Ashful
Minister of Fire
yeah. I'll admit I was totally surprised. I loaded a little more volume than I would normally, using oak or hickory as a basis for a 8 hour burn time target, knowing pine has a lot less BTU's than oak. I set the thermostat where I would for oak, figuring the spring would automatically meter out the difference to keep output roughly the same.
I think output was probably lower, and the BTU math on burn time would support that. But on the flip side, I'm totally blown away by the consistently high cat probe temperature, and the fact that I had to go to WOT throttle late in the evening to try to burn this thing down far enough for a comfortable bedtime reload.
Definitely more punch than I had expected for eastern white pine. As noted, these were extremely knotty pieces, way heavier than nice straight grain stuff, which probably helped a good bit on the BTU scale, both by weight and high resin content around knots.
