ANyone with one of these stoves. Likes- dislikes. I can't seen to get the oven working properly, it will only heat up to about 200f and that is with the stove going all day long, hot! any suggestions?

-- Megan Milliken (millikenfarm@altavista.com), October 11, 2000

Answers

Megan, I don't have a Schrader so I probably won't know what I'm talking about here (never stopped me from responding to anything else before, though! LOL) Have you shut down the oven damper? I have a separate control to my oven (on my wood cookstove), so that if I don't close it, the oven never really warms up. The top of the stove stays hot, though. What made me think of this, is that the oven doesn't get over 200F if I don't close the damper!

-- sheepish (rborgo@gte.net), October 11, 2000.

I suspect Sheepish is right, as usual. The slow-combustion wood stove I'm used to - definitely not that brand - has an oven control. The smoke and hot air can escape from the firebox two ways. One is fairly directly, going under the hotplates and over the oven. The other also passes under the hotplates, but then is routed more circuitously around the oven before escaping up the chimney. Of course, normally it takes the easy, direct route. When you "open" the oven control, it in fact blocks off the direct route for the smoke, forcing it around the oven before escaping. When you damp down the stove for the night, if you've forgotten to "close" the oven control (opening the direct route for the smoke) then the stove can smoke quite badly.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), October 13, 2000.

Megan, I have one of these stoves. A woodstove with a cast iron box sitting on top of stove? Is that what you have? Yes, it is frustrating to cook in it! No, I haven't any answers. We think it was just a sales gimmick to get people to pick their stove over others. Ours was in place when we bought our house. It is good for warming things, heating cold cookies until gooey, and cooking certain meals when all the conditions are right (hot stove, enough wind to keep it hot, etc.)

This stove really frustrated us when our electric oven died. Wished we could have made it work for that time. But we did insert a grill in the box (where the wood burns). It worked for the time needed to get the other oven replaced.

Do you have some type of damper? Our stove does not and can not as the pipe is two feet long and meets the chimney at a 45 degree angle.

Sometimes, playing with leaving the door open at certain angles actually can increase the heat. I think it would work if it did not have that thick bottom.

Good luck. {Please send me any information that could help us.)

-- Christina (crublee@homer.libby.org), October 15, 2000.

Yes I have a Schrader wood stove and mine dont heat very good eather. SO I had it looked at and the reason it dont heat the house because they dont have a blower in them and the heat just blows up the chimney. So Im trying to find out if you can put a blower in them. Does anyone know if you can?

-- Evelyn Rendon (erendson2001@yahoo.com), January 22, 2002.