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How to Heat Remote Spaces, with Less Source Room Overheating

Wood stoves and inserts are not 'instant' heaters, like oil or gas furnaces. However, remote heating is much better with long duration 'flash combustion' technology equipped wood heaters. Because the source of heat for the entire home originates from the source room, the focus is now on factors that optimize the spreading of heat to remote spaces, while limiting source room overheating.

First, there are two heating environments. It can be chilly, as in the fall and spring, or frigid winter temps. When in frigid winter temps, the stove is on 24/7, but in the fall and spring, the stove is off about half the day. For both temperature environments, the procedure is the same. The exception is when in the warmer days of fall and spring heating, remember to restart the stove late day before the remote spaces get cold.

Long burn durations, when fully loaded, provide consistent lower level heat for 8-10 hours. This means it is much more likely to stay in heating mode, and not periodically off a few hours or more each day. However, the same stove, when filled to the max, providing the same lower level heat, can have just 5 hours burn duration. You'll find it off, a few hours here and there every day, because you weren't around to reload frequently. The tips that follow enable the longer range of burn duration, to insure that once remote spaces of the house are heated, you don't have to reheat so often.

Half of all folks who have a flash combustion stove, are unaware choices they make, cuts efficiency nearly in half, from the stoves 80%, down to 45%. It's like car mileage dropping from 30 miles/gallon to just 17 mpg. You'll be out of gas sooner. With a stove, if it's off before you awake, or off on returning from work, then the far end of the home cooled down.

To heat cold remote spaces, without severe overheating of the source room, requires 2 things. A lower stove heat output, along with a 10-20 hour wait. Since the 10-20 hour wait is unacceptable, you need a plan B. Before getting into the details of plan B, I need to address a non-solution some have adopted from yesteryears 'cave man' air tight stoves. Some are under the notion a blower will help blow warm air to these remote rooms. Tests performed with blowers show no measurable air movement beyond 8 feet from the stove. With old air tight, 35-45% inefficient stoves, blowers increased efficiency. This captured a bit of heat that would have been lost up the chimney, which will indeed quicken remote heating, however, the tips that follow are to also lessen overheating of the source room, while heating remote spaces.

From above, you learned a long burn duration will keep remote spaces from needing frequent reheating.

Plan B: How to get a much longer burn duration:

Follow the steps needed to season your recently obtained 'seasoned' wood. see * below. This insures you get the stove's 80% efficiency, not 45%, thus nearly doubling the burn duration: (with the side benefits of nearly half the wood usage, half the work, and 'stay clean' chimney.)

When ordering wood, choose larger 'chunks'. Over splitting wood results in a fire box half filled with air, due to air spaces between numerous splits of wood. This can cut burn duration in half.

Top off the stove if leaving the room for long periods. If you're stuck with wet or 'seasoned' wood, then instead of loading 1-2 logs at a time, fill the stove full. Adjust the stoves air intake control to more air, which increases heat for wood drying. The 2/3 load of wood remaining after 2 hours, is now fully dried out, so at least 2/3 of your wood is in an efficient clean burning mode. If loading 2 logs, you lose most of this benefit. With a quality stove, full loads don't spike heat, just provide an efficient longer burn.

* Insuring great performance requires more than obtaining a flash combustion stove. It also requires understanding a new definition of seasoned wood. Freshly cut 'green' wood must be dried for two years, split & covered. Commercially seasoned wood refers to green wood that has been seasoning just for a year. All seasoned wood delivered in the fall will need another 'spring to fall' period to get the last pound or two of water from every log. Just one pound of water is a pint. Loading eight logs adds a gallon of water to the fire. Here's the problem wood dealers often face. Wood cut and split in the spring, sits there over the summer, and then loaded and delivered to you, job done. If they had to deliver it to their own property to fully season an added summer , it require a storage location, and double the travel and labor to again load and deliver. Doubling the work would be prohibitive for the wood dealer to remain competitive. This 'seasoned' wood was not a big problem with old generation stoves, as these never had the potential to burn smoke.

Most wood dealers do not understand flash combustion stoves, and thus unaware of the need for fully seasoned wood. Thus when they say it is seasoned enough, they say so not knowing your type stove.

If you're burning 'seasoned' wood you just purchased, NEVER operate the air intake control to the low extreme. This is because all recently obtained 'seasoned' wood is only partially seasoned. Instead, pull the control back out an inch or so. This extra air leads to adequate heat to burn smoke. Unburned smoke is wasted fuel that dirties the chimney & lowers the burn duration. Adequate air intake also provides better draft to reduce dirty glass, reduces back-puffing, and saves a lot of work and wood.