Earth Stove ?'s

[n9viw]

I've already done a search, and learned a lot by reading Wolf Mom's post from back in '05, but haven't found what I'm particularly experiencing.

The short of it- I have a finicky Earth Stove, and I'm about to give it the boot! HELP!

The long:
This is in my garage, a structure that has more in common with the average 150-year-old barn than a suburban garage... thank you, Danley. I had an Atlanta Stove Works #27 2-burner box stove in there before, but tired of feeding it every half hour to keep a skim of warmth in the corner. I tried rigging up a house fan in front of it to blow the heat around, but the cold temps made the fan shaft seize to the bushings, and the motor burned out. D'oh!
A friend hooked me up with a used Earth Stove, model 706-806 M/R, that a fellow he knew was selling. I paid $50 for it, not a bad deal, or so I thought. Seems it was a bit of a mutt, since I can't find any info about it online except for a couple threads over at Hearth.com, both of which I've written and replied in and involve other owners of the same model being stymied by its lack of support. It's EPA certified, and seals up tight enough to kill a fire but quick when the intake vent and door are closed. Got the nice glass panel in front (that quickly gets sooted up so you can't see thru it, but anyway) and everything.

The nice thing about it is that it has a fan and shroud, so once the body gets warm, start up the fan (mine's on a dimmer switch so I can control the fan speed), and it blows air over the body and out into the room. The other day (the last good run), I got the temp in the garage up to a sweltering 45*! Had me sweating in my toque!
The goofy thing about this stove is that the intake vent is in the front below the door, right where most people pull ash, so it clogs up at the drop of a hat. It has no ash pan! Also, if the embers are too close to the intake, they block the air (even though there are holes in the vent guard all the way up to the door and on either side), and stops the flow. I try to keep the fire toward the front, so my heat isn't all going up the flue, but I have to keep it far enough back to allow air thru the vent!

Okay, I know enough not to sweep ash into the damper, so that's fine. But the last couple times I've tried to fire this thing, it's been hit or miss- sometimes it'll burn like crazy and I'll get body temps of 4-500*, other times it's a struggle to get it to maintain 150-200*. Some days it just takes a fire and will burn anything I put on it, other days I have to feed it tiny tiny bits of kindling, as it won't burn the splits I was using the day before!
I typically leave the ash from 1-2 fires in the box before cleaning it out (I cleaned the Atlanta after every 3rd fire), but it seems like this one likes the bed to be DEAD CLEAR before it runs. I'm going to clean it and fire it again tonight to see if that has any effect. Seems awful fussy to me to have to clean the fool thing EVERY TIME, and forget about leaving a fire overnight! It'd be nigh unto impossible to start in the morning, because oh gosh, it's got ash in it!

My fires typically start with a pair of splits used as rails or bumpers on either side of the proposed bed, front to back. I shred and crumple a bunch of corrugated cardboard into little balls, and then lay 1" dia. kindling crib-style over that, as high as I can balance it. I light the cardboard, and once it's caught and has a few of the lower cribs caught too, I shut the door "to"- so the latch hits the jamb, but not so the door seals. The fire roars and consumes the crib in a matter of 5-10 minutes, at which point I lay a split or two over the last of the crib and the fresh coals, and can close the door. As the bumpers are consumed, I push them in to the center and lay fresh ones outside, and new splits on top. In my Atlanta, that was "THE WAY". In the Earth Stove, it works, sometimes. Other times, only kindling will burn! Maybe it just 'breathes' funny.

Anyway, this has wound on long enough. If anyone has a good suggestion, please clue me in! Not looking forward to hearing "clean it every day", but if that's what it takes to get a decent run, guess that's what I'll do.

[Cabin Fever]

There was a reason it sold for $50 and now you know why. What I would do is drill a couple of holes through the front...or sides...or wherever it is logical to do so, and fashion myself some homemade spin damper knobs so I could control the air flow that way. Just keep the factory damper control to the "off" setting.

[zukgod]

Cabin Fever has it right, just get some new breathers in that stove and leave the factory one shut. You will need a drill and possibly a welder for this, but you could do without the welder if you use small holes instead of one large one drilled in a circle patern. Good luck.

[FolioMark]

Ive got an old Earth Stove and couldnt be happier though mine doesnt have a blower on it. Just a plain old damper flap in the back that we have to open by hand as the scrw knob doesnt work properly. When we first got it, we did have some trouble getting it to light but we finally discoverd that the trick was NOT to clean it out at all until the ashes were nearly spilling out the door.
It holds a fire beautifully during the night if we shut the damper down completely and in the morning the logs are burned to a fine ash but there is a huge bed of coals. A few twigs and a log and she is roaring. Some days it drives us right out of the kitchen and even on cold cold days it comfortably heats the back wing of the house about 1000 sq ft. I got mine from a neighbor who had it in a shed for 150 bucks. Good luck with your 50 dollar version, but once you figure out its little quirks, I bet you will be happy with your earth stove.

[nathan104]

I have an earth stove with the fab blower and glass door. Model 2100HT. Mine also wants to be nice and clean before a fire is started. As for the glass, mine was sooted over horribly for the longest time. But, I have started to burn my fires much hotter and it has started to become clear. Oh, and to get mine to draw good, I have to loosely crumple 5 or 6 pages of newspaper and fill the box with them and light them so they all go together in one big hot swoosh. I still have good days and bad days with it for no apparent reason. And sometimes it changes its mind midfire. I can have a blazing fire going for three hours and all the sudden it doesnt want to burn hot anymore. And other times I start it and it will smolder and burn real slow no matter what I do for a few hours and then all the sudden explode into flames and burn really hot. All Im using is seasoned oak so not sure what its deal is. The air intakes on mine are on both sides. When it is going good and the fan is blowing, it defintly does its job though.

[n9viw]

Thanks to all for your replies!

Cabin Fever, no offense, but the reason why it sold for $50 is because the guy who sold it to me is moving at the end of the month (today, actually) as he's been reassigned to a naval base in TX. Also, because he's an avid biodieseler, as is my friend (and as will I soon), he cut us a screaming deal. Has nothing to do with the stove.

Fever and Zukgod, thanks for the damper idea, but I think I'll try to make it run the way the factory intended before I butcher it. I have a welder and steel, and can certainly fabricate what it takes to add dampers, but (IMO) that defeats the purpose of a certified stove, which is to be reasonably tight to maintain efficiency.

If it comes down to hacking some dampers in it, any suggestion as to placement? Both sides are open to the halfway mark (the shroud fits over the back of the stove like a hood on a parka, and blows over the outside of the stove toward the door in front). A damper could go anywhere, but it seems to me it should be as low as possible to blow THROUGH the fire instead of OVER it. Does this make sense? I can approximate that kind of flow by cracking the door, but that opens the top as well as the bottom.

Nathan and Folio, thanks for the owner feedback. I, too, have to open the damper with a pair of pliers, as the bakelite-esque knob broke off back when Josh (the PO) owned it. The knob controls the "Flame Tamer" bimetal coil, that (theoretically) modulates the damper as the stove heats and cools, to attempt to keep the stove running at the same temp. The last few times I set it to "M" (H, M, L), it choked out. I now run it wide open, and control the flow with the flue damper. I'd love to be able to figure it out, though, so I can use it to modulate the fire. If it would self-compensate for types and stacks of wood, I wouldn't have to check it every 10 minutes to see "what's wrong now?"

As for the ash- got two good answers, but one from either end of the spectrum! Folio's stove runs well full of ash, Nathan's needs regular cleaning. Just lends credence to the adage that every stove has its 'personality', and it's up to the owner to learn it.

Nathan, mine is finicky like that, too. The last fire I had, started up like gangbusters, and ran long enough to give me enough hope to put a third-split on top. The cribbing collapsed, the split didn't take, and the rest of the night it was feeding it kindling and "come on baby, just catch a little..." Boy, some wives don't get the foreplay I give that stove!

Seeing as how I now have two burns worth of ash in there, I'll try just adding to it tonight. If it runs finicky again, that would point to the 'fussy, clean me every day' end of the range. Not my preference, but oh well.

[haypoint]

I'm not a beliver in planting or butchering by the stages of the moon, but the barametric pressure makes a big difference on some stoves. Somehow it causes a wood stove to fail to draw up the chimney, causing hit and miss burning success.
Some stoves can burn poorly seasoned wood while others refuse. Un split wood is much slower to dry than split wood. I'm just saying that there are lots of different factors for a wood stove's failures.

[Toads tool]

Originally Posted by haypoint

I'm not a beliver in planting or butchering by the stages of the moon, but the barametric pressure makes a big difference on some stoves. Somehow it causes a wood stove to fail to draw up the chimney, causing hit and miss burning success.
Some stoves can burn poorly seasoned wood while others refuse. Un split wood is much slower to dry than split wood. I'm just saying that there are lots of different factors for a wood stove's failures.

Beat me to it.

I've always had bad burns on heavy wet days. A good ripping wind can also cool your flue differently and make the draw harder.
I got to where i would turn on an old hair dryer and toss it in the stove for about 2 or 3 minutes to help get the draw started on those cold damp days.

[greg273]

Is your flue pipe straight up and down, or do you have a couple of 90degree elbows in it? Have you checked the chimney cap for creosote/ash deposits? Cleaned the flue? Surely you've thought of all that, but just a reminder, that those are common causes for poorly-operating woodstoves...

[n9viw]

Thanks for the continuing advice, I appreciate it.

Re: the chimney: Yes, it has two 90* bends in it- since the stove is in the corner of a garage with the old four-sided roof on it, the chimney would have to either go through or around a 'peak'. Rather than do that (and have to monkey with flashing and shingles and whatnot), we ran it up to just under the header (four feet), then through the wall directly behind the stove to the fascia, then up another six feet. No heavy creosote buildup, in the pipe or the cap. This setup worked great with the Atlanta, but being an "exempt" stove, it required constant feeding.

Re: the wood: Yes, I do have some wet wood, owing to the fact that some of the roofing over my wood crib was used to construct the chicken coop... or was it the rabbit hutch? Either way, it's gone now, and having the cribs right behind the garage... under the eaves... doh. All that wood has to re-season now, and I imagine a goodly bunch of it is rotted. Two face cords down.
I've been using wood from a separate pile, also uncovered, but NOT under the eaves, and mostly standing on end. These have been, amazingly, almost completely dry even when brought in from the snow. I split them layer-wise, and lay the outsides next to the stove while I use the insides to burn. By the time I'm ready for more splits, the outside splits are dry enough to run.

Re: Draw
My father always had a habit of 'priming' the chimney in his fireplace by holding a torch of newspaper up the flue, he said it established a positive draw. I've never done that, and never had a problem with draft- this short chimney pulls strong enough that I can feel it when I open the stove door, and it can blow out a weak fire if the door is shut to too early.

On Sunday, I started a fire over the ashes, just to see if that was the issue. I laid the bumpers left-to-right rather than front-to-back, and that seemed to have the effect of slowing down the start time. The air had to go under, over, or around the front bumper to get to the fire, not a good idea.
The ash didn't seem to really affect the fire as much as I thought it would; I just made sure it was all away from the front damper and reasonably level, and it didn't seem to slow the fire at all. I got stovetop temps of up to 500*, and got the garage warm enough to take off hat AND coat, and snow started melting off the snowblowers. Downright toasty!
On a couple occasions, I let the fire die down (too intent on my work), and had a relatively easy time restarting it. I laid a split right on the coals at a bit of an upward angle, and shut the door to. Within a few minutes, it started itself, and maybe 10 minutes later the stove temps were up to the point where I could toss in another couple splits and close the door.
I still had to feed the stove every half hour or so, though. I was running the stove "wide open"- front damper open, flue damper open. Heat was phenomenal, but adjusting either one simply made the fire die back at one rate or another. Closing the front damper from "H" to "M" killed it pretty fast; leaving the front damper in "H" and closing the flue damper 1/2 way or a little more killed it slowly. The added benefit of the latter was, if I forgot to open the flue before opening the door, I got a snootful of smoke! Whee!

Anything else I'm doing wrong? Do stoves just run like this, and you have to feed them all the time? Seems to me there have been some stoves you can feed and leave em alone for an hour or two while they do their thing, or is that a (stove)pipe dream?