Too much heat from wood stove

"My temperatures outside run from the mid-thirties to the upper twenties during most of the year with occasional lower spikes and days where it is warmer.'

When I lived in Humboldt County I don't remember it being that cold!

I meant in winter- Opps.

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Is this an air tight heater? You should be able to control the heat output by limiting the air intake.
Burn the wood stove when it is coldest, at night.

Foe many years I had a wood fired boiler and a kitchen wood cookstove. Used the kitchen stove to take the edge off in spring and fall. The boiler took over an hour to bring the whole system up to full heat, so used the cook stove while the main heat source was getting there.

Also have several years experience with a tiny airtight stove in a 1600 sq ft house, where winter temps can be plus or minus 40 degrees. Very controlable because it was airtight. Also kept a fire overnight.

Just remember that heating with a woodstove is not going to be as convenient or as comfortable as heating with say a forced-air gas furnance or an in-floor heating system - it just isn't - that's a fact of life. Accept it for what it is. When heating with a woodstove, some rooms are going to hot and some rooms are going to be cold. There are a lot of things you can do to moderate this problem which have already been recommended and discussed. But don't ever have the notion that it is going to be as "nice" as flipping a button or setting a thermostat and having every room at a perfect desired temp.

With that said, we'd never give up our woodstove. We like our living area warm and our back bedrooms cold!

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Although not perfect, burning at night seems to have been the best solution. It gets way too hot at night but since I keep my bedroom cold and the window open at night, I sleep fine and the house is warm (ish anyway) in the morning, when I'm out a lot feeding and stuff.
Then in the early afternoon or when I get cold, I start the stove going again.
So thanks- I'm still working on it but that has worked better at least. It was counter intuitive for me as I was shutting down the stove at night when I felt too hot and waking up to a house too cold to ignore so I had to have a fire in the morning.

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Build a masonry shroud around the wood stove. The masonry soaks up the heat and releases it slowly into the house. This is much more pleasant and efficient. We have a tiny box wood stove inside a masonry shroud. It is our only heat source. We burn about 0.75 cord of wood a year here in the mountains of northern Vermont. Our house is also heavy masonry and small which helps more but even in a stick built house the masonry shroud will help improve your heating.

See Cottage | Sugar Mountain Farm

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Depending on how you build and add to your fires, you can end up with a boatload of coals. Hickory and hard woods can make coals that are almost like a coal (mineral coal) fire. Sometimes you can shift ashes to cover a lot of them and slow the burn.

Another way to mitigate heat spikes is to have a big pot of water on the stove. It takes a LOT of energy to heat water and turn it into steam or gaseous state. Since the airflow needed for draft is pulling in cold air, chances are the room air is too dry anyway.

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Highlands and Harry both sound right, to me. You could use a combination of both: build up stone close to the sides of the stove and have the water on top. Both would "mop up" excess heat and release it slowly later.

Mind how you go with a using a heavy pan of water, though; if you can find an urn with an outlet at the bottom that would be more convenient.

Learning to manage your fire is the key. If you burn woods like cedar and poplar you get a fast heat and short duration burning oak you get even heat for a longer duration.
In a nut shell which is different for everybody start your fire with a light fast wood like poplar. It will sent a good heat up the chimney and clear creosote out and heat the flue which will make it draw better. Then which to your hardwood in small pieces and get your bed of coals and heat your house. Lay larger when you want to lay the fire back (slow even heat which gives warn etch but not too much). This is done but shoveling ashes over the fire to slow the oxygen to the wood. When you want more heat stir the ashes.
In literature there are many references to stirring the coal back to life.

A basic of fire building is the diameter of the log or chunk determines how LONG it will burn the leangth
determines how much heat it will make.
Its always seemed to me that rounds burn longer than splits.

I kind of have the same problem. The stove I got after years of waiting for it is a big one, capable of heating up to 3000 sq ft. It is way too easy to get my house too hot. We are still in the learning phase of running this stove. We usually get a good fire going before bed and let it burn down over night. In the morning, if it's going to be cold during the day, we throw another log in there and let it add more heat. I keep my bedroom door shut so it stays cool. I'd rather have too much heat than not enough so I am happy with my heater. It's nice to be able to stay very cozy and warm and know there is no furnace running up my bills.

We put in an EPA wood burner this year after heating 1200 sq feet for three years with a Vogelzang big box stove and are having the same problem. The new stove is so efficient that it heats the main living area to 80 degrees without difficulty. Right now in the early winter/late fall stage it's a little overbearing at times so we just open up the upstairs to regulate the heat in the downstairs. If that doesn't work, we open the doors that lead to the unheated shop and let that area get warmed up.

We burn seasoned oak and hickory, split and rounds and I agree with the poster who said the size and shape of your wood is linked to the heat your fire puts out.

We stock this stove at night before we go to bed, making sure to add one solid 'keeper log' clamp it down and in the morning the temp in the house is in the low 70s high 60s compared to the box wood where the AM temp was in the 50s.

Each house is different as far as regulating is concerned. When you are in the depths of winter and the daytime temps are in the 20s, I'm betting your stove will be chugging along keeping your house and family toasty warm. I'm hoping this early test run is indication that our stove is going to do just that.

Ditto: The Amish open windows and doors to regulate the house temp. Easy peasy and low tech.

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Whatever don't try to hold the fire low all the time have at least one Hot Fire a day or you will have creosote problem.

big rockpile

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Firewood does not dry well in the round. Once split, it dries faster. So, yes, rounds burn slower/last longer.
Small firebox requiring small pieces cannot hold a fire for long.
When dealing with dry firewood, weight indicates the amout off heat you can get from it. A 20 pound piece of dry oak will not provide more heat than 20 pounds of Poplar. But you might not be able to fit enough poplar to provide the needed heat for the desired time period, making oak more desireable.
Efficient wood burning requires dry wood, a way to limit ait intake, plus a way to capture some of the heat that goes p the stack.

Plop a wood burner down in your house and expect anything close to an enginered HVAC, ducted hot and cold air ductwork on demand gass furnace is a setup for disappointment. But a properly sized air tight woodstove will keep you fairly comfortable most of the time, in most of the house.

Haywood is right on .
Except that I would think efficent wood burning requires UNLIMITED air. So that the smoke burns and doesnt go up the pipe. . However most people are happy to burn a little more wood in return for the much easyer heat regualtion you get by controling the amount of air available to the fire.
A interesting point Ive discovered in reserching woodburning trucks is that wood burnt at high enough temps can actually crack the hydrogen out of water ..........which then burns!

From what I have read, limiting air inflow causes slower movement of the volatile wood gases up the flue. Thus more time to heat the flue, and burning of wood gases then occurs at a higher temperature and is more complete, ie efficient in terms of max heat from your piece of wood. Too much air allows gases to escape unburned into atmosphere, as with an open fire, which is wasteful.

But you start off with all the vents open to get a big surface area ignited.

Since I have a thermometer on my flue and one on the stove, I can tell you that opening the recombustion chamber dropss the flue temperature almost immediately by about 200 degrees.
The stove instructions said to have the recombustion chamber closed off unitl the stove itself reaches a certain temperature. While it's getting there, the flue runs pretty hot.
Once the stove is at a level that will maintain burn, I try to keep just enough fuel in it to keep it steady at the lower end of good combustion temps.
That means small fires fed frequently- which is pretty ok with me.

__________________
For we used to ask when we were little, thinking that the old men knew all things which are on earth: yet forsooth they did not know; but we do not contradict them, for neither do we know.

The most efficient burning of wood does require UNLIMITED air, you are correct. Problem in application is that most of that heat is drawn out the smoke stack and that suction pulls the house's heat into the stove's air intake. Net result is a hot stove pipe and a cold house.

However, if the goal is to obtain the maximum amount of heat radiating out of the stove and warming your house, you must limit the escape of excessive amounts of heat up the stove pipe. If you close the stovepipe damper, and your stove isn't air tight, smoke will billow out the stove's mis-matched parts. To prevent a smoking stove, you'll have to keep the stovepipe damper open a good bit. That allows the heat to escape, drawing in more air, making the fire burn faster and using up more wood.

If I understand "where I want to" correctly, it mkes me wonder if the recombustion area has a plugged Catalytic unit. Back in the 1970's there were a few wood stoves that attempted a second stage burn chamber and the Catalytic unit allowed ignition of gasses at a lower temperature. In my experience, the honeycomb openings quickly plugged up, rendering it useless in reburning anything.

No catalytic converter. It's a Lopi cast iron stove. Switching to the recompustion chamber (reburner?) puts a lot more heat into the room from two vents at the back. And, as I said earlier, the flue temperature drops a lot when the chamber is opened.
It does work well.

__________________
For we used to ask when we were little, thinking that the old men knew all things which are on earth: yet forsooth they did not know; but we do not contradict them, for neither do we know.