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[hondaracer2oo4]

Thanks yoder for some of the suggestions. He has read this thread and made some changes such as stacking the wood away from the front, opening the flapper door back to 100% and upped his differential to 8 and he said he was amaze pad that 75% of the smoke went away and he is getting much longer burn times out of the same amount of wood. I am still trying to get him to up his diff to 15 but he was very thankful for the help.

[E Yoder]

Great. Happy wood burners is what we want!

[hondaracer2oo4]

Does anyone know when they started putting the timers on the mfe series? This guy does not have one and his build date is April of 2015. His boiler I believe is well oversized for his application and experiences long idle periods. He doesn't think he can bump the diff over the 8 he has moved it to because it wont restart. He called the factory and they said that it would be very difficult to retro in a timer, I looked at the wiring schematic in the manual and it does run to a bunch of different places.

[E Yoder]

It could be done if you wanted to do some rewiring. The ranco control would be one route the power could go from the rocker switch to the high limit, timer could be a second route. High limit feeds to the fan and solenoid.

Adding some air leakage by drilling a hole below the solenoid flap might be all he needs though, and much cheaper. I'd try that first.

[hondaracer2oo4]

I'll pass it along, any idea what the diff is set to from the factory with the 10000?

[E Yoder]

180, 10 degree diff. on the ranco control.

[aarmga]

This is the stove my father in law has.  He heats his barn, woodshop and house with dhw.  It is a large stove so the wood consumption is marginally larger than what I use to heat my house and dhw.  One thing that I have found with his stove, which also works well on mine, is that running a little less air with a larger differential temp seems to burn less wood and much cleaner out the stack.  I'm not sure why this is but I figure it has to do with torching the wood.  Father in law runs his flapper about a little less than half open with a 15* diff temp and 185* high temp.  The stove itself runs a lot longer on a burn this way but believe it or not he uses less wood and it is a noticeable difference.  Since then I have closes my air damper to 1/4 open on my stove with a 10* diff and I have also found a much longer available heat cycle for the wood i burn.  My stove used to run 10-15 minutes then idle for a few hours and now it runs 30 minutes and idles for a few hours but uses less wood.  I can't explain it but I do know a bumblebee by scientific terms isn't supposed to be able to fly but they still can! 

[mlappin]

Easy enough to explain, while a MF E series is a efficient stove, it’s still not a gassifier, by limiting the air available your slowing the burn down and lowering the amount of heat lost out the stack. If you had a pyrometer to place in the stack then ran it like you are now, then set it back like it was originally when it burned for shorter times, I’m betting your stack temp goes up with the shorter burn times.

[aarmga]

I'm sure you are right as rain mr. lappin i know what works for me by trial and error.  I hope hondaracer can get through to the guy! More air and shorter/tighter temp differential just doesn't work!

[hondaracer2oo4]

Thanks guys. I'll tell him to check this thread out again although I think it might make him tear his hair out a little. He says that he has reduced 75% of his smoke and his wood consumption has dropped by close to half BUT he has opened his damper up to100% to get this. So you guys suggesting that he cut the air down is probably going to frustrate him but I think it's all about the differential. He is up to 8 degree diff from 5 but he doesn't want to go longer because he thinks that the boiler will go out from the long idle time. He also says that he is running 180 off and the boiler creeps to 185 so he does t want to go higher than 180. He also doesn't want to drop below 172 because he feels as though his house forced hot air runs twice as long to meet the thermostat. I told him that btus are btus and a lower forced hot air temp will actually be more comfortable but he hasn't got there yet.

[aarmga]

First and foremost.  It was 66 degrees out yesterday, which is unheard of for wisconsin February weather,  my owb would sit at idle for at least 6 hours and had no problem firing back up when the fan came on.  I keep really dry wood (less than 20%) for times like this.  Even with temps only 4 degrees  less than my house temp my owb never got over 185.  Another thing I'd like to mention having a brother in the hvac business is that running the furnace fan for longer periods is actually better for the fan motor/motherboard.  It does however use more electricity but that is minimal, most electricity is used at startup.  Look at this the same way you would treat your vehicle.  If you drive your truck into town 1 mile everyday that is hard on the engine but if you drive it 25 miles everyday it is actually going to last longer, it does however use more gas . This is a true fact believe it or not, which is another reason we don't oversize our furnace. 

[hondaracer2oo4]

I told him that the new high efficiency forced hot air systems run the fan on very low cfm 24/7 to keep the air mixing and keep the space at a more even temp instead of the up and down swings, then ramp up only if it can't meet the thermostat setting. He is having a hard time coming around to thinking a longer hot burn on the owb is more efficient than short swings. He also is thinking that running the house fha for longer periods of times equals more btus used but I have told him that BTUS are BTUS weather its more in a short period of time or less in a longer period of time. He isnt afraid of electricity use, he runs his two PL36 pumps 365 because he is afraid of the heat exchangers plugging up or sludge covering the bottom of the boiler if he doesn't. I explained to him that the pumps down move anywhere enough water or to the right places to keep sludge off the bottom and that heat exchangers are going to be plugged up from use, not non use and they occasionally need to be flushed.

[aarmga]

He sounds like an old timer stuck in his ways.  Some people change their oil at 3000 miles even with synthetic because they can't get that out of their system.  It's not going to damage your car to run it 7500 miles or more these days.  Our new Toyota calls for 10,000 mile OCI and Toyota won't even touch the oil until you're somewhere close to that.  Anyway back on point, sometimes you just can't teach an old dog new tricks.

[E Yoder]

There is a limit to how low you can turn the draft down tho. At some point creosote takes over. Every unit has its sweet spot. The MF units are purposely slightly overfired to compensate for the guys who let ash build up thick on the grate.

[RSI]

Does anyone know when they started putting the timers on the mfe series? This guy does not have one and his build date is April of 2015. His boiler I believe is well oversized for his application and experiences long idle periods. He doesn't think he can bump the diff over the 8 he has moved it to because it wont restart. He called the factory and they said that it would be very difficult to retro in a timer, I looked at the wiring schematic in the manual and it does run to a bunch of different places.

I have an MF10000E out on the lot that was made 11/2015 and it doesn't appear that have the timer. I would guess it is only the ones that are the same as the C series.