This one is all about running without storage - move right along to the next thread if you have storage. When I first started operating the EB in 2008, it was a big blue hulk that I didn't understand at all. One of the things you learn really fast is don't fall behind on a cold day - it doesn't have the ability to magically start cranking out 150K btus if it's empty and at a low water temp. You either use oil (not happening), or wait a while for it to recover. We all probably learn that lesson in a hurry. But then came a whole bunch of other things that were not as obvious, about matching boiler output to heat load. Smaller fires on warmer days was easy to figure out, and then came the start of the boiler shut-downs. We have lots of South-facing windows with a big solar gain, and discovered the boiler could be shut down for many hours on Sunny days, even on a cold Winter day (today it will be off for around 5 hours). Last year I expanded the boiler shutdowns in the shoulder season, and now it's frequently off all night in Spring and Fall - one small fire in the morning and another in the evening. These ongoing adjustments have all resulted in less wood used, and I kind of figured we had it down pat. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I made some adjustments based on input from the EB factory (well documented in a prior thread ;-)). That, coupled with some other improvements done over the Summer, have resulted in the boiler running on steriods. It's been producing so much heat that I couldn't figure out what to do - way too much idling during the nighttime load. Not thinking along the right track, I was trying to find a better loading pattern to cut down the output - even getting up 3 times at night to load smaller amounts. None of that worked - Big Blue is not going to be prevented from producing lots of heat, with any wood load exceeding just a few splits. Then finally I realized my thinking had been completely wrong on this (idiot). We had always kept the upstairs zone at 66, and dropped the downstairs to 69 at night. And then in the morning I would set everything back up before leaving for work. So finally it hit me that the beast needs work to do. Last night I left the downstairs at 73, and raised the upstairs to 70. From the small amount of creosote on the door, I could tell there had been far less idling, due to the extra heat load. And the amount of wood used was basically the same - all of the idling had just been wasting btus. So, increasing the load at night is likely to use less wood overall, because nothing extra will be needed in the morning (just a small fire to maintain the temp). The only thing left to deal with is my wife being upset that the house is much warmer at night :lol: I wanted to share this experience to remind folks without storage to continue to experiment with how you run your boiler, especially after making any kind of enhancements. As Heaterman says - become one with your boiler.