What is overfiring a wood-burning stove?

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If you’ve been reading up on operating a wood-burning stove, you might have seen people advising you to avoid overfiring. So, what is overfiring?

Overfiring is essentially the process of operating your stove at too high a temperature. Woodburners are supposed to operate at high temperatures, but there are optimum temperature levels and going above them can result in damage being caused to your stove. In particular, the stove body and the internal parts are susceptible to becoming warped if your woodburner is being overfired.

What causes overfiring in a wood-burning stove?

To overfire your woodburner, you must be operating it incorrectly. In other words, something you are doing is causing the stove to burn hotter than it has been designed to burn, so the prime suspects are:

Too much oxygen

Allowing too much oxygen into your firebox can result in overfiring. For instance, leaving the door open, having the vents open too wide or operating the stove with faulty stove rope in place could all result in too much oxygen getting to the fames.

Too much fuel

Another possibility is that too much fuel is being added to your stove. This might result in a fire that is too intense and therefore cause damaged to the appliance.

Avoiding overfiring with your woodburner

The easiest way to ensure that you are not overfiring your wood-burning stove is to install a stove pipe thermometer. This will measure the temperature of gases leaving your woodburner and help your to ascertain whether your stove is being operated within its optimum levels or if you are overfiring it.

Equally, it will show you if the stove is not being operated at a high enough temperature, which results in an efficient and environmentally unfriendly burn, fuel being wasted and creosote build-up in your chimney.

Click here to buy a stove pipe thermometer.

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