Englander 30 - New Shoulder Burn Technique

[leeave96]

Being the heating BOMB, I don't always need the 30 blasting us out of the house - especially in shoulder season or just when daytime temps are somewhat milder than the overnight ones.

I don't want to build small, hot fires or load-up and damper down for a smokey burn for less overall heat.

So here's what I'm trying:

In as much as the firebox on the 30 is huge, it is possible to have two different fires going at the same time...

Rather than reload when the whole stove is down to 250-300, what I'm trying is to scrap coals/50%-ish burn't spits to oneside of the stove, scraping some hot coals to the front/other side and loading a large single split on that side.

What this seems to do is give me a near charcoal burn on oneside and fresh wood burn on the other. Through the day, I just keep adding a split to one side or the other, alternating as the burn completes.

This seems to give me a smoke free burn, don't have to change the damper settings, and since the stove ain't full, I'm not getting blasted with heat when I don't need it.

This is only a test...

Anyone else burn their stove like this?

Bill

 

[BrotherBart]

Dueling coal beds. What a concept. Not really sure what that gives you over just moving some coals over to one side, putting the big split on the rest in the middle N/S and burning the sucker. Better yet, spread'em and put that split E/W on top of them. Beautiful fire and no overheating.

 

[Huntindog1]

I cant really load North South as my stove will only take a 14.5" split North South but it will take a 20" split East West. Would be nice to have a NC-30.
But yes I do the 2 zone burning East West by raking coals forward to open up the back of the stove all the way to the bottom. That way all the hot coals are only up front by the door.
The back of the stove is loaded all the way to the bottom with no coals underneath that back of stove wood and loading all the way to bottom I can get 3 3-4" sized splits stacked on top of each other.
Then the second row is usually on some coals as I cant get the coals raked any further forward than that. But I can usually get 2 splits loaded on top of each other on the second row.
Then with the 2.2 cubic foot box I have room for a 3rd row right in front of the door on hot coals. I usually try and stack kindling on the 3rd row to burn hot and fast to get heat up quick . Or sometimes I stack kindling with a small split on top of the kindling on that front row.

This way the stove is mainly just burning up in the front part and the wood in the back isn't burning till the stove has time to burn back to it which takes some time. Rather than having all the wood on hot coals burning all at once.

If you cant get a space opened up in the back because you have too many coals then you just have to burn down the coals with some small stuff that will burn hot and fast.