Bridging in EKO-60 -- Causes, Cures, Prevention -- any ideas?

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cguida

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Jan 11, 2008
122
Eastern Maine
Title of this thread pretty much says it all.

No doubt about it: bridging is a real pain in the neck. Make a nice fire before bed, and wake up to a cold boiler and a pile of carbonized sticks. Usually one poke with the poker sets it gassing again, but who wants to do that every hour or so?

Meantime, Eric Johnson says that if it will fit through the EKO-60 door, it will burn -- a situation of which I am deeply envious. Cleary, he has figured out the Bridging Problem.

So, is there a trick to this, or what? What do you think?

Thanks in advance.

Smee
 
Small unsplit rounds and small spitts work best. larger splits tend to hang up. You can put in a large one on top, split or unsplit. Also short or real long work better. If the wood is criscrossed in the middle it tends to hang them up as the wood tends to burn on the ends faster and don't let the middle fall.
leaddog
 
Being too cheap to burn real firewood this time of year, I am using thin splits of standing dead Cedar and such. My wife calls this "Balsa Wood," -- or as the old timers say, "Nothing left in it but the Smoke."

Part of my problem may have been excess air -- strong chimney draft, fans full blast. Somewhere I saw a post that refered to burned out pockets in the wood. This may be part of my problem. I cut the fan power back to 70% and closed the fan shutters half way and this seemed to help.

My worst idea was putting two big pieces of hardwood on either side of the nozzles thinking they would turn into good coals and everything would work great.... Took me 2 hours and lots of smoke to get the thing to go right. We experience a dramatic fall off in WAF.... fortunatley short term.

The idea of short wood is interesting, at least for starters.... You mean like, say 12 inches? We'll experiment.
 
I played with this quite a bit last winter. Now remember my CRS syndrome is becoming more intense with each passing day but I recall closing the fan shutter below 50% and reducing the fan speed to about 60%. This gave me a lazyier flame but more blue in color and seemed to reduce the bridging somewhat. My fan and probably yours is a 50 cycle unit and is turning at a faster rate so it should be cut back from the get-go.
EDIT: Small splits!
 
CRS Syndrome? Sorry -- I don't know what that means. Is that Polish?

Good point about the 50-60 cycles issue. Makes sense. I'll move the Fan power down another notch and see what happens.
 
Smee said:
CRS Syndrome? Sorry -- I don't know what that means. Is that Polish?

Good point about the 50-60 cycles issue. Makes sense. I'll move the Fan power down another notch and see what happens.
Click to expand...


Cant remember sh!t


I am only running 1 fan at 100% and I also never cleen out my fire box and it keeps the wood twards the center better. also like they said split your rounds at least 1 time and try that. If you have too strong of a draft look at my video on the barometric damper.

Rob
 
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