pen said:
If there is enough primary air coming into the stove, the secondaries wouldn't have much to clean up anyway. The time that you'd really get creosote is when a large bed of hot coals gets a nice load of wood placed on it then the air is shut down too early. This and a general lack of air when closed down too far is how the old stoves get the title "smoke dragon." You are doing just fine so long as you don't have smoke pouring out of your chimney. If the exhaust is pretty much just heat waves, you are doing it right.
I couldn't agree more with this post. In fact, you can do it right even when the wood is "not quite up to standards"... :roll:
I took this video against a backdrop of trees so the heat waves would be easily visible. Against a clear blue sky the stove looked like it wasn't even running, but it was cruising along at 750ºF with a roaring secondary burn going on behind the fireback.
I did this run last season just for giggles and to make a point (mostly to myself). It is not a fun way to operate a stove, however. Way too much babysitting. But a good example of the meaninglessness of comparing emissions, secondary combustion, and heater efficiency. Obviously, the stove is burning this sopping wet stuff (close to 60% MCdb) very cleanly, and producing great gobs of heat in the room, but we all know this can't be done efficiently. At 600º on the pipe, a lot of heat was being sent up the chimney. In fact, I could have gotten a lot more efficiency out of the wood by choking the air all the way down "old timer" style, but Lordy, what a mess that would have made in the flue - a case of great thermal efficiency but horrendous combustion efficiency.
BTW please refrain from the need to assume I am advocating burning wet wood by showing this video. I burned plenty of wet wood when I was young and stupid, but now that I am old and stupid I have come to realize that dry burns much better. I just wanted to show that you can get a clean, hot burn and stay very warm using bad wood, but you won't get very good fuel economy doing it.