Advice on a Smaller Stove

So I have the VC Vigilant II and it works great, to good lol. I woke last night and it was 90 in my house. I am only heating 950 sq feet and its an open floor plan. The Stove is on the bottom level. I have the stove cranked all the way down. I have to open up windows because it get to hot upstairs. Can anyone maybe recommend a smaller stove? Here is a pic of me on my kitchen balcony to give you kind of an idea what my floor plan is like.

A Chubby Jr comes to mind....

This has been abnormally warm the last few days so you can't size your stove for this weather.

The Vigilant II burns at the low end about 20 pounds or a little less per day. How much are you burning? Running in direct draft will also put less heat into the room. Perhaps a ceiling fan would also help to lower upstairs temperature.

Concerning low output the round brick lined fire pot of a good antique has the best chance of maintaining a low fire because of the compactness of the fire and better air distribution through the fire bed. Our Glenwood 109 or the Crawford equivalent would be best choices or maybe even the Glenwood Modern Oak 114 with back pipe. Without the back pipe the stack temp. will climb at higher firing rates, but otherwise work fine. The Modern Oaks have the best shaker system.

You might be able to make the burn area smaller using fire brick. Get some fire brick and cut it to fit part of the grate area. That would essentially cut down the available area for air to get to burning coal and cut the output. Easily reversible for when it gets really cold out. Just watch your draft. If it doesn't work, it will only cost ya a few bucks for the fire brick.

Or, if possible let part of the grate ash up by not shaking it. Shake only part of the grate if possible and only load coal there. Not sure how your shaker system works. This technique worked well with my Hitzer insert.

You need to also make sure that there are no air leaks in the stove. Check around the doors and the griddle on the top for leaks. Leaky stoves are difficult to control. If you decide you really want a different stove, I have some good ideas of highly efficient small stoves that would work very well.

I'm sure you could trade with someone who has a stove not large enough to heat their space if nothing else works. We should all have the problem of too much heat!

I know I go threw a lot of coal it seems but not burning hot I don't think. I always have a nice orange glow. BTW total noob at this

Lots to check before you dump the stove. Do you have a manometer to measure the draft?

I do not. Is there a such thing as to much draft?

There is a dealer for these not far from my house. Guess it would be a good idea to have them come look at it

You can have too much draft for effective/efficient burning. I think its a good idea to be able to measure what your set up is running so you can reference later readings to help quantify changes to your burn. It could help identify fly ash build up.

a good suggestion was already given to look for air leaks on the stove that is keeping you from controlling the combustion air getting to the coal.

other vc burners will chime in soon to help you get control of this heat monster!!

I don't think the "size" of the stove is the issue here. My guess is that you have very strong draft which won't allow the stove to idle down, or air leaking into the stove. My house is the same size as yours, but I have a stoker which can go as low as 5,000 btu's.

EarthWindandFire wrote:I don't think the "size" of the stove is the issue here. My guess is that you have very strong draft which won't allow the stove to idle down, or air leaking into the stove. My house is the same size as yours, but I have a stoker which can go as low as 5,000 btu's.

I agree totally with EWF here! If the stove cant dialed back to the heat & duration your aiming for something is HORRIBLY wrong with the stove design and it would not have sold at ALL (we know thats not the case with the Vig... even though I personally think theirs better for cheaper you can deny the VC vig was a successful stove)... or your unable to dial back draft because of leaking in the stove... I assume this one of them their fancy dance ashpan door thingies with rolltop desk? plenty of people can help you check and seal or re-cement the things you need (im not sure how VC makes the seal between this fancy dance ash pan and the stove but it MUST seal well!)...

Lets here from some folks who have this stove to explain how it seals or take some photos of the ash door open and how it connects when closed (its not typical im sure of that).

Without knowing the amount of coal burned and stove temperatures we can only guess at a possible problem where there may be none.

The ash door seals like any other modern stove, with a gasket but not attached to the roll top desk.