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[Duane Eberle]

We have a forced air wood furnace and was wondering if its possible to get one thats too big for our house.  We have 2200 sf between our main floor and basement. We ordered the furnace that was rated for 2000-3000sf but when it came, the box said it covers 2500-3500sf. Assuming that it was a typo on the box, we went thru with hooking it up. That was 3 weeks ago and we still haven't been able to get this furnace to run right. We've been working with the company and they have been very nice about the whole thing.  We've tried everything to get it running right but have gotten so frustrated with that we are ready to make the company take it back or just take to the nearest junk yard to get some money back.  Any suggestions from any of you 'seasoned' wood burning guys?

[hondaracer2oo4]

Welcome, not many people around here have any experience running a fha furnace but we may be able to try and help you out where we can. You need to be MUCH more descriptive about your issues beside ' it won't work right'.

[slimjim]

MUCH MORE DISCRIPTIVE

[NaturallyAspirated]

What are you temperature measurements supply and return lines of the furnace?  What circulator are you using?  What is the BTU rating of your exchanger?

Neal

[slimjim]

Neal, he is talking about a Hot Air furnace not a boiler

[NaturallyAspirated]

AHH I see!

Neal

[Duane Eberle]

Its controlled by a thermostat and if we set it at 70 degrees it heats up to 75 + and thats just burning 1-2 logs at a time.  We get a good fire going but we are unable to set our draft dials to what the instructions say they should be set at without the fire going out.  If we load it up like they tell us we should be able to do, smoke rolls out the chimney or heats up the house too hot.  We are going out every half hour to put a log in it just to keep it going.  We've taken our chimney down and cleaned it out.  We've add another 3' to our chimney thinking it might be a draft problem.  Our chimney is now 10' and higher than our roof but didn't make a difference.  We've rerouted our ducts in the house wondering if we had our elbows too close to being a 90 degree.  That didn't make a difference.  We're out of things to change and wondered if it's possible that the unit could just be too big for our house.

[slimjim]

It does sound like it is to big if you can't control the fire or it keeps going out, is there a way that you could add some demand on it such as heating something else at the same time

[Duane Eberle]

No    We thot of the same thing but our barn or even our garage is too far away from where the owb is.

[slimjim]

IMHO About all you can do then is small hot fires as you need them

[Duane Eberle]

Thanks for all your help.  Thats what we have been doing.  I guess we will be trying to get the company to help us out on trading this one in for one that will work for our house.  When it comes down to it, we ordered this one on the assumtion that it was rated to heat 2000-3000sf as it was described but arrived to us rated for 2500-3500sf.  We only need to heat 2200sf.  With the prices of LP this year, we were hoping that we didn't have to fill our tank again this year but we have had to.  The rep from the company said it would be ok for our house but I just wanted to get the real experts' opinions.

[victor6deep]

Its better to have a little more than what's needed in many situations.

[Duane Eberle]

Very true   

[Sprinter]

I wonder who came up with the brilliant idea of sizing any wood burning device by house sq footage.

I wanna know, what diameter chimney you have and what the stove calls for?
Do they give you a draft spec in inches of water, bar other?
What devices are there on just the stove to control draft?
When you say you have to go out to feed stove, I take it this is an exterior install connected to ductwork. Fan controls?

[fireboss]

Would it be better to just leave some windows open a crack and then maybe this summer  run the pipes to the other buildings ?