Last Updated on 4 years by Christopher G Mendla
My wood stove is in the basement and my office is in the breezeway. I found an easy way to keep tabs of the state of the fire.
I purchased a remote thermometer that I was going to install upstairs so I could check the outside temperature in the mornings. It dawned on me that I could use it to check the performance of my wood stove which is located in the basement.
The thermometer is a no frills Accurite that shows the time, local temperature and remote temperature. They generally sell for about $10 to $15.
I hung the remote sensor in the rafters above the stove. The basement is unfinished so it was extremely easy to hang the remote sensor.
The results were good. I could see the temperature rise to above 80 degrees when the stove was really running. As the fire died out, the temperature would slowly drop.
With a little bit of practice and correlation with a strategically placed Wyze camera, I was able to know when I needed to add more wood or if the wood I had added hadn’t caught.
Note – In addition to letting me monitor the fire in the wood stove, the thermometer alerted me to an issue that was wasting a LOT of heat. Namely the loss of heat due to uninsulated ducts.
Summary
If you have a wood stove in a room other than where you spend the bulk of your time, a remote thermometer may be a good investment.