Coals - a new technique that is really working for me

[wahoowad]

Like many people I quickly develop a stove full of coals that prohibit me from reloading with a full load of wood. Or if I do reload the coal bed just keeps growing until I am forced to spend time burning them down. Generally (for me) burning down a coal bed only results in low stove stove temps for several hours and my overall room temps starts to drop as well.

This past week I tried something new and it has worked great. I am fortunate to have plenty of 3 or 4 year seasoned and split oak and hickory. It burns good but produces lots of coals (especially the hickory which I am mostly burning this season). What I have begun doing is repacking the stove with my softwood pine and poplar and burning that for a cycle. I'm getting the same stove temps out of the softwoods, almost as much burn time, but all the prior coals get eliminated as well as no real coaling issue at the conclusion of the softwood cycle. Plenty of coals left to kick off the next burn cycle.

I know some folks do a variant of this - they place a single split on top of the large coal pile and run a quick cycle to burn the split and coals down. That does work for me too, but I usually don't get the desired stove temps out of it. So alternating loads of hardwoods, then softwoods, has really helped manage my coaling and keep me going on regular stove cycles.

 

[NH_Wood]

Sounds like that would work fine - getting a hot load of soft wood to burn down the hardwood coals. But, I'm amazed that you are achieving similar burn times with the softwood as you are getting with oak and hickory. Just how similar? Cheers!

 

[wahoowad]

well, I'm working with a Jotul F3CB, so not a very big stove. I get about 3 hour burn cycles give or take (usually take). Yes, the hardwood is a little longer but only if you add in the extra time it takes to get those coals burnt down. Which for me is often slack time that I'd rather have a fresh load going in and getting the higher temps. That said, I do like using the hardwoods for my overnight burns and when I will be away from the stove as the residual heat from the coals is better than nothing.

 

[Battenkiller]

I'm amazed that you are achieving similar burn times with the softwood as you are getting with oak and hickory.

Don't forget that some of that burn time is from those dense leftover hickory coals on the bottom. Still, I've been burning some 3 year old box elder, a wood that I never deemed stove-worthy before. The thin splits burn like flash paper, but a 5-6" round hangs in there for a lot longer than I thought it would. Burns hot as Hades, too. I'm surprised with the way this works in my stove, but pleasantly so. I think I'll go out and cut up that fallen willow that's been low on my to-do list. Who knows? Maybe there's a week's worth of heat locked up in that sucker.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

 

[oldspark]

Some times I am having better luck with my "crap wood" that my ash and oak, not sure I understand that but these EPA stoves seem to have a mind of their own.

 

[LLigetfa]

But, I'm amazed that you are achieving similar burn times with the softwood as you are getting with oak and hickory.

My guess is that it's not a fair comparison. The load of softwood is on top of a huge bed of hardwood coals so he's still getting the benefit of the hardwood. There is still a lot of heating time in the hardwood coals. A fair comparison would not involve a bed of hardwood coals.