I'm on my third season with the Tarm Solo 30, and it's done a fantastic job of heating my house and dhw while reducing my oil use to almost zero. During the first winter it was immediately clear that drier wood was called for, and that was remedied by preparing 2 years worth the following summer. It took a little longer to accept that it just doesn't pay to place a long piece in the firebox kitty corner, as you're just asking for bridging and a compromised fire if not a failure to ignite. I now set aside any long ones I encounter and snip them before use.
The hardest thing to accept, however, is the limitation on the cross sectional area of the firewood. I do my initial splitting with a hydraulic splitter that's kind of slow, so I leave a lot of pieces on the large side. I usually bring my wood in on the weekends and do a final split of the larger pieces by hand. Sometimes I'm rushed though, especially if I bring in a couple loads during the week, and I might skip the final split, thinking those 6 or 8 inch wedges will be fine. In truth, they ARE fine if used sparingly, but if I use them for most of the load without surrounding them with pieces not much larger than a deck of cards, I'm in for a difficult burn and some fiddling and poking before I get good gasification, even with excellent, really dry wood.
The lessons are -
1) the wood must be dry
2) it must be shorter than the firebox depth
3) the cross sectional area must be small, not much larger than a playing card
Follow those rules and it's a piece of cake.
The hardest thing to accept, however, is the limitation on the cross sectional area of the firewood. I do my initial splitting with a hydraulic splitter that's kind of slow, so I leave a lot of pieces on the large side. I usually bring my wood in on the weekends and do a final split of the larger pieces by hand. Sometimes I'm rushed though, especially if I bring in a couple loads during the week, and I might skip the final split, thinking those 6 or 8 inch wedges will be fine. In truth, they ARE fine if used sparingly, but if I use them for most of the load without surrounding them with pieces not much larger than a deck of cards, I'm in for a difficult burn and some fiddling and poking before I get good gasification, even with excellent, really dry wood.
The lessons are -
1) the wood must be dry
2) it must be shorter than the firebox depth
3) the cross sectional area must be small, not much larger than a playing card
Follow those rules and it's a piece of cake.
