How much wood per day?

I'm trying to get a handle on our wood consumption with the new stove. Wood consumption for us is running approximately 7 cu ft per day. This seems higher that we are used to. It would be helpful to know what others are using per day. Please copy and paste my info into your post and replace the data with yours.

Stove brand: Jotul F400
Hours burning: 18
Outside ave. temp: 37
Wind speed ave.: <5mph
Inside temp ave.: 70
House size: 2000
Insulation: moderate
Glass area: med-high
Wood Consumption: ~7-8 cu. ft.
Wood type: mixed soft maple, madrona, and a little hemlock
Fill frequency: ~3 hrs.

It's almost impossible to normalize wood type across the country, as it would be to normalize the house type. I'm just after the big picture. Rhone's stats are impressive. I'll also track my neighbor's consumption with his new PE classic if he is burning steadily in this cold snap. They have very young ones, so they may not burn 24/7 but we'll see.

Agreed, and there is no question that our wood consumption is up significantly from previous years. Last year our consumption with a leakier house was less.

I think there is a notable difference in the amount of heat that goes up the stack vs into the room from stove to stove. Also one's buring techniques will alter the equation. I'm learning that some stoves are well balanced and achieve great burn efficiency almost by themself. Others need a greater degree of manual intervention to achieve this. Some never will, especially unbaffled, pre-EPA models.

Yesterday I had a breakthrough with the Castine. On Saturday the stack probe arrived. This has helped. It took some experimenting, but I found the stove's sweet spot.

Previously, trying to follow advice of the forum, I would feed the stove almost full with about 3-4 medium sized splits. Then I would run wide open on stack damper and air control for about 15 min. When the wood was charred and stovetop temps were over 450. Then I would close the stack damper and close the air control down to about 50%. The stove would find it's crusing temp of about 550 and that would be it. Reload two hours later.

Now, I am packing it to the gills with a combo of small and large splits. I run it with air control wide open and stack damper open only if the flue temp is below 250. It takes about 5-10 minutes to blacken the wood. At this point, the firebox is a ball of big orange flames, secondaries working overtime. Then I damper almost all the way closed forcing almost pure secondary burn. Voila. The stack temp settles at about 400 degrees and stays there, but the stove top temps keep climbing. Last night she cruised at 625 for about an hour. This is getting me more heat over a longer period of time. If all is right, maybe 3 hrs. Not good for the glass which has a grey-bown haze, but a lot more heat.

But of the 4 cast iron stoves I've owned this is the fussiest stove so far. I've also pulled off the rear heat shield and placed it on bricks about 3" back from the stove. That seems to be helping it convect better. But with all this, our house is only 70 in the living room where the stove is located and 68 in other rooms. So I am looking hard at real world efficiencies vs specs.

Wish you were my neighbor Eric. I'm getting too old to cut alot of wood. Getting a new stove that seems to have increased wood consumption was not part of the plan. I have to work full time, so spliitting is a weekend deal. For me, keeping consumption reasonable is both and economic and time consideration. Any spare time is spent working on the house or I hope by next summer, in the garden.

I hear ya. Our stove pipe cap is blacker than our previous Jotuls ever were. Has me wondering about how cleanly we're burning as well.

Eric, thanks for the good words. I'll persist with the F400 the way I did with the 3CB. Once the issue with the 3CB was found, it worked like a charm. Unfortunately there are less variables with the F400, so at this point I am perplexed. Next weekend, after this cold snap passes, I am going to figure out how to pull the top off the stove. Will do a thorough inspection to see if anything is amiss.

Creosote has been a non-issue for us for years. Each time the pipe was cleaned, it barely yielded a handful. Finally stopped cleaning and just eyeballed it anually. 5 yrs and no accumulation. But a new stove and a new stack bears for careful watching until one learns its habits. I appreciate BB's concerns and just went out with the binoculars to check the cap screen. It looks fine, no accumulation.