At Home In The Woods

[Dishpointer]

Something seems wrong. I know its a fireplace insert, not a wood stove but a 20 degree temp differential does not sound very impressive.

My stove will keep our 3500 square foot house in the high 60's when it is 0 outside. The great room (900 square feet) is kept in the mid 70's. When you have good dry wood you should be able to shut the air down to almost nothing and have a strong fire.

I agree! Something seems wrong. Your insert should be putting out much more heat than that. When I close my insert down, I can make it 95 degrees in that room if I kept the fan going. It will make you open the door to cool off. My bet is that it's not drawing fresh air correctly. Maybe a line is kinked some where? You shouldn't have to open a window before you add wood. That right there makes me believe it isn't getting fresh air correctly. Hopefully the manufacturer can solve the problem when he comes out.

 

[Obed]

Speaking of scraps and such, we have a huge mess around the yard. We are planning to hire an excavating contractor to take down some trees, move dirt, put down some topsoil and do the final grading. The job is just too big for my little tractor. Plus, I need to bring down some trees anyway in order to make room for the grading work behind the house. Before bringing in the excavator, we need to do something with the debris in the front yard, the remnants of the sand pile, and 3 pallets of brick.

This evening I hitched the trailer to the truck and parked it in the front yard in preparation for loading and hauling off some debris. Some of the scrap boards are 4 ft long and I hate to throw them away. However, they've been outside all winter and have some mildew on them. I'm afraid of bringing any of these scraps inside the house so I'm leaning toward taking them to the dump. It hurts my pocketbook to think about it but I'm just tired of seeing piles of trash around the place.

In preparation for the badly needed excavation and gradining project, yesterday (Saturday) we cleaned up scraps around the house. When we checked the schedule for the dump, we found that the dump closes at 11:30 AM on Saturdays. So we'll have to wait until next Saturday to unload the trailer. The trailer is pretty full. I suspect we will be over the "free" weight limit so we'll probably have to pay to dump this load. Unfortunately, you can only use your one time per year free dump allotment during the week, not on the weekend.

We have some bricks in the way. I put on the tractor forks and attempted to move a pallet of bricks. They were too heavy for my tractor to lift them. I suspected as much but thought I would try it. We have 3 pallets of bricks left over from the house build and intend to return 2 of them and keep one pallet around for patching and other small projects. When the brick company arrives to pick up the bricks, we will ask them to relocate the pallet we want to keep.

We put one small pile of lumber scraps on a pallet and placed the pallet in the garage. My wife wants to uses the scraps to help start fires in the fireplace.

Lastly, we marked with stakes the areas where we want the dirt piles to be moved and spread out in the back of the house. We marked with ribbons several trees that we want taken down behind the house. We also marked some other trees to taken down in preparation for making a better driving path to the basement garage.

We should soon start getting bids for the excavation and grading work. I'm kind of dreading seeing the prices but it needs to be done.

 

[WBWI]

I am still concerned that the FP is not getting enough combustion air. With the ACC (Automatic Combustion Control) wide open, the living room didn't get warmer than 72 degrees with an outdoor temp of 50 degrees. I would think the FP ought to be able to heat the room with the glass doors shut until the room would be uncomfortably warm. I'm concerned that the FP won't put out enough heat when the outdoor temps are in the 20s. If I crack open the glass doors, the flames immediately get bigger. The fireplace people are supposed to come out again next week to have a look.

Jonathan,
How hot will your fireplace make your LR or den with the doors closed? Can you get a "roaring" fire with the doors closed? We don't seem to be able to get a "roaring" fire with the doors closed.
Obed

You must have some install/draft issues. Mine will smoke a little when I first light it and the chimney isn't pulling a good draft yet but generally when I load it I do not have smoke issues. I have a screen with mine that allows me to burn with the doors open. I've used it a few times without any smoke problems.
As far as heating my FP is in a great room with a 20' ceiling at the peak. There is a catwalk leading to second floor bedrooms. The thermostat for the second floor always reads 75+ when the fireplace is going and the main floor is 70-72. That's with outside temps below zero thru the mid 20's. If it was 50 outside I'd have to open the doors to cool the house down.
Yes, with the ACC fully open (to the right) I get a roaring fire.

 

[firefighter9208]

Obed,

Are you trying to burn a fire in the fireplace with the central heat on???? If so, you probably are causing a negative draft situation and pulling the smoke back into the house.

Try this. Turn off your central heat (if it's on) and open the doors to the fireplace. Light a match and slowly move it toward the door of the fireplace. When you get into the fireplace and close to the chimney you should see the flame be "drawn" toward the chimney. This shows that you have a draft in the chimney.

Chris

 

[mikefromnh]

Regarding your fireplace -- now that the installer switched the ducts around, is it possible there is a damper in the line that is now backwards?

 

[Obed]

You must have some install/draft issues. Mine will smoke a little when I first light it and the chimney isn't pulling a good draft yet but generally when I load it I do not have smoke issues. I have a screen with mine that allows me to burn with the doors open. I've used it a few times without any smoke problems.
As far as heating my FP is in a great room with a 20' ceiling at the peak. There is a catwalk leading to second floor bedrooms. The thermostat for the second floor always reads 75+ when the fireplace is going and the main floor is 70-72. That's with outside temps below zero thru the mid 20's. If it was 50 outside I'd have to open the doors to cool the house down.
Yes, with the ACC fully open (to the right) I get a roaring fire.

WBWI,
Yes we have a screen for the fireplace but haven't used it yet.

We are still learning the fireplace and are not sure if we have a fireplace issue, a learning issue, or a wood issue. This past weekend my wife build a really hot fire using small dry wood. The fireplace got so hot that the heat duct that runs from the fireplace to the hallway ceiling got very warm and set off the smoke detectors. I went into the attic and unscrewed a piece of OSB so I could inspect the b-vent double-walled duct that runs to the hallway ceiling. The insulation company did not do a great job installing the rockwool around the b-vent duct so their was blown insulation touching the hot duct. I believe the warm insulation touching the duct caused the smoke detectors to go off.

So we were able to get a really hot fire using smaller wood. Today my wife built another fire and has been experimenting. In the fireplace manual, there is a statement that says you should either operate the fireplace with the glass doors completely closed or completely open. If the doors are cracked, the manuals says you will have smoke issues. We are able to load the fireplace and burn it fine with both the doors open without a significant
amount of smoke entering the room. The chimney is definitely drafting.

The fire seems to be burning better but we aren't sure if it is burning as hot as it should be. So we aren't sure if the problem is us, our wood, or the fireplace installation. Our wood was cut over a year ago and has been stacked outside uncovered and off the ground. It has had time to season but has been exposed to the weather.

The fireplace people are supposed to come out in two days.

Obed

 

[Obed]

Obed,

Are you trying to burn a fire in the fireplace with the central heat on???? If so, you probably are causing a negative draft situation and pulling the smoke back into the house.

Try this. Turn off your central heat (if it's on) and open the doors to the fireplace. Light a match and slowly move it toward the door of the fireplace. When you get into the fireplace and close to the chimney you should see the flame be "drawn" toward the chimney. This shows that you have a draft in the chimney.

Chris

Chris,

The central heat doesn't come on when the FP is running. We've been setting the HVAC system on 67 but the FP has been keeping the temp between 70 and 72 degrees in the hallway where the HVAC thermostat is located.

Our HVAC system does have a really neat feature called Circulate. When the fan is set to Circulate, the HVAC system randomly turns on the fan; the manual says when Circulate is set to on, the fan will run approximately 35% of the time. Running the HVAC fan in circulate mode is doing a great job of keeping the entire house warm, even the bedrooms at the end of the house. I was afraid that running the HVAC fan continuously would make the house feel cold and drafty as the air being moved around might not be very warm. Having the fan run randomly seems to be working great.

Obed

 

[Obed]

We just moved the ACC control all the way to the right to let in the maximum combustion air and the flames got bigger like we would expect. The fireplace might be ok?

 

[dcyrilc]

We just moved the ACC control all the way to the right to let in the maximum combustion air and the flames got bigger like we would expect. The fireplace might be ok?

How clean are you keeping the bottom of the fireplace? With the airtight we used to have, we had to keep a bed of coals/ash on the bottom or it significantly reduced the amount of heat it would put out.

 

[medicshawn]

When the fireplace guys come check your fireplace, make sure they look at the duct that you think set the detector off. Some of the new fireplace are designed to be installed with zero or 1 inch of clearance to combustibles. The system shouldn't be getting hot enough to set the detectors off. The last thing you want is a fire smoldering somewhere you can't see it.

If you're wondering about the draft you could also try opening a window and see how that affects the draft.

Good luck hopefully the fireplace company sends out some guys who know what they are doing and are concerned about the safe operation of the fireplace.