Wood Burning Stove Performance Question?

Question

After doing some research I just purchased at Jotul Winterport Wood Burning Stove Insert for my fireplace. I already have seasoned firewood (Oak and Maple seasoned for a little over a year) and my home is not huge, roughly 1,000 sq ft, 500 per floor. The stove has a blower and I get it hot enough to kick on, but I cannot get the home warm. If I have it running all day, I can sometimes get it up to about 70, but that's when it's been warmer out. On a colder day (like today, it was 25) I only got the first floor up to 64. What am I doing wrong?!? I was told this thing would heat my home, and I can't get it warm outside of the room its in. Worried I made a very poor investment...

Answer 1

If it's brand new(and I bet it was expensive), I'd be asking the dealer who sold it to me why it's not performing as expected. Jotul is a good make and you pay top dollar for it, so I would expect pretty good after sales help. Your house is small enough that it would be slightly difficult to find a freestanding woodstove an appropriate size so I can't see why this insert doesn't work very well.



Are you sure you're getting a good hot fire? It sounds like your wood is good, I wish we could get oak and maple around here. If you're new to woodstoves, perhaps what you've got is a fire problem, that you're not getting as hot a fire as you could from the stove and the wood. Does the blower have a preset temp it comes on at, or can you adjust that?



Do you have high ceilings, or is your house split up into small rooms? The first can mean that it's plenty warm higher up where you don't get full advantage from it, the second can mean that the warm air just can't move out of the room where the fire is. A ceiling fan in the room and/or in a stairwell might help both of those. Climb a ladder, or hang a thermometer up high and check the upper air temp.



In many older houses which were built when wood heat was all there was, they put a hole in the floor near the woodstove so heat could get into the upstairs. It had a heavy metal grate on it, and these days you could install a fan in such a hole.

Answer 2

I wouldn't get smaller that 8 inches, if it was my stove. The opening in the chimney through which smoke passes is called the flue. To provide adequate room for smoke passage and draft development, flues must be carefully sized in relation to stove capacity and chimney height. In general, flue size should be 25 percent larger than the size of the stove pipe, which connects the stove to the chimney. This means a stove with a 6-inch diameter pipe would require at least an 8-inch flue; an 8-inch stove pipe requires a 10-inch flue, etc. Smoke moves up the flue in a swirling pattern. Round flues are more efficient than square or rectangular ones because they offer little obstruction to the natural flow of smoke. For best performance, the inner surface of flues should be as smooth as possible.

Answer 3

Is it used?? If its used there could be residue buildup on the inside of the stove making it burn wood less efficiently. They have cleaning logs at the supermaket if thats the case and you should be able to fix it for about 5 bucks.

Answer 4

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