Ideal split thickness in catalytic/hybrid stove.

[JA600L]

Hi guys,
We are going through a bit of a cold windy spell here. I am looking to get the most heat possible for overnight/ 11 hour work day burns.

I am still fairly new to operating a catalytic/hybrid stove and have been cruising trouble free. With this added cold I just want to ensure I'm using the best of my best firewood.

The fuel in question is large white oak chunks taken out of my 3 year old stack. I know in my older stove chunks did very well, but with a cat I'm just not sure if it will off gas as well as say more medium sized splits. I know I will have a lot more left over coals with the chunks.

Any thoughts? I have plenty of large, medium, and small sized variety to chose from. Either way it will burn all night I'm just looking for the most heat possible.

 

[Spletz]

Hi guys,
We are going through a bit of a cold windy spell here. I am looking to get the most heat possible for overnight/ 11 hour work day burns.

I am still fairly new to operating a catalytic/hybrid stove and have been cruising trouble free. With this added cold I just want to ensure I'm using the best of my best firewood.

The fuel in question is large white oak chunks taken out of my 3 year old stack. I know in my older stove chunks did very well, but with a cat I'm just not sure if it will off gas as well as say more medium sized splits. I know I will have a lot more left over coals with the chunks.

Any thoughts? I have plenty of large, medium, and small sized variety to chose from. Either way it will burn all night I'm just looking for the most heat possible.

For what it's worth, my hybrid goes all night regardless of split size, but I utilize my largest splits at bedtime to get the most for my efforts. I'm still not entirely sure it matters.

 

[Woody Stover]

I try to mix most loads to some degree to get a similar result from burn to burn. But yeah, the chunks are going to slower to gas so if you're needing a lot of heat, don't load full with chunks. Eventually a load of chunks will get rockin' with more air at the beginning, then cutting it back later, but sounds like you need higher output at the beginning of the burn.

 

[Poindexter]

On regular days I run splits bigger than a 2x4 but smaller than a 4x4 and get 12 hours burns in my Ashford.

In shoulder season I had good results burning 2 splits, about 6x6 each, pretty darn big, but having the fire limited to just the touching/ kissing surface of the two splits.

On cold nights I tend to put one enormous split on the left (arbitrary) and then fill the rest of the box with mediums and smalls.

When it gets really really cold I load as above for cold weather, but when I first get home from work I run a load of small wide open, then load one enormous one on the left and a bunch of mediums in the rest of the box for the overnight and first thing in the AM burns.

I have been playing with E-W instead of N-S loading lately.

I am not sure any of this makes a big difference with the Tstat control on my BlazeKing's air intake.