how to bank a wood stove

[meggie]

O.k. please don't laugh , but I have a rather silly question. How do you bank a woodstove at night? I remember my uncle doing it but as memory gets older I can not remember how. I lived in florida for many many years and didn't need heat , now back in Arkansas I need to remember.

thanks , meggie

[Bruce in NE]

Fill it with wood and close the draft. That's all I do to "bank" it for the night.

[meggie]

Thats it ,now I am red in the face Thanks....For some strange reason that just seemed too simple. I should have remembered what my uncle said alot too " keep it simple stupid. "

[uncle Will in In.]

Our old heating stove had coal grates. We burned wood all day but filled it with coal at night and closed the draft on the bottom. A stove full of coal burns about twice as long as the same stove full of wood.
Back then you could buy good hard coal just about anywhere, but now it's hard to find anyone selling coal.
They had coal bricketts that really burned clean and were nice to handle. The last I bought were $19 a ton. I thought that was terribly high.

[mpillow]

If you have a grate you can also pull coals forward or backward and mound off the grate...then close draft on stove and in the stack. The more ashes in the ashpan (if you have a pan) also reduces air flow.

[UpstateNY]

"banking" a stove is basically doing something to slow the fire and reduce heat output in favor of keeping the fire longer without tending, or to save fuel. Loading the stove with wood and closing daughts is one one to bank a stove. I use coal and will pull burning coals to the front and pile new coal high along the back with some overlap so the fire does not go out but takes more time to burn up into the new coal. There are also ways to pile ashes around the wood to slow how fast the fire burns. Banking ashes up on 2 or 3 side of the just loaded wood so that the fires burns from one end and along the wood instead of all around the wood. "banking" depends on your stove, what you are burning and even the weather. Knowing your stove, putting a fresh load of wood on right before going to sleep and regulating your draughts and dampers is the quickest, easiest and usually best way to bank your fire for the night.

[Helena]

$19 a ton !! Point in that direction..surely you meant $190 a ton..didn't you. That's about what it cost around us now and usually you need to get at least 2 tons to make it worth their trip.

[Thumper/inOkla.]

For more info on wood burning check out www.woodheat.org

[crashy]

We paid $200.00 a ton and we have to drive an hour away to get it. And we load it ourselves.

[shaycool]

Prices for coal around here range from $170 per ton plus delivery charges or $220.00 a ton in 40lb bags picked up.

[antiquestuff]

Be careful not to let it smolder too often by closing the air intakes too much. It'll lead to creosote build up from the dirty fire. Also a risk of CO poisoning.

[minnikin1]

Originally Posted by shaycool

Prices for coal around here range from $170 per ton plus delivery charges or $220.00 a ton in 40lb bags picked up.

Ok then, on THAT note:

You can make your own wood charcoal very simply at home if you have the time and old metal barrels.
I saw the instructions recently in a book called:
Skills for Simple Living Edited by Betty Tillotson

I've read every homesteading type book out there three times, but I just found this one. Every few minutes I would say "how about that?"
DH would ask "what"?
and I'd have to tell him some fantastic new thing I'd learned...

This book was loaded with interesting tidbits...
Like charcoal gives 3 to 4 times the heat of green wood and twice the BTU's of dried wood. charcoal is not subject to decay from fungus or insects and does not deteriorate when wet.
It burns without odor or smoke and may be stored indefinitely regardless of weather conditions.

One 44 gallon oil drum will produce
about 40 lbs of charcoal a day. 2 workers with minimum experience can oversee six to eight drums at a time. ANY type of debarked, untreated wood, green or dried, hardwood OR SOFTWOOD can be used.

[uncle Will in In.]

In the early 40s we could get hard coal deliverd to our house, and shoveled in the basement window for $9 per ton. 5 ton would last us all winter by using wood in the cookstove and heating stove during the day.
The $19 per ton price was in 1955. We went to propane the next year, which was $.19 a gallon at that time.
Anyone making $100 a week in 1955 was richer than chicken poop.
I went to work for a truck line in 1953 which was a teamster union job. I made $1.61 an hour with no pension plan. Maximun vacation after 3 years was 2 weeks.

[marvella]

please don't feel bad about not knowing. hardly anyone in this country knows how to build a fire anymore, much less how to keep one going 24/7. it's a dying skill.

Originally Posted by meggie

Thats it ,now I am red in the face Thanks....For some strange reason that just seemed too simple. I should have remembered what my uncle said alot too " keep it simple stupid. "

[foxtrapper]

There's a huge difference between banking a fire and smoldering one. Make sure you do the former. Lots of folks inadvertently do the latter, and create nice chimney fires as a result.