Maintaining your wood-burning stove is the only way to ensure efficiency, but it doesn't stop it from overheating. If you have no idea why your stove is burning all of a sudden, be sure to keep on reading.
Can You Overheat a Wood Stove?
Yes, you can undoubtedly heat wood stoves excessively if you leave the fire running at high temperatures regularly. Regardless of the size of your stove, exceeding the temperature recommended by the manufacturer can cause extensive damage to the stovepipe and other metal components.
Consequently, they may bend or even crack. And, with time, the stove becomes less efficient, and it might even catch on fire.
See Also: Best Wood Stoves
Why Is My Pellet Stove Too Hot?
Is your wood stove getting extremely hot, and you're unsure why? Here are some hints that'll help you understand what's going on.
1. Air Vents
Manual wood-burning stoves are tricky, especially when it comes to adjusting the air vents. The opening of the vent is what allows oxygen to get into the stove to burn wood efficiently. However, if the air vents are too wide, the oxygen ignites the fuel stronger than intended, creating vigorous flames and releasing more heat. So, the stove gets hotter than it should.
2. Size
Regarding size, if your stove is installed in a small room, it can easily get too hot to the point where the burning fire becomes unbearable. In such cases, you should adjust the stove to a lower temperature and open all doors and windows to enhance airflow.
3. Stove Door
The stove door should be closed properly whenever it's on. Otherwise, leaving the door open is the same as leaving the air vents too open. To illustrate, more oxygen flows in, and the heat output increases, causing the stove to become prone to more damage and catch fire.
4. Wood
Putting too much wood in a wood-burning stove makes it burn faster than it should, reaching such high temperatures. And over-firing the logs can damage the baffle plate and break the firebox. To prevent this, you need to add logs into the fire one by one rather than all at once.
5. Dampers
If a wood-burning stove is over-firing, it can be that the flue draft is sucking the hot air. This is why you should use a damper and allow more smoke to be released through the chimney. On the other hand, if you block chimney fires and close the flue, creosote levels increase. And the increased creosote level makes your wood stove even hotter.
What Happens if Wood Burning Stoves Get Too Hot?
If a wood stove is burning excessively, you'll notice that the metal or steel parts are starting to glow red. Moreover, the materials inside the stove will bend or warp, especially the baffle that'll hold gases inside the stove for a longer duration, hence damaging the firebox.
If you feel like your unit is heating up too fast, check the stove thermometer and ensure that nothing is preventing the smoke from escaping. Moreover, having a metal grate fixed to the firebox will help because the ash sticks on it, which resists over-firing.
Can You Leave a Wood Burning Stove on Overnight?
Absolutely, you can run a wood stove overnight, but there are some precautions that we recommend following. For instance, you should close the stove's vents a little and avoid setting the stove at higher temperatures so that the wood is burning slowly.
How Do You Cool Down a Wood Stove That Is Too Hot?
Here are some tips that'll help you lower the temperature of your wood stove whenever it's burning up:
- If you own a manual wood stove, close the air vents a bit so that enough air enters the stove but not too much that it becomes burning hot and set your home on fire.
- Use the stove fan to cool the unit down.
- Use the stove thermostat, or attach a stove thermometer to the stove pipe to monitor the temperature. If the thermometer tells you there's so much heat, turn the stove off, and open the stove door.
- Reposition the log away from the air so that it doesn't ignite for too long.
Conclusion
Wood stoves tend to overheat in the long run. This is why we recommend regular maintenance, sticking to suitable temperatures, and using the right amount of fuel necessary for the stove to burn efficiently. To prevent health hazards, don't hesitate to seek professional help if your stove keeps over-firing.
