Clearview woodburner help needed please!

Hl6866

Happy New Year, everyone!

This my first post but I really need some help now. After months of researching including reading through advice from this forum, we finally picked Clearview Vision 500 and it was installed on the 16th of Dec. we started using it exactly two weeks ago. It is on nearly 12-14 hours everyday and so far it has eaten up nearly a whole Toyota truck load of logs from a local supplier recommended by the installer, in addition of four bags of kiln dried birch from home bargain. The local supplier said their logs are mixer of soft and hard wood although I can't really tell. They said the logs were seasoned at least 12 months which again I am not too sure. I bought a moisture reading thing which did give reading of around 20 although some logs are actually more than 30 but I guess different types of logs may need different length of time of seasoning.

During operating, the lighting is easy enough but the thermometer reading take forever to go up. It constantly stays between 100-150c, unless we piled up with all kiln dried birch. The following is what I normally do, please let me know whether I did something wrong or whether something is wrong with the system:

Light the stove with some newspaper and a handful kindling, with two home bargain logs. Temperature goes to about 50c then I close the first air flow (clearview customer service told me turn off the spin wheel down when it reach 100f which is about 40-50c). In about half an hour temperature can rise to 100c but the two logs usually are quite burned- turning into grey kind of color, then I add another two logs in. I normally open the spin wheel to let the new logs catch fire properly before close the first air flow, and half close the second. The log will burn and the temperature will gradually rise to 150c maximum and that's it. (Clearview customer service said they could bring temperature to 200c within 20min with one log, with addition of one log per hour to maintain the temperature).

We have tried to load 4-5 home bargain logs (the firebox was nearly full) and temperature could get to more than 300c but even with both air flow nearly closed, it won't keep (the second air flow normally need open about 1 or 2cm , otherwise the fire will kind of go out and temperature will drop, even if the logs are not fully burned). Within 2-3 hour or less, all logs were burned to small clump of charcoal / ashes and there is no way the stove could still be warm after overnight burn, something would assure me that the whole system has no fault.

We have been thinking the possibility of over draw of the flue as when it's windy, we could clearly hear the wind howling whenever we opened the door, hence could all heat has gone up the chimney? The chimney were lined and insulated, the flue is at the top with no bend. It has smoke control device installed. The airwash is effective.

To summarise, the issues are 1) take much longer and much more logs to raise the temperature 2) temperature drops when both air flow closed 3) log burn far too much fast than other users on this forum and others 4) do we need a flue damper or change to crown top chimney pot?

Please could anyone advise? Many thanks

thozza

I have just looked at some instructions for the Clearview and they state:-

It is recommended that you heat your stove to at least 205°C./ 400°F. on the air manifold (area above door) before fully shutting down air inlet to minimum setting, this may take 15 to 30 minutes from lighting, depending on fuel.

so perhaps you are shutting down the air too soon at 50°C?

Usually we need to have our primary air open for at least 20-30 minutes (on a smaller Aga stove) to get logs burning well, the secondary air is only shut when the flue thermometer gets up to around 250°C

The instructions are here:-

http://goo.gl/ybZDGs

Logs at 20% moisture should be fine, 30% are probably a bit too damp, and hard/softwood shouldn't make too much difference, although softwood usually burns a bit quicker.

When our stove is running on a cold evening we can go through a fair few logs (buns to an elephant), and I have only ever once managed to have a warm stove in the morning.

michaelgordon

you may not be using enough kingling to get the fire upto temp, for lighting my stove i only use kindling about 15 pieces which are about 6 inches by 1 inch stacked into a jenga type tower and light with firelighters one upto 300f or 150c i close down the bottom vent completly and add a log and or briquette once this lights it will generally burn for half an hour or so and burns hot getting to 500f 250c depending on the weather and i top up once the temp falls to 350f with another log or briquette and keep this going for a couple of hours until room gets hot which is usually only 2-3 hours. I have started putting a shovel full about 12 pieces of smokeless coal in with one of the top ups and this really help keep the temp in the room up.

For instance tonight after lighting used a log and briquette then about 45 mins later put on another briquette and about half hour later put the coal on with half a briquette this was about 5pm got room to about 29c and its 11pm and temp still 25c. I never really shut down my top vent, on my stove it dosent seem to make much difference

I have not found the wind make much difference to the temp but lighting is harder and getting upto temp takes longer and more kindling but once caught i dont do anything different

Greenfires

In addition - birch is one of the fastest burning (ie short lived) hardwoods there is. Behaves more like softwood. If you're burning 12-14 hours a day, then you should expect to get through a fair old pile of wood. This is something that loads of people don't plan for when they see these dinky log stores on ebay and think that if they get one and fill it they'll be set for the winter - they won't!

My advice would be to get the installer round, or failing that a decent chimney sweep - who can run through lighting and running the stove with you. Newcomers often get too hung up on trying to keep the flue thermometer in a narrow range - it will go up and down quite a bit anyway burning wood - and it's perfectly normal. Don't get too scared by it dropping down into the "creosote range" when the fire is dying down - by that stage all the volatiles will have been driven off anyway so there's nothing to condense in the chimney.

firefox1956

Don't know why but people seem to have problems with this woodburner malarky !!
I have the same stove as the OP.
I open the bottom spin wheel & the bottom slider control.
I put a handful of kindling in the grate & cover it with wood & briquettes stick my gas poker in for about 3 minutes
I then take the gas poker out & shut the door.
Within 2 or 3 minutes the fire burning like hell so I shut the spin wheel right down.After about 10 minutes i close the slider down by half or more.
Don't touch anything again apart from filling the firebox & maybe a very slight adjustment to the bottom slider.
I run mine just on or just below Too Hot according to my stove pipe thermometer.....
I chuck about 4 briquettes on at about 10.30 pm 7 shut down the bottom slider to about a quarter open the stove will still be in every morning.
Up to now I have burnt 500kg of briquettes & about 50 pallets !!
My wood etc is bone dry by the way.
HTH

farmerboy

We have the same stove and have no problems with getting it going. Our way is as follows:

Thin layer of ash on the grate, crumpled up newspaper on top with kindling stacked ontop of this. Wheel and secondary air fully open. Light newspaper and then put 4 logs ontop of the kindling (can do this before lighting, but we find it easier this way). Push the door so the catch rests on the latch leaving the door slightly open.

Once the fire is going well, shut the door. Our temp is on the face above the door. After about 10 mins its at about 250-300f, close the wheel and add afew more logs. When we get to 450-500f (about 15-20mins) we throttle the secondary back and let it tick over.

Can't fault our stove at all, and it give off a large amount of heat just on tick over. We have had our chimney lined as well

Hl6866

I posted a quick reply, not sure why it's not shown, reply again here but please forgive me if you it went somewhere else and you end up seeing it twice.

thozza

Don't worry, you only have 2 posts showing, both in this thread. You can check what you have posted by clicking on your name (in blue) and selecting find more posts by..... which in your case gives
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search.php?do=finduser&u=2353169

Hl6866

I posted a quick reply, not sure why it's not shown, reply again here but please forgive me if you it went somewhere else and you end up seeing it twice.

Firstly many thanks for all the replies. It's glad to know issues we got don't seem to be due to faulty stove / flue / chimney.

I guess we do need to leave the spin wheel a bit longer though I'm not sure why the customer service lady told us to turn it off at 100f. But do you need to open the spin wheel again every time when new log is added? As for us, if we add the log after the temp dropped from ie 200c to 150c, we found quite difficult to bring it back to 200 with 2 pieces of logs (about 6 x 4 inches each), unless we top up 4-5 of them.

In addition, when light, I don't think there is any way our stove can reach 250-300f within 10min, let alone 2-3 min (the temp reading was taken from front, the space just above the door). So something must be wrong with our logs (many thanks for greenfires' info about the birch, thought we were investing in hardwood but didn't realise its quick burn property). We haven't tried briquettes or coal but for those use logs, can I please ask what types and what sizes are they? It amazes us that your stove can reach 400-500f within 30min and with only one to four logs! For those use other fuels, do you feel they are more economical to run? We paid £90 for the truck load plus spending on birches and pallets, in total burned about £120 within two weeks and feel really struggle to feed the stove at this speed any more. Btw, is anybody by any chance is in west midland that can recommend your fuel supplier please?


Lastly, our room is quite big (39sq m) and not very well insulted. It's all double glazed but when we moved in last summer, we took the carpet off so the floor is still bare. It obviously got a couple doors as we prefer the stove can warm the house not just the room so we don't tend to strictly close all doors at all time. I understand this will affect the rise of room temp but does it also affect the stove temp so dramatically?

Many thanks again and look forward for more advices.

farmerboy

We're using seasoned hardwood, not sure what it is, but burns very well.

Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzGY2tSz7wo thats how we light ours and keep it going.

To get ours up to temp we use 8 logs, 4 on the initial light up, then 4 when we close the wheel. Never had to open the wheel when reloading, just open the secondary air.

A._Badger

I really think you might be taking this temperature business a bit too seriously.

Driving a stove is not an exact science and shouldn't involve hopping up and down every half hour or so to see what a thermometer says.

I've posted this before and I think it makes a good deal of sense.

http://www.woodheat.org/thermometers.html