I don't remember it being this hard.

[Bad Wolf]

I installed a TARM Excel 2000 last year with 1200 gallons of storage. Used the standard TARM piping setup and it worked pretty good all year.

So this year, I fire everthing up and seem to have a hard time keeping a good secondary burn going. Now I know that my wood is not as dry as it could be, I wasn't able to buy and stack it as early as I did last year. I can get a good fire going and good seconardy combustion but when I come back half an hour later the wood seems to have bridged and there is a void over the slot to the lower chamber. The fires is still burning but just not that hot.
I don't remember it doing that, that often last year.

I've even gotten a good fire going, loaded it up and come back 4 hours later to find all the wood burned and the storage tank at the same temp I left it at.

If I open the door every 15 minutes and poke it to make the wood fall down I can keep it roaring and eventually run the storage up to 172.

With the cold snap coming up I'd like to get back to where I was last year where I could fill it and have it run full tilt until the wood was gone. (which is the whole idea of having stoarge)

Ideas?

 

[sdrobertson]

The only thing that I have found to really help with wetter wood is to split it down. Its not fun to do this but it'll work better but you still have to clean the boiler allot more than normal. 2" splits is what I go down to.

 

[NHFarmer]

Greg earlier this season I was buning some scrounge wood that was not as dry as usual and I had the same problem. I found that mixing with some really dry wood helped. Also if you could find some dry pine and mix it in that might help. I cut standing dead pine for mixing if needed

 

[Tony H]

I had the same thing happen to me last year and I found that I had some splits that were a little to close to the max length and as the wood shifted that would hang up and start a bridge. I also was burning a bit wetter wood and found that adjusting the secondary air settings helped considerably in getting the and keeping the gasification going because like you I was way tired of babysitting the boiler.