OOOH that Smell !

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pybyr

Minister of Fire
Jun 3, 2008
2,300
Adamant, VT 05640
hmm-

as someone who has heated significantly with wood for almost 20 years, although to varying degrees depending on the rest of life....

and as someone who once had a frigid little apartment with a woodstove that backdrafted so badly that I and everything I owned smelled like bacon until mid-July that year, to the point that bacon and campfires repulsed me until September of that year (even though I usually like both)

I

LOVE

the smell of my gasifier

it may contain polycyclic aromatic something or others supposedly "known" to to the State of California (whenever I read those labels, I wonder, is that "known" in the Biblical sense ? ) to cause something or other....

but...

it smells "clean," and I get more heat per log than I'd have thought possible before based on past appliances.

can't wait 'til I see what fine tuning and storage/ control open up.
 
To me, gasification exhaust smells like lightly toasted wood. It's really a very pleasant smell.

Of course, if things aren't going right, it can stink to high heaven.
 
Eric Johnson said:
To me, gasification exhaust smells like lightly toasted wood. It's really a very pleasant smell.

yeah- it's like bacon met marshmallows !

what more could a guy want other than a gal to hand him tankards of grog ?
 
I have a cousing who's an MD. He says that some people can do amazing diagnostics by smelling the patient's breath. I wonder if we could apply that theory to gasifier tuning?

For sure there's a faint yet distinct slightly sweet / slightly nutty odor that's evident when it's running well.
 
Funny how we choose to describe pretty subjective things like smells. I think bacon/marshmellow and sweet/nutty are both pretty good descriptions of what I choose to call "toasted wood."

I don't care what you call it--it's one of the sweetest smells on my olfactory radar.
 
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