23
Planning Installation
Safety and General
Installation
Operation
Maintenance
Troubleshooting
Parts / Accessories
Operation
Recent developments in wood-burning technology have made wood-
burning a cleaner and more convenient way to heat your home. Overall
efficiency in a wood-burning appliance is a combination of combustion
efficiency and heat transfer efficiency. Whether heating your entire home or
just a room or two, your understanding of how to best operate your stove
or insert will enhance its overall efficiency and performance. What this
can mean to you is longer, cleaner burns, less wood use and more heat.
The following sections will outline techniques you can use to “get the
most out of your stove or insert.” Please read them carefully.
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR FIREPLACE INSERT
It is important to know that for high, combustion efficient, clean burns,
you will need to have sufficient temperatures inside the firebox for
thorough combustion.
The best method for determining if you have
sufficient temperatures is to watch the brick lining in your firebox. When
you first light your stove or fireplace insert, the firebrick will turn a dark
brown or black. After 20 to 30 minutes of a hot fire, most of the bricks
should return to near their original beige color. This means the firebrick
have reached a high enough temperature for your appliance to achieve
high combustion efficiency and you are ready to adjust the draft control
to a lower setting.
Second and just as important, is achieving a high level of heat transfer
efficiency. Slowing the rate of flow through the stove or insert enhances
heat transfer, thus allowing more time for heat to be transferred into your
home. To do this, be sure to thoroughly preheat your stove or insert and
then reduce the amount of primary air by closing the draft control down
to a lower setting. (More air may produce a slightly greater amount of
heat, but will greatly increase wood consumption).
To get the most out of your appliance, you will need to combine good
combustion efficiency with good heat transfer practices. The following
are some tips on how to operate your appliance to achieve the highest
overall efficiency.
1. Thoroughly preheat your appliance before slowing the burn rate by
closing the draft control.
2. When loading wood into a preheated stove or fireplace insert, allow
a vigorous fire to build before lowering the draft control.
3. Operate your stove or fireplace insert as much as possible in the low
to medium burn ranges.
4. Do not lower the draft setting so low as to completely extinguish the
flames in the firebox. Check for at least some small flames twenty
minutes after setting the draft control.
5. Do not continually operate your stove or fireplace insert in the high
(wide open) setting. This wastes wood by carrying a great deal of
heat up the chimney and can damage your stove or fireplace insert
and chimney.
6. Go outside and check your chimney. More than a very small amount
of smoke indicates wasted heat, creosote build up and pollution
(see
Figure 28
)
.
MAXIMIZING YOUR FIREPLACE INSERT’S OVERALL
EFFICIENCY
To achieve long burn times, after having thoroughly preheated the
stove or fireplace insert, let the appliance top cool down to 250 to 325
degrees.
Now load the firebox and set the draft control. At this point,
you may need to burn the fireplace insert with the draft open for a few
minutes to ignite the wood. All IHP stoves and inserts are EPA tested for
emissions at low burn with the air control completely closed. Whether or
not you should burn your fireplace insert with the air control completely
closed will depend on the following factors:
• How you load your wood
• Your chimney type, height and draft
• Your wood type and its moisture content
• The temperature of the stove or fireplace insert or fireplace insert
• Which model stove or insert you have
In order to maximize the burn time of your stove or insert you may need
to experiment to get the right balance of starting temperature, wood
type, and draft control setting for your particular venting configura-
tion. Do not reload the stove or insert for long burns when the stainless
secondary tubes or baffles are glowing red, or when the stove or insert
is uncomfortably hot to load. This indicates the stove or insert is too hot
to load for a long burn.
ACHIEVING CLEAN, LONG BURNS
