Woodstove Assistant Keeps the Heat on Safely

Those who have never lived in a cold climate might romanticize winters around a fire, keeping warm under blankets while snow gently falls outside. While it certainly can be a …. Woodstove Assistant Keeps the Heat on Safely.

While it certainly can be a cozy experience, using a woodstove comes with several pitfalls, and when operated improperly can even cause house-destroying chimney fires. Modern stoves operated properly with properly dried wood make this possibility extremely remote, but it’s still worth keeping an eye on. Reddit user [nas886] built a system called Oru which takes a lot of the guesswork out using one of these pieces of heating equipment.

The real danger of a woodstove isn’t necessarily running the fire too hot, although that can be a problem, but running it too cold. Without full combustion of the wood, flammable creosote builds up on the inside of the chimney which eventually can combust. This system uses a probe placed in the stovepipe to monitor the temperature of the exhaust gasses.

If it’s too low an ESP32 notifies [nas886] remotely with with a status LED inside a seperate custom-built walnut enclosure so that more wood can quickly be added or airflow increased to bring up the temperature, and in the case that the fire gets too hot the LED changes to a different color and the air can be closed off a bit.