Wood Stove Tetris

[SlyFerret]

Sometimes it amazes me how the stacking of a load in the stove can make such a difference in the way it burns.

I just adjusted one split's position (out of the 5 in the stove) by about half an inch, and it made the difference between cruising along at 430 degrees with minimal secondaries, and cruising at 500+ with good strong secondaries.

Since every load of splits is different... we get to play Tetris every time we reload the stove!

-SF

 

[pen]

It really is amazing. My 30 seems to do be w/ a full load that is stacked so that none of the seems between the wood seal themselves. Doing that, I can cook us out of here and still easily relight the next load 12 hours from now.

Now w/ the old fisher. If I wanted a 9.5-10hour burn it was geometry based tetris where I had to first build a coal bed about 1.5-2 hours before bed, rake the coals out, then load things up to the gills leaving as little space in between as possible, let the load catch, closer her down, and hope there was something there in the morning!

I'm glad I made the switch

pen

 

[SlyFerret]

When I moved that one split, it was to place it about half an inch closer to another split so that they could "snuggle" and keep each other warm better.

Seemed to do the trick!

I'm burning mostly ash right now. Oak it is not. With the oak that I had last year, it wasn't uncommon to have coals to relight with after 12 hours. With this ash, there's nothing left after 6-8 hours.

On the flip side though.... it's easier to control the heat output and keep the house a little cooler with the ash.

-SF

 

[Backwoods Savage]

That does not surprise me. Many times when my wife puts wood in the stove, later I have to go do some adjusting. It sort of ticks her off. She will monkey around with it several times and get no results. I go an make on little adjustment and it takes right off.

Most of the time when this happens I will find some air space under a log or logs. Get the wood down onto the bottom and it takes right off.