spinny, this is the real beauty of this community, when information which may not be current is seen, its corrected in a civil way. nobody gets blasted in here. the mission is to educate.
a lot of old traditional "methods" simply do not apply with the newer technology , as well as the proper practices in burning wood for heat.
the
"toss a green split on cause it burns all night" for instance. green wood will not burn, however if green wood is added to an existing fire, the existing fire will
"cook" the moisture out of the wood and eventually when its been "dried" it will start to burn. problem is, in order to "dry" this green split, a lot of
thermal energy is wasted. this is heat energy used inside the stove to dry out the green stuff instead of being used to radiate to the structure.
a little physics folks, moisture is the enemy of woodburning. this is why in laymans terms, to remove the water it would have to be cooked out by heat. this water once it has absorbed enough thermal energy it will flash to steam through evaporation, as this steam dissipates away from the fire it carries this thermal energy with it..
its a physical fact that heat (thermal energy)cannot be destroyed, only dissipated so by carrying this heat out of the stove with the steam we are doing just that,
"evaporation" is a cooling function. same as perspiration in our own bodies, the heat is removed from us by the vapor which by turning to vapor carries the heat energy away from our bodies.
now, understand that since the steam has left the fire it starts cooling in the flue, if this vapor drops below 211F it condenses back into a liquid and starts coating the flue like dew on your windshield, as it builds up and gravity starts drawing the water back down it gets closer to the fire and warms again, if it gets warmed back to 213F it evaporates again (remember its a cooling function, its drawing heat with it to dissipate again higher in the flue) this cycle builds
"wet creosote" which is the stuff of flue fires.
burning a "hot fire" to clear the flue ,
is literally asking for a flue fire when the flue has been coated in the above manner. there are many a flue liner that's suffered cracked tiles from repeated firings due to this practice. and once a flue tile has been cracked , the heat is able to attack the structure of the chimney itself (and possibly the wood structure of the house which would be protected by the cracked tile).
this causes house fires even when a flue fire is not happening at the time the house goes up. it happens when the chimney itself cracks and heat has an entry into the wood behind it.
ask my firefighting friends in here about this, they will confirm it im sure. bear in mind also that im not trying to "one up" the poster above , merely to post information describing the situation in a way that is educational.