The Stove Issue

I didn’t fire up my outdoor wood boiler until around Thanksgiving.  But this year, I have been having this ongoing problem of the stove either overheating at 212° or burned to ashes at 125° when it should be regulating itself between 165 and 175.  I have pondered this for months.  At first I just figured I was filling the wood box too full when the air temperature was still above freezing.  That idea was struck down by our one and only blizzard of the season, right before Christmas - I had to open the windows because I was trying to cool the house down in order to get rid of the excess heat in the wood boiler. 

Was the wood too dry?  After all, this is the oldest wood I have ever burned, it was cut last winter, and it was a very hot, dry summer...Would that make such a huge difference?  And don't worry, I checked everything - the damper was working, the chimney wasn't plugged, the pumps are circulating as expected and the house was warm.  

Scratching my head, I decided to do the next thing on my trouble shooting list: call the installer/repair person/expert.  Just as I had thought, too much air into the stove is causing the fire to continually burn.   I scraped and chiseled (with the largest flathead screwdriver I own) the creosote from around the door.   

The second item was to check and adjust the door because it may not be sealing tightly.  For this I needed a crescent wrench, but I don't have one.  However I did find the smallest ever, monkey wrench?  It was in a small rusty toolbox I had gotten from my grandfather.  The wrench was a bit rusty, but the clamp adjusted - I was in business.  Keep in mind it is getting dark by now.  I couldn't seem to get the wrench adjusted right, but yet I couldn't really see what I was doing either.  Then something fell to the ground, hmmm.  It was the top half of my wrench.  It didn't fall off, it broke off.  

Well, maybe scraping the creosote would do the trick?