Wood burner not heating up room?

Peachypies12

@freebear had a look at the chimney sheep- it looks exactly what I need thank you!!

Peachypies12

@ThisIsWeird thank you! I had a good search on trusty google this morning and found that it’s actually Firefox 8 which I believe is 8.4kw (that will teach me to just assume when someone tells me something it’s true!) do you think even with this stove it would still heat up the room? 

Also, what a lovely community this is!! I’m so grateful to everyone who has commented and helped, I don’t have any family I can ask for advice and now I feel like I have lots of tips here I can try! 

victor2

Peachypies12 said:

@freebear had a look at the chimney sheep- it looks exactly what I need thank you!!

If it really is a 12KW burner, do make sure you have got some other ventilation in the room. Also, if you haven't already got one, a CO detector should be fitted.

Edit: Just seen your above comment. Anything over 5KW requires ventilation by today's standards.

ThisIsWeird

Peachypies12 said:

@ThisIsWeird thank you! I had a good search on trusty google this morning and found that it’s actually Firefox 8 which I believe is 8.4kw (that will teach me to just assume when someone tells me something it’s true!) do you think even with this stove it would still heat up the room? 

Also, what a lovely community this is!! I’m so grateful to everyone who has commented and helped, I don’t have any family I can ask for advice and now I feel like I have lots of tips here I can try! 

Cool - that's a more sensible size. And, with an 'old' room that size, I doubt you'll have any air-starvation issues!

Yes, that stove should do the job, but as said by others, it does need time to get there. I'm assuming you are relying on it to get the room fabric up to temp from 'chilly' (ie ambient), and you haven't, say, also had your central heating on beforehand? So, even tho' it potentially has a very decent output, it will need time to raise the room temp, but from then on it should be fine and cosy.

And, more importantly, it needs to be used properly.

Do you have the instructions for it? If not, they will be available on-line, I'm pretty sure. Depending on how modern the stove is, and also whether it's a multi-fuel or 'just' a wood-burner, it should have at least two forms of air inlet, sometimes even three.

The first is the 'primary' air vent which is located low, often on the bottoms of the doors. This is only used to get the fire going for start-up, and should then be off during proper burning. If the fire has died down and needs another blast to get it flaming again, this vent can be temporarily opened for a quick blast, but it's important to understand it is not the correct way to burn a wood fire.

There should also be a high-positioned vent - often a sliding control - usually mounted above the doors, just under the stove's top. It may have a '+' and a '-' marked on it. This is the 'secondary' air supply, and often doubles as an 'air wash' to help keep the glass clean. And that's how a wood fire should be burned - with an air supply from above, with the timber sitting on a nicely built up layer of ash (so don't rake the fire after each burn!).

Check that the stove has a 'throat' or 'baffle' plate inside it, which will almost certainly be sitting on the fire bricks, sloping upwards towards the front of the stove, and ending around an inch from the front, just above the open doors, like a sloping ceiling. Looking inside the stove, you should not be able to see the exiting flue hole at the top or back of the stove - this throat plate should be hiding it. 

The flames from the freshly-started fire should lick upwards until it hits this sloping plate, and then follow it forwards to lap around and up that wee gap at the front - the flue is drawing from above this plate. Once the fire is established - this should take little more than 10 minutes - the bottom air vent is shut off completely, and the upper - secondary/air-wash - vent is opened. This will direct the air supply straight down over the door glass - keeping it clean - before supplying the burning timber from above. It has a secondary effect too - it adds fresh air directly to the tops of the flames, helping to burn off any remaining unburnt particles.

Once the stove has warmed up, you control the burn rate using that secondary vent only. Turn it down until the flames are 'lazy' as described before, and sometimes you will even just have a deep-red glow coming from the lump of wood - with superb heat coming off it.

When running nicely hot, you may be disappointed by how 'little' heat is radiated from the front of the stove, and it is really tempting to open the doors and FEEL the astonishing heat inside! But, opening the doors will not only make the fire burn in an uncontrolled way (far too fast), but will also send far too much air flooding in there to take a lot of that heat right up the flue. It might feel good, but the actual overall output from the stove will be reduced, and it'll be far less efficient. Most of the heat from a stove will come from the top plate, and the upper sides - hold your hand above the stove and feel that 'convection'...!

I will treat myself to the luxury of opening the doors late in the eve when only a few embers are left - the direct warmth and glow from that is just yummy. But opening the doors at any other time will just result in a 'roar', and your wood disappearing in double-quick time.

Does your stove have a flue damper on the outlet pipe? This is another form of control if the flue is drawing too strongly, which it can often do with certain wind conditions, but it's often - usually - not required.

So, download the instructions for the Firefox, and see what it says. I'm sure there are good vids on YouTube too - really worth watching. I have to say, a lot of it is counter-intuitive, and I had to force myself to stop using the lower vent to make the fire BURN! It's really delightful when you get the hang of it - a nice, bottom-fed roar for 10 minutes, followed by the calm glow, with gentle crackles and increasing heat levels, of the secondary air supply.

Another thing you may wish to keep an eye on - check the colour of the emitting smoke from your stack. When you first light the fire, it'll be a whitish-grey of various hues, depending on the type of wood, and I guess how damp it might be. After the fire has roared into proper life, tho', and the bottom vent has been closed and the 'secondary' used instead, and the fire is glowing nicely red with lazy or little flames, have another look - there is every chance you won't see any smoke at all. The flames are being fully fed with air, and the material almost completely consumed = environmentally 'better', and at its max efficiency. 

If you are going to use it for your main evening heating, then get it going at least an hour before you will begin to want the heat, and hopefully a couple of hours later you'll be able to tweak the 'secondary' half or more closed, and then pretty much fully off an hour or so before retiring.

FreeBear

Peachypies12 said:

@ThisIsWeird thank you! I had a good search on trusty google this morning and found that it’s actually Firefox 8 which I believe is 8.4kw (that will teach me to just assume when someone tells me something it’s true!) do you think even with this stove it would still heat up the room?

If it is indeed the Firefox 8, it would appear to have an output of 8-12KW with a nominal rating of 8.5KW. The closest match I could find giving the specs is this - https://victorianfireplacestore.co.uk/product/firefox-8-twin-door-stove/

As I commented in my first reply, you only need 6-7KW to heat that space (volume of room in m³ divided by 14), so the Firefox is going to be plenty. You will find you'll need to leave internal doors open to let the heat escape to the rest of the house. On the plus side, the Firefox is a multifuel stove, so you can use smokeless coal in it if you don't want a roaring wood fire.

Oh, and that quantity of wood stacked in the other fireplace should last about two weeks (unless it is Poplar or Willow).

JohnJ76

we took a few burns to get the hang of our woodburner we inherited (11kw) but once we got the hang of it, our room was very warm, in fact its almost identical dims to yours.  I was often in t shirts in winter as our wood was free and my wife liked it up around the 25degree mark!

ThisIsWeird

Yours is a double door, but the operating sty;le should be the same - from page 10: https://www.thegallerycollection.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Firefox-Classic-8-Eco-Manual-Rev_B-Nov2018.pdf

Eldi_Dos

Lovely wooden floor, was it draught proofed when sanded and sealed?

Peachypies12

@ThisIsWeird amazing!! Thank you so much, my weekend is sorted… 

@Eldi_Dos unfortunately not, there are some quite big gaps between the floor boards and the odd larger crack or two so I definitely feel the cold! 

oldernonethewiser

As an aside, is a burner like that not meant to sit more out in the open rather than in an old fireplace. 

In an old home we replaced a real fire with a gas stove/burner and the difference was immense as these things radiate heat from all surfaces. 

Ours wasn't as powerful as the OPs but my goodness it heated the room, slightly larger than the OPs, very quickly, and we had drafts galore. 

Hope the OP gets it all sorted.