Like many people I quickly develop a stove full of coals that prohibit me from reloading with a full load of wood. Or if I do reload the coal bed just keeps growing until I am forced to spend time burning them down. Generally (for me) burning down a coal bed only results in low stove stove temps for several hours and my overall room temps starts to drop as well.
This past week I tried something new and it has worked great. I am fortunate to have plenty of 3 or 4 year seasoned and split oak and hickory. It burns good but produces lots of coals (especially the hickory which I am mostly burning this season). What I have begun doing is repacking the stove with my softwood pine and poplar and burning that for a cycle. I'm getting the same stove temps out of the softwoods, almost as much burn time, but all the prior coals get eliminated as well as no real coaling issue at the conclusion of the softwood cycle. Plenty of coals left to kick off the next burn cycle.
I know some folks do a variant of this - they place a single split on top of the large coal pile and run a quick cycle to burn the split and coals down. That does work for me too, but I usually don't get the desired stove temps out of it. So alternating loads of hardwoods, then softwoods, has really helped manage my coaling and keep me going on regular stove cycles.
This past week I tried something new and it has worked great. I am fortunate to have plenty of 3 or 4 year seasoned and split oak and hickory. It burns good but produces lots of coals (especially the hickory which I am mostly burning this season). What I have begun doing is repacking the stove with my softwood pine and poplar and burning that for a cycle. I'm getting the same stove temps out of the softwoods, almost as much burn time, but all the prior coals get eliminated as well as no real coaling issue at the conclusion of the softwood cycle. Plenty of coals left to kick off the next burn cycle.
I know some folks do a variant of this - they place a single split on top of the large coal pile and run a quick cycle to burn the split and coals down. That does work for me too, but I usually don't get the desired stove temps out of it. So alternating loads of hardwoods, then softwoods, has really helped manage my coaling and keep me going on regular stove cycles.