Everburn cooler with wetter wood?

[heffergm]

So I started off my first season with my VC Encore NC with 3 year old oak that was stone dry. Everything worked nicely albeit with an expected learning curve (like waiting out the griddle temp drop after first closing the damper).

My oak just kinda burned. Nothing terribly surprising about that, and all the dry white pine I had did the same. I've now dipped into my pile that's really for next year which is measuring in the 25% range.

What I'm noticing is that when I close the damper and shut off the air, I'm getting monstrous secondaries that I never saw before. It's pretty cool, but I wouldn't have really expected it.... Once the additional moisture is burnt off, I'd expect it to behave the same, but it's clearly not.

Anyone else notice this?

 

[summit]

you would think it would be the other way round... however, you can have wood thats TOO dry (SOME moisture aids in extended burns, longer flame cycles, etc) and I think dry pine and 3 yr old Oak would qualify to be very dry, thus burning thru the pyrolosis (gasification) stage B4 you feel it req. engage the 2ndy burn. It'd be interesting to see if you had some of that pine and oak and cut the damper down 2x as early as normal... I bet it would be a similar result.

 

[heffergm]

Funny you say that. I did find that my dry wood was disappearing almost before I got a decent coal bed if I waited until surface temps hit 500 which is when I usually shut it down. The wetter wood is lasting longer and coaling better b

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Funny you say that. I've never had wood that is too dry.