Burn times

BrotherBart said:

Thank God I'm not the only dinosaur on the Forum. I bet your stove has the same four temperatures Big Brownie has:

1. Cold
2. Hot
3. Really hot
4. Holy #$%& call the Volunteers when you get to the neighbor's house Martha!

And burn time:

Can till can't.

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Ha ha ha! Yep BrotherBart, Big Brownie sounds a lot like Old Smokey!

WoodStock soapstone Fireview burning Red Oak Post Oak Walnut and wild cherry.Burn times when filled full run a easy 12 hrs.in 30 to 40 deg outside temp.When outside temp. drops below25 or so burn times will be reduced to about 8 hrs.This is my second year burning this stove and I am still learning.
My house is a old farm house built in 1932 remodeled.Good double pane windows and good insulated exterior doors.There is no insulation in the attic and very little in walls.House is 1200sq. ft.Temp outside as i type this is 21 deg. inside avg. temp is74. The stove is burning at 550 deg. surface temp with the flue gas probe showing 400 deg. and the CAT probe temp. at 1300 deg. This is with 1 piece of Red Oak 5x6 inch by 16 inch long and 2 small pieces of cherry about 3x4 also 16inch long. The stove has been going about 3 hrs. on this burn and I expect it go about 2 more hrs.

Warren said:

Maybe some of the guys who burn match sticks for 12 hours were the testers. (sorry, I couldn't help myself)

Funny none of the coal or pellet burners haven't weighed in here saying something like:

"100,000 btu's burning for 3 days....What overnight burn time problems? "
or
"hey honey...did you put pellets in the stove this week?"

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"NO HONEY , The store was sold out of pellets again this week ."

Put a 3/4 load in the firebox last night at 9:15 and at 5:00 this morning I had two glowing coal logs and a full bed of glowing coals with some larger chunks

76 inside
20's outside and not as much snow as they forecasted, thankfully

Morso claims a 10 hour burn for this stove , theres one company that tells it like it is anyway ;-P

Jotul Kennebec
Full Load: coals at 8 hours, can restart fire with splits at 8 hours, at 10 hours use kindling or small splits. A full load on this stove is 4 splits, at night I rake the coals forward and put a very large split in the back, then more on top.

What I would like to know is this: To keep a nice fire going, how many splits per 24 hours are people using? Also, when keeping it "burning" for 24 hours, do you always let the wood burn to coals, and let the coals go for a few more hours before adding splits, or do you keep a flame going the entire time? I find myself doing the former.

-- Mike

I have a Royall 6150 inside boiler with a big firebox. We heat a 3,000 sq. foot house & all domestic hot water in a cold climate (Upstate NY). The firebox holds about 8 cubic feet of 24-28-inch wood. Beech & hard maple, mostly. We like to keep the house 70-75, depending on the outside temp. I turn the stats down to 68 at night. When the temp is in the mid teens overnight, I can load the boiler up at about 11:00 and still have a nice bed of coals the next morning at 7:00. When it gets around zero, it's more like midnight to 6:00 a.m. When it's -20, I snooze on the couch until around 2:00 a.m, then load the boiler, go to bed and repeat the process at 6:30 or 7:00. As I said in another post, I figure we save an average of $25/day during the 200-day heating season by burning wood. That's with free firewood and free labor.

To me burn time is when you can throw a few logs on the coals, open the damper and get fire pretty quickly

If you have to add paper, kindling then I would say burn time has already expired

Dylan said:

IMNSHO, I fail to see the presence of a few coals being left after an overnight (whatever) burn as representing a justifiable end-point for the purposes of measuring 'burn time'.....it's FAR to subjective. (Perhaps, it's just that I've never found it all that difficult to kindle a new fire from scatch.) For me, I'd pick a more objective condition as an endpoint, such as, surface temperature at 350 degrees or greater. Anything different than such objectivity gives the manufacturers/retailers WAY to much room to BS the prospective purchaser. On the other hand, perhaps prospective purchasers enjoy getting BS-ed.

Dylan

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I was kind of wondering when someone might bring this up. Just because you have a few coals left, and can open up the air control to make the coals smolder, does not mean you have a "burning fire". My oppinion of an overnight burn is: stove temps near or over 300* and remenants of burning logs remaining with many hot coals. Starting a raging fire after a true overnight burn should only require tossing on a couple of thin splits.

My info:
Stove: Avalon Mission (1.9 cu. ft. if I remember correctly)
Stove thermometer location: door front
Type of wood burned: Mostly hard maple with some oak, cedar, apple, and silver maple mixed in.
Burn duration: 2-3 hours on medium to high burn with full load. Stove temps in the 400-500 range.
Overnight burn: I can get between 6-8 hours depending on the type of wood, whether I use rounds, splits or monster chunks, and stove temp and fire quality before I shut the air control down.

my harman has the grates on the floor, there is some unburned coals in the corners in the morning, my burn time may not be 350 everyone says, i mostly look at the ease of starting back up in the morning and keeping the house at 72+

Surface temp where?
I dont see how surface tempshave anything to do in relation to burn time

You can have still have fire and not have a surface temp of 350, at least in my stove

None taken

I dont see your point and you dont see mine

Its good though that you know whats best for me as far as heating my house though
I should just shut down the stove when I get home because the surface temp isnt what you think it should be

To throw a wrench in the works I think the soapstone owners get the shaft on this one. They burn shorter fires but it's hours later their stove temperature drops and no longer heats. My insert is 550 lbs with 90 lbs of soapstone in it. If I burn a fire on medium the fire is what I'd say out after 6-7 hours (I need a couple branch pieces to get it moving again but wouldn't go as far as needing kindlin) but it sure hasn't stopped heating. Once the fire is out and some coals visible it's another 1-3 hours before the temperature of my insert catches up and the temperature drops to a point the fans shut off. On medium air I get 6 hour burns and 9 hours of heating if I'm lucky, most often on medium it's 6 hour burns and around 8 hours of heating. Firebrick users if they burn a fire for 6 hours they get around 6 hours of heating.

It's interesting that this thread has provoked a number of back and forth "debates" on the relative merits of different heating units, and our understanding of the various features and what constitutes a good "burn".

This is a good thing as it shows that the forum is alive and kicking. I've always believed that it is a difference of opinion that often makes us think a little bit more about our own assumptions, and therefore expands our own outlook and understanding.

On the other hand, it could be some of "my firebox is bigger than your firebox" poking through..... ;-P


Maybe ULC, or Warner-Hersey or somebody needs to develop a spec for what constitutes a "burn" for measuring burn time. Oh oh.....I feel another beer study coming on.....

Willhound

Appalachian 32 BWXL. Rebuilt Catatlytic heater. (rebuilt because the damper extender is warped all to hell so I used lengths of fiberglass door gasket to fil the gaps this created and make the smoke go where it's supposed to go) 3rd year with this stove. My fires are hotter and burn time longer than in the past. LAst night during a wet snow temp about 32-33 degrees with fire going, I got up at 12:45 and loaded up the stove. Took about 30-45 minutes to get the stove up to 400 degrees and then I engaged the Cats. Woke up this morning a litle after 7 am. Red coals in the stove. Still putting out mild heat. house temp 64 degrees. House size is about 2200 SF. stove is on first floor at one end of house. 3 beds above, and a bonus room/bedroom at the other end of the house. Burning hardwood, mostly oak. some gum and scant hickory....and some elm. Wood I'm using has been drying for 2 years. most of it's nice and solid. some has a little bugginess but I throw it in there just the same.
Some mornings I get up and the stove is dead cold. When it drops down to the 20's next month ans stays there, I'm sure I'll be burning some natural gas. But so far, I have burned very little. I keep the thermostat set on 60 and it hasn't come on but once. The wood stove has done the bulk of the work this winter. Last year and the year before I also burned a Kerosene space heater in the kitchen some nights to get the place nice and warm. Not planning on doing that, but plans might change. I am stocking up on Kerosene a bit in case we have power outages. Not sure about running the stove without power for the blower.

Next month if it ever gets up to the 20s, we'll be running around half nekked and celebrating the heat wave. Usually it gets into the -20s in January/February and stays there.

Hearthstone Homestead, 2.0 cu ft firebox.

When I burn oak I get the longest burns. Lately I have been burning hot short fires during the day, but at night I will dampen all the way down with about a 3/4 full load around 8:30. I get up at 4:30, the stove is still around 300 deg, with a nice bed of coals. I usually just throw more regular splits on and she fires right up. This is about average for my stove, but you can plus or minus 2 hrs on my burn times depending on lots of variables.

Dylan, I'm not certain so I'm estimating. door is 22 inches and firebox is slightly wider than the door. top to bottom is a scosh more than 12 inches and fr0ont to back is minimum 12 inches (I estimate 14) I came up with 2.25 cubic feet but I would guess it's bigger than that. I am looking at the original documentation and it lists it as taking a 20" log but says nothing about firebox dimensions. The max heating listed for this stove was 2500. Of course we know what those ratings are worth. I can't complain. I've gotten more than my 250 bucks worth of good heat and burning out of this stove. PRobly run it 2-3 more years before I call it quits and buy a non cat model.

David

Rhonemas said:

To throw a wrench in the works I think the soapstone owners get the shaft on this one. They burn shorter fires but it's hours later their stove temperature drops and no longer heats. My insert is 550 lbs with 90 lbs of soapstone in it. If I burn a fire on medium the fire is what I'd say out after 6-7 hours (I need a couple branch pieces to get it moving again but wouldn't go as far as needing kindlin) but it sure hasn't stopped heating. Once the fire is out and some coals visible it's another 1-3 hours before the temperature of my insert catches up and the temperature drops to a point the fans shut off. On medium air I get 6 hour burns and 9 hours of heating if I'm lucky, most often on medium it's 6 hour burns and around 8 hours of heating. Firebrick users if they burn a fire for 6 hours they get around 6 hours of heating.

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I agree with you. Good point . Burn times and "HEAT times" are different but the same . If i can get say an 8 hour burn in the steel stove and 1 hour of heat after and YOU can get with your stove 6 hour burn time and 3 hours of heat then that should be 9 for both. That was kinda the idea of the stone stoves.