how large are your splits

This is my first year burning in an epa stove, an older Avalon 1196 that came with the house. I started gathering and splitting my wood last year. I split my wood big because that is what I did with my old smoke dragon. My concern is that everytime I see someone loading an EPA stove in a video they are loading small pieces 3"-4" splits. Most of mine are 6"-9" ,big heavy pieces of wood. My stove top has been around 350F most burns sometimes I can get it up to 550F but not easily. Am I doing it wrong, should I resplit my wood smaller?

Having a mixture of sizes is a good thing!
At night I put the bigger splits on top of the smaller ones..works for me!

My splits are 3-6", bigger than that takes a long time to dry, harder to handle and a pain loading into the stove.

What species of woods do you have? If its heavy stuff like oak, those big splits may not have dried enough in one year. Many of us split small to dry faster, but I leave some big ones for overnight loads.

We use mostly 3-4" splits but use 5-8" for overnight burns in our epa stove. I like to use bigger chunks in bigger stoves.

One of the biggest factors for size of splits is the size of your firebox. If you have, say, a 1.5 cu. ft. firebox it would be silly to have 8-9" splits or even 6" simply because it would be difficult to fill the firebox. But if one had smaller splits then the firebox could be filled a bit easier. And of course the drying of the wood comes into the equation also.

We tend to put at least one large split or round in the firebox for night burning but that means we really do not need many of them. Certainly at this time of the year we don't put big stuff in the firebox because that much heat is not needed yet. When January rolls around it is a different story.

I use small splits for quick hot fires and larger splits for overnight burns. My largest splits are about 8" across. At night I put a few small splits on the bottom with some air space between them, then I load with large splits. Once I have as many large splits as I can fit I fill in the gaps with some smaller splits. With the air gaps and a hot fire on the bottom the solidly packed wood heats and starts to off-gass quickly which launches the secondaries for a long overnight burn.

Having a mix of split sizes is good. Both diameter and length. Short splits N/S load, long splits E/W load. Pack it full for the longest burn. Use your air controls to adjust the amount of heat.

KaptJaq

If that is red oak it may not be fully seasoned out red oak takes about 2 or 3 year to season.

This is not really correct? I split some wood this summer that was about 40"s in diameter!! a quarter of that one was about as much as I could pick up and was close to the size of my stove!! I would say this would be the rule for a say 12" round maybe 14"er but bigger than that your going to have to split way smaller. Those trees I had this summer were yielding 20-25splits each of 4" or so splits!!

My average split size are 7"x8"!
I have been progressively going larger and most stuff is 10x10 now but I have a good surplus, so lots of time to dry...

If I can handle it with one hand it dosent get split again.

I like a variety of split sizes, but honestly really large splits don't usually work out so great for me.

When i split wood i like to have all sizes like others said.

Maybe the moisture content is too high still?

Last couple of log loads I tried to go for the slab look (two opposite sides parallel), and light enough to carry with one hand (me not too strong). I figure it'll be easier to stack in the stove. It'll be a while before my theory will get tested.