First year GW burners

[ISeeDeadBTUs]

I feel your pain sometimes when I read you . . .

[quote author="Deere10" date="1262920530"]May try to answer two threads in one post if possibe. As for wood being burned mostly Cherry,Hickory,and some hit n miss with Maple. All seem like very good wood, ran into some punky stuff at begining of burn season.Have noticed the past couple days if I clean out any ash n coals build up in the bottom 3 inches or so does seem to burn longer dont know if thats all in my head or not yet.
[/quote]

1) Do NOT remove ashes when its cold outside(<30deg). I made this same mistake year 1 also :smirk:

Try to avoid putting a new load of wood on any wood left over from the last load. Do not put new load in until coals are down to the point where you can see the air tubes. A trick I learned from a cagey old wood burner on this forum is to use a few small pine splits to burn the coals down. Also, wet/crappy wood will produce more ash. And the wet stuff tends to produce black ash in clumps. With a load burned down you may find some of these hidden in the ashes. These clumps are good to remove as they no longer have any heat in them and they are just taking up space.

2) Modulate your aquastat with outside temps. If you have no dump zone and are concerned about boiling over, do this experiment when you will be home to watch the life of the load.

The overnight lows are supposed to be around 0 the next few nights. MY stat will be as high as 195. Now having said that, I will admit my GW is probably undersized. I know many people claim 'efficiency is best at 170deg' and maybe they are right. But I can tell you that when my GW runs hot -say, set at 190- she seems to run in a zone. She's so hot that when the damper opens she produces heat very quickly while never dropping below 180.

Jimbo

 

[91220da]

Thanks Jimbo, I had a similar conclusion in my mind but thought I was nuts. It seems if you leave the coals in and just to the bottom of the tubes it burns great. If I shovel out the majority of the coals the air flows around the log better and faster but that attributes to faster burns. Slow constant heat from the logs and coals seems to work fine.
Rich

 

[trailhound68]

I have to agree with the burn down theory. First thing I do after returning from a work day is to pull the ash away from the air inlets, then push the pile of coals to the rear of the fire box to try to burn them down. BUT, sometimes what can happen is that gasses will build up in the firebox and POOF, flame ash and red coals OUT the air inlets. Anyone experience that or find a lot of ashes behind yer boiler and not sure why?
Regardless, I'm always pulling ash/coal toward the door in preparation of a new load, starting with small rounds or kindking.
After one week or more, depending on how cold it is, it's time to shovel about 5 gal. of ash.
Mine is undersized also, we'll go through a log truck load plus in a 5 month season, combining dry and green rounds.
I do wish I had a nice implement to remove the ash from the corner by the door. Any suggestions?

 

[91220da]

Trailhound68
I do the exact same thing with the coals and ashes. I can't say I have had ash and soot fly out the back. The greenwood tubes run on an angle upward to the back. Are the seaton tubes straight out the back? anyway I use a full size coal (flat shovel) to get the stuff in the back and then a small coal scoop to get the front corners. Just be careful and wear a welding glove.

 

[henfruit]

when i let it burn down that low i will shovel out towards the rear right down to the bottom. i remove about half of the ash that i can with out taking out to many coals. then i push all the coals to the rear and reload with small rounds an a couple big ones on top. i have never had any blow by out the back. i notice that when i re fill it and there are abig bed of coals and i close the front door i can here it star to take off like jet engine. even with the zero degree weather we have today i can still get a eight to ten hour burn of useable heat.