Backwoods Savage said:
One also has to remember how some of the older folks used to do things. A lot of them knew nothing at all about seasoning and they had this dumb thing about burning a stove super hot to "clean out the chimney." Nuts! Completely nuts! That is just asking for problems. Burn good dry wood and you won't be needing any hot fire to "clean out the chimney."
Well, I'm one of those "older folks" who runs the stove blasting hot every morning. 600-650ºF flue pipe temp. I mostly burn very dry wood, sometimes approaching kiln-dried. I have never had a chimney fire in 25 years, burning close to 150 full cord in total.
The fact is that extremely dry wood can actually produce
more smoke when the intake air is shut way down, especially in a pre-EPA stove like mentioned in the OP. The drier the wood, the quicker it pyrolyzes, the denser the smoke, and the more air is needed to burn off that dense smoke. That can create an overfire situation (or trigger a chimney fire) when trying to burn smokeless by adding lots of air. That's why
I cringe when I read over and over again for new burners with stove problems to try burning a load of kiln-dried wood. They'll even be advised to split the wood really small, exacerbating the smoke production problem if the air is too little, or risking overfire or worse if the air is too great. Water that is not in excess (i.e. not above 25%) can actually regulate a burn and slow down the pyrolysis. Studies have shown that wood that is 15-20% MC (seasoned outside for 2-3 years) is not only adequately dry, it is the
ideal MC range. As well, large splits produce
less smoke than small ones by a large factor. I go ballistic when I read about folks loading up the stove for the night and packing all the spaces between the bigger splits with very small splits - a sure way to choke down the air and make lots of smoke.
Another thing. Creosote is
not "basically smoke". It is a complex mixture of oxygenated monoaromatic hydrocarbons that are formed along with dozens of other secondary fuel products during the course of any burn. Smoke is primarily wood tar and particulate solid matter like soot. Creosote condenses onto smoke particles and gets deposited on your chimney walls. The denser the smoke and the longer the residence time in the flue, the worse the problem gets. Very dry wood, split small and burned with too little air in a pre-EPA stove, or even in a non-cat EPA stove, will produce a cool fire with tons of smoke - a recipe for disaster IMHO. Cat stove owners, however, are in a league of their own.
All of this information is out there. I suggest that new burners worry less about what kind of wood they are burning and take the time to educate themselves about the controlled combustion of wood. My bible is this regard is "The Woodburner's Encyclopedia", by Jay Shelton (out of print, but available used through Amazon). It has hundreds of useful facts that are missing from the newer books I've looked at.