Keeping a wood stove going all night

My dad's stove is really interesting. It's a conventional woodstove, maybe 20 years old, and holds coals overnight without turning it down, easily. Never any smoke, except when first started or if using exceptionally wet wood. The other stove in the house, which is newer... doesn't hold a flame overnight, and sometimes even during 8 hours away, and often smokes. We actually have a hard time cleaning out the ashes in the main stove, as after 2-3 days without burning it still has a few hot coals. Dad controls the heat of the room by opening the front door, or how many logs he puts in, and seldom uses the damper. You don't even need kindling in the morning!

Why is it so special???

Thermal mass.

The stove is recessed  inside a fireplace that's about 12' x 12' of solid rock and concrete, with about 1 ft of space on all sides. The wide chimney extends two stories in the centre of the house. It's beautiful, and a crazy amount of thermal mass. The chimney is straight up, and the local chimney cleaner has said he only wants to come every 3 years or so, as there is not enough creosote to bother with. If I ever have a house with a woodstove, I want one built exactly like this.

Holy moly..can't believe this post...We have had a Hearthstone Soapstone stove since 2002. We maybe clean our chimney every 2 years(now that we live in a wet cold climate we are doing it every year)...hardly anything there. Use dry wood..old super dry willow (we had tons of it) and now fir..My husband and I have arguments as to what constitutes dry..He tolerates a little wet.. me NO!!
Pile Juniper or oak on the coals at night ..damp it down and go to bed. Always a little bit of coals in the AM. 6-8 hour burn without attention.  As per smoke..ok once in awhile I see smoke from the chimney but little or no creosote in the chimney speaks for itself.
We now use sugar pine pine cones to restart the fire in the AM..works a treat!!
I had an old ..who knows what.. wood stove in Mt and same thing..I guess it comes down to how well ya build fires!!
We need a small  auxiliary stove in our house now..and I am totally confused as to what to buy..pretty concerned..quality of a lot of things has gone to hell..heard rumors it's that way with wood  stoves too. Catalytic converter? May only cost $200-$400 for the part but how hard is it to change them? Heard impossible in some cases.
A little leery after all this 2020 EPA change and maybe I'll just wait till the dust settles before I buy one.
Am considering a Blaze King Ashford 20..swore I'd never do a catalytic converter..oh well. Ok maybe  Lopi of Morso 2B classic..
I personally think cutting down on procreating will have more affect than EPA regs on wood stoves!!

There are quite a few good 2020 compliant options available.  Many have gone to cats but there are still some that are non cat.  That being said cat stoves are not a bad thing.  The blaze king for example is extremely easy to change cats.  You don't even need any tools to do it.

Our Waterford Stanley cookstove does not keep a fire or coals overnight so in the cold months I need to feed it once or twice during the night. My method is to drink a glass of water before going to sleep and I usually have to get up to pee right about when the fire needs reloading. With practice, I can gauge how much water to drink during the night so I time my wake-ups to maintain comfortable temperatures.

Those are fantastic cookstoves.  But yeah it's tiny firebox isn't going to hold fire very long.

Michael Helmersson wrote:drink a glass of water before going to sleep

Haha! This is exactly what I do when I need to get up for anything at night, not just the stove.

Ben Holler wrote:Those are fantastic cookstoves.  But yeah it's tiny firebox isn't going to hold fire very long.

No, but it sure radiates heat for a long time.

Yeah there is allot of metal there to hold the heat

we live in North Iowa next to Minnesota we hit O degrees and below, with the prairie winds. we have a large furnace in the basement and an inside chimney. this is our only heat source, so letting the fire go out in out of the question this house is at 100 yrs old. We are blessed to have a good supply of burr oak  to fire with. I do not like using any thing else !  We can get 34" long pieces into the fire box. which is nice for night long burns, a freezing house is no fun. Chimney fires are so common with outside chimneys, we have been burning wood for 44 yr.

Myron Brenner wrote: We are blessed to have a good supply of burr oak  to fire with. I do not like using any thing else !  We can get 34" long pieces into the fire box.  

34" logs of Burr Oak sounds awfully warm right now.  

I have a "Resolute" made by Vermont Castings, I think it is the second smallest they make if they still make it, it's almost fifty years old. It has the double burner, if that's what it's called where after you get it hot you close off the straight up draft and smoke is drawn down through the coals and between the double walls before going up the chimney.

I only use very well-seasoned wood, mostly black locust. I cut my wood to about 14 inches long. I let the evening fire burn down to coals and (if it's cold enough outside) to worry over it, I put a single log on the coals and go to bed. Often it is still there the next morning but instead of wood it's a glowing mass of coals still in the shape of the log. Smoke can only rarely be seen coming out of the chimney and I have kept a fire going for a week or more before having to clean the ashes from blocking the air intakes. Even then I'm able to save enough coals to make restating a fire easy.

I generally burn less than a face cord of wood (4' x 8' x 14") per season, but full disclosure, the house is small and well insulated. If it isn't really cold, as in 25 F or less daytime highs, it's hard not to overheat the place. Sometimes I'll just put a small fire in the evening and let it go completely out at bedtime, I can't build up the hot bed of coals if it isn't cold enough outside.

ON WET WOOD:

When I lived at Pacific Beach, Washington, I got a bunch of years old cedar from my buddy's cedar mill.  Blocks of the stuff, when split open, would still be sopping wet from the coastal rains.  I burned it anyway.  In two weeks of burning, even with hot fires first thing in the morning, the chimney pipe was so blocked with creosote I had to hammer a pipe to a point to break through. Imagine that mess taking off, if you know anything about chimney fires.

ON EFFICIENCY:

In that same house, the basement was of solid concrete floors and walls. I added a wall, door and window to make it into a useable area.  The concrete would take about three days to come up to temp from the stove I installed, after I enclosed the daylight basement (exposed on two walls).  In short, the entire basement was a heat flywheel.  It would take a couple days to cool down again. Had I insulated the outside, that flywheel would have been even more efficient at storing and giving off heat to the interior.

As it was, I didn't need to run a fire all night to keep the house warm. It would have been remarkable with insulation. However, it was a rental and I already did thousands of dollars in improvements to a landlord who would see them and think, out loud, he could raise the rent because the place was so improved (paint, new garage roof, rebuilt stairs, drainage, repaired circuit panel,. . . .).

Deborah Lippitt wrote:Holy moly..can't believe this post...We have had a Hearthstone Soapstone stove since 2002. We maybe clean our chimney every 2 years(now that we live in a wet cold climate we are doing it every year)...hardly anything there. Use dry wood..old super dry willow (we had tons of it) and now fir..My husband and I have arguments as to what constitutes dry..He tolerates a little wet.. me NO!!
Pile Juniper or oak on the coals at night ..damp it down and go to bed. Always a little bit of coals in the AM. 6-8 hour burn without attention.  As per smoke..ok once in awhile I see smoke from the chimney but little or no creosote in the chimney speaks for itself.
We now use sugar pine pine cones to restart the fire in the AM..works a treat!!
I had an old ..who knows what.. wood stove in Mt and same thing..I guess it comes down to how well ya build fires!!
We need a small  auxiliary stove in our house now..and I am totally confused as to what to buy..pretty concerned..quality of a lot of things has gone to hell..heard rumors it's that way with wood  stoves too. Catalytic converter? May only cost $200-$400 for the part but how hard is it to change them? Heard impossible in some cases.
A little leery after all this 2020 EPA change and maybe I'll just wait till the dust settles before I buy one.
Am considering a Blaze King Ashford 20..swore I'd never do a catalytic converter..oh well. Ok maybe  Lopi of Morso 2B classic..
I personally think cutting down on procreating will have more affect than EPA regs on wood stoves!!

I had to laugh. On my Blaze King it might take 30-40-50 hours to go cold after filling it up with dry birch, at a lowish setting just high enough for zero smoke (catalyst temperature 4-500F on thermometer).
But it then takes me about 30 seconds to actually swap converters.
You can extend their lifetime by rinsing in water, soaking in white vinegar for 24-48 hours (with a bit of shaking a couple of times) and then rinsing again. For me a burning season is ~4 or even 5000 hours. So if I get 10000 hours that’s like 400000 miles in a car.
The absolute key to efficiency and safety is an airtight door (“paper test “), thermostatically controlled air inlet and working catalyst.
If I had to start a fire every am in a cold house….forget it!!
I have burned about 200 cords over 35 years, had the stack changed in 2023.
Once temperatures drop below freezing, the only fire starting will occur when I return from trips.
It is nice to have backup gas zonal baseboard, absolutely necessary for the cats when I’m gone.

I now have multiple heating options in my home.  I still like my open fireplace in the LR.  If I feel the need, I can put maybe 4 or 5  logs in it, and it will burn all night.

John F Dean wrote:I now have multiple heating options in my home.  I still like my open fireplace in the LR.  If I feel the need, I can put maybe 4 or 5  logs in it, and it will burn all night.

Curious, how big are the 4-5 logs that burn all night in the open (?) fireplace? You go to bed and let them burn while you sleep?
Are you trying to heat a large house in a cold climate that way?

Good questions.  Of course, the devil is in the details. I am in zone 6.  32f is normally cold here. I have seen 20 below.   I expect 10 below at least one night every winter.  I have lived in both Michigan and northern MN, so I know what serious cold is.


The house is 3500 sq ft.  Of course, I do not try to heat the entire house with the fireplace.  I was attempting to point out that I find it relatively easy to keep an all night fire.   I have done so backpacking in the winter with an open camp fire.

The fireplace is massive. Once the bricks heat up, it radiates heat well.  Within the living area, it measures around 16’ x 16’ x 3’. The opening is a smallish 42x42.  

I get a 6 inch bed of coals and then pile the 12” to 18” and larger diameter logs of hickory and oak on it. I normally burn blowdowns from the previous winter. I have 11 acres ..which is nice.  I have an exceptional neighbor with over 500 acres who have given me access to his blowdowns as well…though I have seldom taken advantage of his offer.

I am not suggesting this for everyone, but I do sleep with the fireplace burning.  The hearth in front of the fireplace is made of brick and slate and measures maybe 4’ deep.  I have lived here about 25 years without a problem.

The person before me heated solely with 2 fireplaces  ( the other one  in the basement) for 10 years.

I don’t see what’s so hard about starting a fire in the morning? Yes it’s nice to have some live coals to help things along but it’s no big deal to just stack some splits in the firebox and use a firestarter.

And and as far as burning overnight any current modern EPA wood stove with at least a 2 cu ft firebox should be able to do it cleanly at a low air setting. These stoves were designed to be most efficient at the lower burn rates. If you read the manufacturer EPA testing report you will see the efficiency and emissions numbers. They are always the best at lower burn rates. Some of the efficiency numbers I have seen with these stove burning at lower rates are approaching 90%!

My Jotul F45 non cat stove goes an easy 12 hours between reloads with no smoke. I also added thermal mass around the stove to help even out the heat that works great.

The RMH’s are very interesting and I’m sure heat very well but I have yet to see any actual numbers from testing and it’s hard to believe some of the wood saving claims over a modern EPA stove.

I believe the wood saving claims can be realistic over an older box stove operated in a common manner to burn overnight... but the most modern woodstoves are considerably more efficient, and I would not expect better than 2-4x improvement (1/2-1/4 the wood) when used per manufacturer's instructions.

Does your modern woodstove ever require chimney cleaning or creosote removal of any kind? Then it is less efficient than a RMH.

Glenn Herbert wrote:I believe the wood saving claims can be realistic over an older box stove operated in a common manner to burn overnight... but the most modern woodstoves are considerably more efficient, and I would not expect better than 2-4x improvement (1/2-1/4 the wood) when used per manufacturer's instructions.

Does your modern woodstove ever require chimney cleaning or creosote removal of any kind? Then it is less efficient than a RMH.

Ok I can get around that. The old smoke dragons were quite inefficient.

Yes I clean my chimney every year and get about a cup or two of fine powder. I burn + or - 3 cords of hardwood about 5 months per year to heat my 1000 sq ft log cabin in N Wis.

There used to be a cabinet place around here, their dumpster was sometimes full of 1x4s.
Oak, cherry, hickory or maple.
I set them on edge stacked up against each other like one log.
End grain to the sides.
Started the fire on one end, in my case the woodburner loaded from the narrow front so I started the fire and pushed it back.
Thinking they would each fall into the fire and burn.
Nope it went out.
I had to put another stack of short 1x4s lengthwise on top of the "log".
It acted like a wick and fell into the fire pulling the leading edge of the stack with it.

Burned from one end to the other. Open the door in the morning and there is a little burnt stack of wood, with some coals, by the door.