Questions about air control and secondaries

I think my stove has the EBT2. I bought it in Sept. 2013, but I think the change occurred in 2013 from the EBT to the EBT2. Hard to say if the improvement extends the burn time. There are a lot of variables involved. The concept is good! It seems like there is a little compromise in clean burn versus long burn times. The EBT maintains clean burn by regulating airflow. You may get shorter burns as it forces complete combustion.

Osagebndr said:

Another question i have is it ok to open the air up a little after secondaries die down when it's nothing but coals?

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Sure . . . especially useful if you have a lot of coals you want to burn down. For example, when burning hard in really cold temps, many folks tend to have a build up of coals since they are reloading more often and earlier in the coaling stage. Eventually you end up with a lot of coals.

To burn down the coals many folks will open up the air . . . many folks also will put a single split on the coals at the same time. In about 15-30 minutes, voila . . . the bed of coals is significantly reduced.

Drag the coals to the front, and open up the air however you wish for burning the coals down. I usually open the 1/2 way. If I want them to burn down faster, I'll open the air all the way.

If you need the heat while waiting for coals to burn off, the kindling or couple small splits really works well for me. Surprising rise in temp with a little bit of wood.

Some things to help control the stove.
If your worried about an over fire:
Dont load on a huge bed of hot coals.
Rake your coals forward East/ West Loading , to load the back of stove right on the stove floor with no hot coals under the wood. So half your wood is on coals and half your wood is not on hot coals. For North/South loading rake coals over to one side or the other. Yes you might have a tall pile of coals on one side but being that you can load more on the other side all the way to the bottom of the stove, it makes up for being able to load less on the other side. You have to learn coal management as to know how much to burn down coals and the timing of your reloads and such.
Use larger splits and pack your stove with less air pockets.

Know your wood your loading , you will get a feel for this as times goes on and you get more experience. You learn how hot the stove is and how hot the coal bed is and its size , you will have a feel for how fast you can get the air turned back down on the stove. Get the stove input primary air turn back down a little sooner helps prevent over fires. As if your loading really dry wood the wood is going to fire up easily for you so you dont need to let the stove heat up as much before turning it back down.

So now for secondaries, if your wood has a little too much moisture your gonna take a little longer getting the heat built up in the box. What you end up doing is while leaving the door cracked open and air wide open your burning alot of your main wood load just trying to build the heat to get the secondaries going as it take a certain heat level to get secondaries. If you use kindling on restarts on the hot coals as in you leave some space to in the box to load some kindling right on the hot coals and even throw a fire starter like a super cedar on top of the kindling thats on top of hot coals your fire box is going to heat up faster and get those secondaries going much fast before your start burning up alot of you main wood load specifically the gases in that main wood load that is what you get secondary flames from is the off gassing of the main wood load. Wood off gases the most at the beginning so thats the chance of getting the best secondaries is at the beginning of the cycle. So the kindling with a fire starter on hot coals will get the box up to temps quickly and secondaries fire off more quickly as your getting the input air shut down more quickly. Its the closing of the input primary air that changes the air balance of the stove. When less air in coming in thru the primary air them more air is coming thru the secondary air baffle or air tubes in the top of the stove. Plus getting the heat up quicker in the stove gets the secondary air heated up also as the stove is designed to preheat the secondary air before its injected in the top of the fire box. And its the heat in the firebox that preheats the secondary air and makes it all work.