I recently bought a 4200 sq ft, 1860 home with a H25. I can tell you what I do on a daily basis and also tell you what appears to be wrong.... I'm looking for answers as to why I can't keep the temp in my home at a steady (or close to) 70 (warm temp) degrees. I fill the stove twice maybe three times a day. There is always smoke coming from the stack. I recently saw smoke seeping from the door of the stove. The home has 3 t-stats. There are baseboard heaters on every inch of every wall of the home. I recently installed what I was told to be the largest pump possible for my stove. And replaced the grates. There is no hot water pressure. And at move in I installed a whole house water filtration system. A smaller version from Lowes. I've been told to burn green wood..... I've been told to burn large wood. When I burn the large wood... it really has a problem heating the house. Any suggestions are appreciated.
first thing i would ask before i started to blame the stove or the pump or anything at this point is your baseboard heat.
if you have normal 3/4 inch slant fin single tube heaters they normall have an output of about 600 to 650 btu per foot of baseboard. (this is at a delivery temp of 180 degrees) i like to use 600 as we never have a constant 180 delivery....now you say you have 4200 square feet to heat. if we said (this is purely a guess) taht you required (on a cold night) 30 btu per square foot to heat your home taht would be 2400 x 30 btu = 72,000 btu per hour ro hw the house... now divide that by 600 btu (the most you could get from a foot of baseboard) you would require 120 feet of basebaord to achieve the required btu
you say the home was built in 1860? h ow well is it insulated ? perhaps on a cold night my estimate is low?
there are many many questions to be asked starting at the OWB...andmoving through the pipeing (size, amount of total length) number of fittings ect.
you say 3 zones, how many feet of basebaord are on each zone...if the gpm is not high you could be sending cooler water to teh farthest baseboard on a zone...this cooler water could very well mean a much lowere rate of btu per foot of baseboard. every 10 degrees under 180 means about 100 btu per hour less per foot of baseboard getting to the room.
there are a lot of questions to your delima to be asked and answered i think before pinpointing any problems with your system