I use oven cleaner to clean the glass, usually mine is more brown with a little
black, doesn't get cleaned a lot so it's baked on pretty good by the time I get around to it.
We have one of these, works good, quiet and requires no power.

http://www.ecofan.com/

Stack fires are scary, sounds like a jet engine! I clean my chimney every 6-8 weeks, better safe than sorry. When I clean out the fire box, I use a 5 gallon metal bucket, small shovel, then I let the bucket sit for days out away from the house. Then I put the ashes in my tow behind the riding lawn mower fertilizer spreader and spread them around the lawn.

 

Glass doors in a woodstove are for looks only. They make the stove look good when you don't use it. You have to decide whether you want to spend a lot of time cleaning the glass or just let it crud up. One stove I now have has both glass and metal inserts for the door. During the summer I'll put the glass inserts in. During the winter the metal inserts go in.

In regards to burning wood, think of it as destructive distillation. You don't want to run the stove where the temperature of the stack is below the condensation temperature of the gasses. Otherwise, the gasses will condense out in your stack and form various types of crud called creosote. Burning unseasoned wood reduces the stack temperature and adds more condensable gasses that goes up the stack only to condense out before they clear the stack. The secrets to burning wood are: burn dry, burn hot, don't smother a fire to make it last a long time, keep the excess air going into the stove to a minimum and, keep an eye on the buildup in your stack (an insulated stainless steel chimney is the best choice and, don't put in a chimney that is too big for a tight stove. 6 inch diameter is better than an 8 inch diameter).

 

Thanks Pop-Pop, I think I am onto just buying a P/U truck load of wood to finish out the season. For $75.00 I think it is worth it.

It seems like wood has gotten outragous, just as I buy a house with a stove???


I've been seeing prices as high as $200 a cord? Lowest I have seen is $160. Does this sound about right (I'm sure it's a reigonal thing)

 

The reason your glass gets black is that you are smoldering the fire. My glass does it all the time. As the temp outside gets warmer, I turn the stove down. The glass in the meantime gets blacker. As it gets colder outside, I turn the heat up on the woodstove, the glass then will burn off the black color. When it was -27 for 3 weeks straight up here, the glass was very clean, then it jumped up to 20 above and the glass started getting blacker. I dont clean it by hand anymore. Just turn up the heat. I burn birch, cause there are alot of dem trees up here. I also burn spruce to start fire, or when it is very cold and I am at home all weekend. Just have to keep it burning hot with spruce.

 

ridofpwrstroke,

While this may be true on your particular stove, it is not true on all wood stoves. The stoves with the air wash glass have the ability to be burn hot and keep the glass clean.......or even clean up dirty glass. It all has to do with how the air enters the stove. My family has alot of craft stoves and it doesn't matter if you burn nothing but extremely hot fires, damper and vents full open, with year-old seasoned wood, the glass still gets black after just 3 or 4 fires to the point that you can't see anything through it. My buck stove is like yours though.......if I burn hot fires, the glass will stay 90% clean......otherwise it will blacken some. Even after it gets black I can just build another HOT fire and it will clear back up.

Waylan

 

Thats what I meant. Of the two stoves I have had, they both did the same thing. Thought all did.

 

I read some tips where a guy was saying if he burnt "green" (or choked it off too much) he would be black almost right away. I'm not running a fashion show, so I can live with the glass being black if it must. I guess what I have is an air tight stove, because there is no damper in the flue, the door locks up tight. When you crank the door handle its TIGHT. There is one handle on the side to close the damper (only two postions, open and completely closed) and there is a little tab that slides from lest to right on the front.

Tell you what I do like about the glass, an inexperienced wood burner such as myslef can see what the heck is going on in there!

I split a pretty good amount of wood the last two days. Things are slow at the office right now so I might as well get stocked up for next year..............

 

Okay then.

A year later and I just about hate using my wood stove. I recently burnt a dime sized mark in our new Cherry hardwood, so that just about sealed the deal (as far as the wife is concerned) that we must come up with another plan.


I burnt just over 3 cords of Oak and Maple this season, I have a full cord or Oak, Maple and wild cherry for next year.
Heres the issue. It's a MESS! My wife absolutly can't stand it and is giving me a few options for next year.

1) Wood Furnace, this way the main mess is in the basement and I can tie it into our existing duct work so it can be thermostat operated.

2) Pellet stove (not my favorite idea) pellets have gotten far more expensive than they deserve to be.

3) Coal stove, does anyone even use these anymore. The idea sounds "neat", but I imagine the mess and danger factor is about the same as wood.

4) Other?

I'm leaning towards the add on furnace, we both like this idea, it is still a pain to deal with the wood, but I have good (cheap) sources for it.

I could still be swayed to replace the existing stove with another one if the fuel was reasonable, otherwise it would just sit there idle forever.

 

Another thing that was not mentioned is that looks like a "new generation" stove. What I mean by that is in recent years all this EPA b.s.etc. has come down to the stove manufacturers. They want to make a stove that they can mass produce and sell in all countrys.

Right now I'm running 3 woodstoves.

A new 2006 jotul.

a mid 80's "the boss"

and a homemade 55 gal barrel stove.





Out of all of them, the new jotul is the biggest pain. I can take the same wood that will burn fine in the other 2 and you have to struggle with it to get it going.

The "new generation" stoves are so airtight that they realy need 2 to 3 year old seasoned hardwood. Now, you can't leave the wood in tree lengths or blocks for 2 years and expect to split it a few days before and get it to burn. It has to be split and stacked in the sun in june or july to start burning it november. trust me they are a pain.

In my barrel stove, I was pulling wood out of a snow bank last night and throwing it in. takes off like we the people.


I have a firewood customer who thought he was doing the right thing by buying a stove with a catalitic converter. This highly educated individual tried burning some of my 2 year old seasoned stuff. he said he had to split and resplit all the wood to get it to burn. Then, he stated he found the solution. He found a guy that sells him "kiln dried" hardwood. "50 extra bucks a cord" he said "but it's worth it!"


I then asked him if there were any greenhouse gasses emmited into the atmosphere during the kiln drying process. He just sat there with a blank look on his face.


coal is just about obsolete...

pellets are too pricey...

you can burn corn, only worth it in the midwest when the prices are down...




I would do the woodstove in the basement idea, It will heat your house better as heat rises. you may need to install some "cold air returns" in the floors. the pro's are better even heating, no mess upstairs, no lugging the wood up. The con's are having to go downstairs to load it and lack of atmosphere in the living area.


The other option is an outdoor wood furnace, big bucks to purchase and install.

 

Hmmmmm.

I have a catylist (sp?) type stove, has a honey comb piece in the top/back that I take out and clean with the shop vac.

Think I would have been able to take that piece out all together, or is that not cool?

BTW, it's a 1990 Jotul.

 

yea, i can see it in your sig...


"stove with no kitty"

 

What you're likely to see in my sig is:
Wife made me give up the money saving wood stove is hopes of some thing "cleaner".

 

I'm with the others on the green wood issue.

Another addictive Forum to learn about wood heat is located at http://www.hearth.com LOTS of good advice, and they are as addicted to wood heat as we are to the Cummins.

This will take you right into the forum:

http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/

 

Alot of good advice already. I'll try to add a bit.
Your stove does not appear to be a "double burn" (don't know the exact terminology). If you can look in and see up the flue, it's not. These, typically older or less expensive type of stoves will creosote up quicker than those that channel the flue gasses (smoke) back into the stove to reburn, sending drier/claener smoke up the chimmney. Just keep an eye on it and buy a chimmney brush and clean it out (from the roof) whenever there's enough buildup that if you smack the flue you get particles falling down into the stove. (Had a chimmney fire when I was little, scared the heck out of me and my parents)
Your wood may not be green, but just wet. You live in a fairly wet/humid climate. Wood needs to be split and stacked for at least one full season before burning. Out west here, you can cut dead standing wood and it's usually pretty dry already.
If you get the stove burning hot for a while, it'll usually burn the black off the window, but still need to clean sometimes.
Make sure the flue is double or triple insulated where it goes through the ceiling and attic. Temps of 800 deg on your flue thermometer are ok (at least the probe type guages) provided the above is installed. Mag netic guages may read lower.
If there is a fan kit for your stove, or you can put a fan behind it, you'll get much more heat out of it.

 

Sorry guys, I should have said something, the wood is not the issue anymore, I bumped a thread that is over a year old.

The green wood WAS the issue, I burnt stuff that was split and stacked about 8 months prior. Now the issue is the whole idea of wood itself.