Wood Burning in a Glenwood No.8 and No.6

Hi all,

I didnt want to start a thread for whats possibly an easy question to answer. I read through as much of the forum as I could and didnt see any info that could help me. I purchased a Glenwood no.8 and im going to burn wood for the first month and the last month due to warmer temps.

The question I have is the barrel is only 18" wide and the wood would have to be cut very short to fit inside the wood plate area. Can I just lay the logs upright in the box? I could fit around six pieces or so this way and the coals would stay near the bottom of the fire box like designed. Would the outer shell warp having wood against it as it burned? The stove is designed for wood and coal and im trying to figure out how to feed the thing.

Im burning bitoumous coal as well and noticed in threads this year that it can burn with the gas rings, I have the rings and believe it will work fine after reading the forums.

What is the rear damper for on the back of the exhaust elbow of the pipe? Sorry for all the questions and thanks for any info you can provide.

If it was february this post would be on page 3 I can't help with the wood question because I have not had the pleasure of meeting a 6 or 8 Glenwood in person YET! ...but I think the damper you speak of is a "check damper" to allow air in the flue for proper drafting. They guys must be golfing tonight but someone should be along to help with the wood issue.

edit: unless the wood very free, I here you can run your stove real low with coal

Robert,
If you mean the rotary damper on the cast iron elbow pipe shown in the picture below,...... as michaelanthony said, it's a check damper. Opening it lets cooler air into the pipe to cool the flue gases thereby slowing an overly strong drafting chimney system.

I don't recommend using it until you hook up a manometer - a gauge for monitoring draft strength.

If the draft strength gets too low, and your house stack affect is strong, the flue gases might reverse and come out through that damper dumping carbon monoxide into the house. With a mano you can see and learn how much draft strength your stove/chimney combo actually has throughout the burn cycle, and what affect using that check damper will have on it.

As for how big pieces of wood will fit without damage, I can't help you there.

Paul

The damper makes sense thanks for the explanation on that.

Yes....the wood is free on my property and I have access ti BIT coal. I just wanted to know if I can put the wood in there stacked upright and against the barrel without damaging it. I know coals fall down into the center bottom which I believe is whats important. I don't think the wood will damage the metal but I could be wrong.

No problem putting the wood in vertical. You have to play with it a bit more as you can get "holes" in your fire. I used to fill the stove to the top of the barrel, opening the top plate and stuffing it in from there... Cutting the wood shorter works better, but you can do it both ways.

dj

BlueMountains wrote:Hi all,

I didnt want to start a thread for whats possibly an easy question to answer. I read through as much of the forum as I could and didnt see any info that could help me. I purchased a Glenwood no.8 and im going to burn wood for the first month and the last month due to warmer temps.

The question I have is the barrel is only 18" wide and the wood would have to be cut very short to fit inside the wood plate area. Can I just lay the logs upright in the box? I could fit around six pieces or so this way and the coals would stay near the bottom of the fire box like designed. Would the outer shell warp having wood against it as it burned? The stove is designed for wood and coal and im trying to figure out how to feed the thing.

Im burning bitoumous coal as well and noticed in threads this year that it can burn with the gas rings, I have the rings and believe it will work fine after reading the forums.

What is the rear damper for on the back of the exhaust elbow of the pipe? Sorry for all the questions and thanks for any info you can provide.

I talked about this with Wilson last year (he burns a fair amount of wood in his heaters/cook stoves). He said the shorter pieces will make a better fire than sticking them in vertically (which makes sense).

I have not yet run wood in mine yet so I can't add much more other than you'll be better off keeping the fire/coals in the fire pot versus leaning on the gas rings/barrel.

I agree that it makes since but you have to factor in the small fire pot after the refractory is put in. Its 18" on the fire pot with the Glenwood No.8 and 16" with the Glenwood No.6 so placing wood in the fire pot after refractory makes the wood chuck needed to fit very very small. I got out a measuring tape and I would litterally need to cut 10"-12" pieces to make them stack right inside the fire pot. Thats very very small with waaaay to many cuts on the logs.

If my logic is correct its the coals from either wood or coal that causes the damage to the fire box or barrel such as our parlor style stoves. If the wood is stacked in the stove upright then as it turns to coals it will drop down into the fire brick/refractory area. The sides of the barrel should be just exposed to only the flames and heat. The high thermal conductivity of the metal should allow the heat buildup to be released efficently, since its not coals it should'nt cause any damage. Putting refractory on the entire barrel inside would be stupid because then I would be killing the thermal conductivity of the stove.

Am I off track here guys or do you follow me?

Some things to consider.

Depending on what your cost of wood is verses coal, a wood fire will not last near as long as coal and your going to need to send more of wood's heat up the chimney than with coal to prevent creosote buildup. So, if like here, even if wood is cheaper than coal, the cost savings is not what you expect. Once you learn how to run the stove well on both types of fuel, a coal fire typically lasts double or longer than wood.

If your going to run it in base heater mode you'll have to run it rather hot to keep all those passageways hot enough to not load the stove and the stack up with creosote. That may be more heat than you need at that time ?

And, depending on how often you need heat in the shoulder months, you might be better to get a mano and learn to keep it running slow with coal ? Once you learn how, with it idled down in the shoulder months, that #8 will go for a couple of days on one load of coal.

When I first got my range, I thought the same as you. Use wood in the shoulder months - coal in the colder months. Like the base heaters, the ranges are also a base heater when put in oven mode ( indirect mode), which is all the time except during reloading. The flue gases circulate over, around, and under the oven so that the range can be run very slow to extract the most heat. When I've run it that slow with wood it built up creosote in the last passages where it's tougher to clean.

And, with wood I had to clean it more often than once a season with coal.

When I hooked up a mano so that I could really see what was going on with the draft, I found that I could run the range slower, longer, and with less heat output with coal. Trying to do the same with wood just made for faster creosote build up.

If you only need it occasionally, than letting it go out and starting a wood fire is a bit faster to startup. But, if you need heat everyday to take the chill off, I found that restarting a wood fire was more work and mess,..... and that gets old ! Plus, it takes much longer to get a wood fire going than it does by just opening the dampers and getting an idling coal fire up to speed.

As such, I don't bother with using wood in the range anymore. And using BBQ charcoal and lighter fluid ,or kerosene, to start a coal fire, it's almost as fast to get the stove putting out heat as starting a wood fire.

Paul

+2 on all the above.

i believe in one of these threads that BlueMountains said he has free wood a plenty on his own property, a fact that doesn't go unappreciated but..............

i have, over the decades, gone slightly mad for periods of time and gone out and removed. trees that were dangerous to buildings, livestock and people. too close to property lines, power lines, roadways, etc. etc.

i got paid REAL good to do that and got to keep all the wood for free, kind of. except for the lumping it up to loadable lengths, loading, unloading / stacking, splitting / stacking, moving the properly seasoned stuff to the house when it time to burn. no matter how careful, constantly hearing about the bark, dirt and bugs in the house. getting up at 0250-0300 to feed the stove. even the telling is starting to put me in a funk !!

in all sincerity, BlueMountains has one of the very best of the older stoves that where designed and built primarily for coal but will burn wood in what to me would have to be a terrible pinch for all the reasons of operation and cleaning that SunnyBoy outlined.

unless you're single, self employed, 20 and an adrenaline furnace do yourself a favor, cut just as much wood as you need to sell in order to buy and burn coal.

here on the forum there is a saying about the baseburners and other advanced stoves being "easy street" because of their efficiency of operation and economy, don't miss out on 1/2 of it and work harder, longer, wetter, colder, hotter, hungrier, thirstier besides.

hope all the grates parts work out for you,

steve

Free wood and no arthritis, can make heating with wood very attractive. But, as we all know, there's no such thing as really "free" wood. Somebody has to do a lot of work to get it from stump to stove.

I can earn coal money faster at work then I can cut, split, and stack the same amount of BTU's of wood.

In just about a half hour, an entire winters worth of coal is dumped into the coal bin as I stand and watch with my hands in my pockets - smiling ! Except for a few minutes pushing coal into the bin corners.

Other things that've got me spoiled for coal are,....
Not having to set the alarm clock to feed the stove in the middle of the night.

Coming down to a warm kitchen in the morning, with a kettle of hot water waiting.

Not having to keep going out in the cold to bring in arm loads of wood.

And not chasing mosquitos, or other bark-bugs around the house all winter as the fire wood I brought in warms up.

Paul

We have access to lots of wood but im looking ahead here. I am slowly loosing most of my hardwood trees which don't put out near the BTU output that coal does. My plan was to burn just in the first and last month of winter. I still clean up the property when trees drop so its free wood for me. I just don't like having to continually look for wood and as you say.....stump to shed for 7 cords of wood is no fun anymore. I would rather do some of my other passions like old vehicles and motorcycles.

Guess I am just trying to figure out if the barrel part of the stove can handle wood being stacked upright. Im just wanting to make sure the stove wont burn out, warp or ruin the barrel. I don't think it will because the coals will drop down to the refractory section.

Hi Blue

worst case, if you ruin the barrel, any good sheet metal shop can roll you a new one....had it done about 15 years ago for $150, and I think that was on the high side.....

but I don't think you're gonna ruin the barrel anyway

BlueMountains wrote: Guess I am just trying to figure out if the barrel part of the stove can handle wood being stacked upright. Im just wanting to make sure the stove wont burn out, warp or ruin the barrel. I don't think it will because the coals will drop down to the refractory section.

BlueMountains,

I already answered your question. Let me re-phrase. I burned wood in my Glenwood for many years. I used to fill it to the very top of the stove by taking off the top plate and stuffing wood in from there to get it totally filled once I couldn't put more in through the front doors. I had no refractory at all in the stove. Using long pieces of wood can be done but it's more of a pain. And yes, I used to cut my wood into 10 to 12 inch long pieces. Yes, it's a lot of cutting. But back then I only used wood for the entire winter. I heated exclusively with wood, had no other heat source in the house at the time. I had to make fires last long enough to keep the pipes from freezing. I was in upstate New York in mighty cold winter country... If you're going to use wood with frequency, I'd recommend cutting it short. Long pieces are a pain in those stoves.... If I were to use wood again, I'd get a modern wood stove...

dj

I agree with D.J. you will not burn out the barrel with wood. the stove burns better with wood laying horz. will burn standing up with a wood plate laying over the pris. coal bars The gas rings will prtect the lower sheetmetal as well as ad secondary air. I sell fire wood and when I cut to length I end up with a lot off shorts,which burn very well in the base heaters and oak stove. This time of the year is nice to burn up and cleanup. Wilson

I forgot about this thread.

I can now say I burned wood in a No 8.
I burned a bunch of 'cookies' in it this spring (maybe 6 to 8 inch long splits) with a few 14 to 16 inch splits to top it off. I did run it in BB mode and operated flawlessly.

NOT something I would want to attempt for a heating season but it worked great for the last couple weeks of cold nights.
If you are still able and have free wood...go for it (I've already got my stash of primo hardwood cookies stacked for the upcoming fall and spring.