeping?
30:26 What do I do if my CO alarm goes off?
I hope you find it helpful, but if you have any questions or suggestions, do drop them in the comments!
Oh and obviously "Like" the video, and then share it 😄 - Розваги
You doing a great job explaining everything, may our Lord bless you.
Thanks 👍
The best 101, You could present anything
😅 thanks a lot!
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👍
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 information from you Gabriel. I am so happy with our Jötul F500, a cast iron power-house.
Sounds awesome!
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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!
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?
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.