My wood stove hit 500 degrees for the first time, here's what that meant for my heating bill

We moved to a 100 year old farmhouse in Keene, NH last fall and I kept feeding the stove kindling to get it past 250 degrees. After 6 weeks of fiddling with the damper and trying different splits, I finally got a good overnight burn going and the thermometer read 500. That single night cut my oil usage down to just 3 gallons for the whole week instead of the usual 8. The trick was letting the ash build up an inch and a half before cleaning it out, which I used to do every single day. Has anyone else found that a slightly dirty stove burns hotter than a spotless one, or am I just getting lucky with this draft?

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gavin_reed18d ago

The ash buildup thing is real, yeah. I ran a stove in Vermont for ten years and once I stopped scraping it clean every morning, the burn got way more consistent. Leaving that inch or so acts like insulation for the coals, keeps the firebox from losing all its heat when the door's shut. 500 is a good number to hit but keep an eye on it, anything over 600 and you're just throwing heat up the pipe instead of into the house. I'd bet your draft is fine, just give it a week before you change anything else.