Pine and burn times

I don't know about the Englander but a cat stove loves the smoke from pine.
You would be able to do a long burn on pine with one.

I'm talking around 24 hours on a load in the shoulder..at least 12 in the bitter cold.
There is at least one guy in here that burns mostly pine in his BK cat.
Hopefully he will see this.
I have burned just a few loads of it.

I've been burning a bunch of it and have been thouroughly converted from the don't burn pine crowd.
If dried well I think I'm getting better temp rise in the house from less wood.
The coal load off a load of good size pine splits seems to generate more heat than the actual secondary/fire burn.
It really makes a diffrence if you cut the wood to totally fill the stove. Some 10-14inch for the lower N-S stack, and the 20-22in for top E-W stack, I easily get a 4-6burn, and 10+hrs of good heat.

Vanskills said:

Well I live at 10,000 feet and it gets cold, very cold for 7 months out of the year

If I could get a 12 he burn from pine keep house warm ( only 900 sq feet) I would be stoked, hell I would be happy with 8 hrs of real heat

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No problem.
Others should confirm this.
Just get the moisture content down to at least 20%.
You might be able to get away with the smaller Princess..but i would go big BKK..you can idle that thing and be warm and get at the very least 12 hours and maybe more then 24 with a nice load of pine.

Longest I ever got when making an attempt was 37 hours, from cold stove start and ending at ~100 degree stove top.. was on 47.6lbs Scots pine.
BK claims 30 hours on 40lbs of softwood in the Chinook... I say their specs are correct.
Outside temps varied from ~30 in the day to ~20 at night. House stayed 74 during the day and dropped to 70 at in the morning, then rose back up slightly as noon time came before the fire died down.
792sq/ft home... Fans were on at the time.

If Fans are off, the house temp will be slightly lower. When it's 40-50 out I burn overnights using no fans, that way the house will stay about 72-74 and not overheat the place.
haven't tried doing a long burn with fans off.


I wouldn't normally expect to load up that much wood at one time. I dry fit every piece to make it as tight as I could, remembered how everything went in there, weighed it all, then crammed it back in. My pine splits are MAYBE 3" at most. 2" is more realistic. I don't have large splits of pine. I split all my pine before I bought my splitter, so I used a fiskars and turned all my pine in to tiny bits and pieces. So if anyone tells you that small splits of pine or anything will overheat a BK stove, they're full of trash. Same thing goes will pallet wood. I use a bunch of pallet wood, what I've got has been seasoned for over a year and is dry as can be. I'll stuff the stove as much as I can, and it's incredibly controllable and doesn't even seem to have a hint of wanting to overheat.

Generally my burn cycle is as follows... I'm working 12-14 hour days right now. So what I do, is when I get home I'll load the stove full of my cottonwood/willow/catalpa mix (yes, It's 10 degrees out and I'm still burning my softwood!!). I don't worry about packing it tight, I just throw some splits in there and whatever I can get in I get in. I do my usual char and turn it down... Then in the morning, I'll fill it with pallet wood. Usually not full again either... Usually Oak 1x4s and 4x4s. I'll just toss them in loosely, let it char... turn it down, and go to work. When I get home, there's usually plenty of wood left. Before I go to bed I repeat with throwing some softwood garbage on top, and so on. So I load twice a day, but realistically I could do it once.
I use pallet wood in the morning because I'm half awake, and pallet wood is all dimensional so it's VERY easy compared to my cordwood to get in the stove. All my softwood came from scrounges, so a lot of it is all knotty/twisted crotchy pieces... Which is part of the reason for I'm doing the cycle that I am lol

If I had cords of straight cordwood, I'd probably load once a day.
My pine is straight... and I've only got maybe 1/3 of a cord left.... so I save that for testing.

Hass said:

Longest I ever got when making an attempt was 37 hours, from cold stove start and ending at ~100 degree stove top.. was on 47.2lbs Scots pine.
BK claims 30 hours on 40lbs of softwood in the Chinook... I say their specs are correct.
Outside temps varied from ~30 in the day to ~20 at night. House stayed 74 during the day and dropped to 70 at in the morning, then rose back up slightly as noon time came before the fire died down.
792sq/ft home... Fans were on at the time.

If Fans are off, the house temp will be slightly lower. When it's 40-50 out I burn overnights using no fans, that way the house will stay about 72-74 and not overheat the place.
haven't tried doing a long burn with fans off.

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You know..the Chinook could be the perfect stove for him.
I hope he at least considers it.

If I was looking to heat my house full time and it was only 900 sq ft a small cat stove is the only way I would go. The smaller secondary combustion stoves will require way to many restarts. Blaze king and Woodstock are the two manufacturers I would look at.

I burn a lot of lodgepole in an EPA tube stove. I get 5 hours tops with pine. Problem with a non-cat stove is that the pine burns so hot and fast. If you shut it down to prevent it it just smokes. And I can't load a full load or I overfire with pine. I would think that if I only had pine a cat stove would be my choice so you could shut it down earlier and let the cat work.

HotCoals said:

You know..the Chinook could be the perfect stove for him.
I hope he at least considers it.

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I think the Chinook is the perfect stove for everyone

Especially being so far west, the price will probably be much more reasonable than what we pay over here for the stove!

Hass said:

Longest I ever got when making an attempt was 37 hours, from cold stove start and ending at ~100 degree stove top.. was on 47.6lbs Scots pine.
BK claims 30 hours on 40lbs of softwood in the Chinook... I say their specs are correct.

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Using those numbers and knowing most wood puts out around7000 btu's per pound that comes out to about 9,300 btu's per hour avg.
Not a lot but should do the shoulder ok in his smaller house when in the 40's.
If you burn that same load in 15 hours(colder out) you would then be around 18,600 per hour.
Sounds reasonable to me...7.5 hours over 37,000 btu's/hour.

don't forget to factor in 80% efficiency. or is it 76%... I forget.
It could burn that load of pine up in 2-3 hours if I cranked it, no doubt.
But I don't have enough windows on my house to move all that heat out

Hass said:

don't forget to factor in 80% efficiency. or is it 76%... I forget.
It could burn that load of pine up in 2-3 hours if I cranked it, no doubt.
But I don't have enough windows on my house to move all that heat out

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Very good point!
I think 75% would be a fair figure for most epa stoves.
So I guess if you're coming up with say 30,000 btu/hour it would be actually around 22,500 btu/hour of usable heat.
Good catch!

I was burning Silver Maple up until the first of the year, I switched to Oak,Locust, etc. I can't tell much of a difference at all! I can get 24 hours of good heat if it's any where near freezing outside. Once it gets colder I turn the stove up and I still get 12 hours easily. Pine won't be a problem at all, I think a Blaze King is the only hope you got if you are gonna be burning pine.

I was skeptical at burning pine, but I burnt a load in shoulder and it worked really great. A week or so ago I burnt a load of larch man did that cook and that cat was smokin orange. My neighbor has a chit load of lodgepole that can be cut alot is dead standing,I'm gonna go for it for next shoulder.

Don't fear the pine!
My 30 will generally put out 6+/- hours of good heat on a big load of pine, with at least some coals for a reload after 8-10 hours (13 hours is my record thus far).
If convenience and burn time are big on your list, you likely won't be dissatisfied with a BK.
If you do go with a secondary burn stove, don't be afraid to leave your splits big - slows down the normally ferocious burning.

I cut a ton of pine throughout the year, and never use it because I have a secondary stove and the points mentioned above about overfiring, etc......I usually end up selling it to people who use it in outdoor furnaces.....anyway, after reading this thread and others on the Blaze King stoves, I think I am going to look into getting one for my next stove in the kitchen....esp. considering all the pine I cut down and end up basically giving away.....

Scotty Overkill said:

I cut a ton of pine throughout the year, and never use it because I have a secondary stove and the points mentioned above about overfiring, etc......I usually end up selling it to people who use it in outdoor furnaces.....anyway, after reading this thread and others on the Blaze King stoves, I think I am going to look into getting one for my next stove in the kitchen....esp. considering all the pine I cut down and end up basically giving away.....

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Uhhhh you should definitely use it! I burned almost the whole shoulder season on pine and still got easy reloads 8-10 hours later. Your stove should be fine.

certified106 said:

Scotty Overkill said:

I cut a ton of pine throughout the year, and never use it because I have a secondary stove and the points mentioned above about overfiring, etc......I usually end up selling it to people who use it in outdoor furnaces.....anyway, after reading this thread and others on the Blaze King stoves, I think I am going to look into getting one for my next stove in the kitchen....esp. considering all the pine I cut down and end up basically giving away.....

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Uhhhh you should definitely use it! I burned almost the whole shoulder season on pine and still got easy reloads 8-10 hours later. Your stove should be fine.

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I feel it would be hard to control my Napoleon with pine....one of the downfalls of these modern EPA stoves is that you cannot choke them down too much (but that is also a plus because you cannot smolder your fire by choking it down). I'm heating around 2800 square feet, and that said, in the shoulder season I would be building constant 'quick fires', not being able to control the burn rate of the pine. In the cold season, if I was to bank that stove up with seasoned pine, it would definately overfire b/c the secondaries are uncontrollable....now if you could close off the secondaries it may be fine. But you cannot do that on the Napoleon, not sure if there are any stoves out there that you can back the secondaries off.....anyway, I will probably start using some of that pine in my maple syrup evaporator........until I get a Blaze King!!

Scotty, I can understand your hesitation to burn pine in your stove if you aren't used to it but I can assure my stove has secondary combustion and I have as much control over a load of pine as I do over a load of oak. I was hesitant at first also but you will find there are many members here that live out west and have nothing to burn in there secondary combustion stoves other than pine (BeGreen is one of them). You could always start with burning a few pieces and work up to loading the stove up if it would help you gain confidence in your stove. Not trying to push you to do it I just think you would be surprised with the results.

I'm doing about 30% pine this year. For my downdraft stove, I'm finding the mix is better for getting good, quick secondaries than straight hardwood. Shorter burn times, but good heat. (The fast-curing extra pine on hand is also allowing me to season some oak into its third year, rather than burn it this season.)

I am cutting pine this year for burning next. I have shunned the wives tale thanks to folks on here. I have a 3.5cuft Cat stove. I split my splits on the large side to get longer burn times.

Do you Cat stove owners think you get longer burn times from larger splits vs small splits? I think i do but you can pack it closer with less puzzel work with the small stuff.

clemsonfor said:

Do you Cat stove owners think you get longer burn times from larger splits vs small splits?

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I don't see a difference. It is easier to pack it full if pieces are smaller though like you said. More work splitting though... but pine is easy to split anyway. I sometimes use it as filler if I'm trying to get a really long burn. I'll cram it in spots where my other twisted garbage left a big gap.