Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
All-Purpose OWF Discussions => General Outdoor Furnace Discussion => Topic started by: f150bft on March 04, 2017, 07:56:14 AM
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With these Feb. temps being hot and cold it gave me some time to experiment. I have come to the conclusion that my OEM blower ain't enough. With the blower running the stove smoke is there, but with blower off and the ash pan door (allowing natural draft) open there is very little to no smoke. So it leads me to think that I need a bigger (cfm) fan. The ashes have been cleaned out so they are not blocking the airflow. I checked the fan at the beginning of the season and it was clean enough I thought. I will check it again this weekend. It's supposed to be warm again. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I am burning seasoned oak so it can't be the wood.
Thanks
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It's a conventional unit, it's going to smoke, pounding more air to it will simply force more heat up the stack.
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It's a conventional unit, it's going to smoke, pounding more air to it will simply force more heat up the stack.
:post:
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As long as you are getting adequate burn times and keeping your temp up there isn't an issue. Even if it smokes that's not a bad thing, it's normal. I have my blower fan almost all the way closed off, the
More air I use from the fan the faster my wood burns up and I'm assuming more heat out the chimney. My cresote buildup isn't bad either as I burn seasoned wood. I have noticed if I burn wet wood I do need to open the blower fan up to about half way also causing the wood to burn up faster and also because green wood supply's less btu. Sounds to me like u need less air. When u open your ash pan to natural draft the stove you are only supplying a fraction of the air your fan supplies to the stove.
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I never thought that the blower would be putting too much air into the stove. My blower blows down a tube of about 5" square and about a foot and a half long with a 45 degree bend. The ash pan door is 16x8? and it's directly under the grates. It just seems that it would have more volume of air coming in but I don't know.
I do know that the stove burns very clean with the ash pan door open even a little bit. And when I close it up and turn on the blower it smokes.
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Depending on the firebox design more or less air can work better. Every furnace has it's sweet spot between the extremes of torching the wood all at once or choking down and slow burning with buckets of creosote.
I'd play with the draft over a period of several days. Keeping in mind there's not but so much you can do. A Hardy is a square box with a chimney straight out the top surrounded by water so you're not going to get a lot of reburn. Not a criticism, it's just a simple stove. Easy to use and there are hundreds or perhaps thousands around here in VA, but not known for efficiency.
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I find that with dry wood we get very little smoke out of my old style P&M even when the blower is running. Toss in a few sticks of fresh cut maple or poplar and suddenly there is quite a steam plume, no change in the amount of air, just wet wood.