I am running out of seasoned wood. Have mercy on me, I moved into this home in late december with no wood and bought a cord of dry fir and have been scrounging for more but the dry wood is almost gone. In the last month I have put up over 3 cords of green cedar, alder, and fir for next season but this year's heating season is still going strong.
I bought 5 logs from two brands. The logs were purchased from a pallet at a hardware store. The pallets were unmarked except for price and SKU but I got some guy to admit that the logs were lignetics at 79 cents each and homefire "12-hour logs" at 99 cents each. Great, I'll take 5 of each for testing. So now I have 10 logs in my truck with no idea how to use them except to burn them.
I got home to a 300 degree stove with maybe enough coals to fill a lunchbox. I raked the coals up near the door and then set two lignetics logs north-south parallel to each other. My Lopi has a primary air inlet front and center below the glass and airwash. The logs lit up and started burning nicely but then the problems started. These buggers expand like crazy and were pushed up against the glass until they buckled and fell down. I actually opened the door and knocked a section ogf log off of the door jamb and into the fire. The gasket surface is clean and the seal is good. Phew, that crisis is over. Now the fire is going good, up to 450, I damper back to almost zero and the secondaries are extremely active. Whoa, climbing towards 500, shut draft to zero. Secondaries rolling like crazy. Temps continue to climb alarmingly fast. Blower now on full blast, starting to worry about combustibles, checking for redness, climbing to 550, then approaching 600. I stuff my welding gloves in the P&S air intakes but it only slows the fire a bit. I am putting away bottle caps and making the house presentable for the fire department when the temp rise stalls at about 615. Then the secondaries mellow out and the blob of snake coils just sits there glowing. Temps fall slowly to 300 after a total burn time of about 3 hours. Not cool. Thank goodness I didn't use three. Time for a beer. My impressions are that the lignetics burns too fast and too hot.
Now refreshed, I grab one (1) 1!, homefire pressed log. Supposedly 12 hours of burntime. This log has a single flat side and is darker in color. Feels like the weight is similar to the lignetic log. I set it down on the last of the glowing remains of the lignetics log. It starts pretty easily and flames actively. No secondary action and no snakelike expansion but much more flaming. Temps rise to 350 and I damper to zero after about 30 minutes and go to bed confident that the overfire isn't going to happen here.
I wake up 9 hours later to a 150 degree stove and a grey homefire log about half sized glowing there in the firebox. Not enough coal to heat the stove to a productive level but the bugger is still burning. I push it aside and start a woodfire and the box is to a predictable and controllable 600 within a half hour. I think I could have used two of these logs with great success.
Since intalling my SS liner I have become confident in my ability to prevent overfire while burning cordwood by shutting the damper to zero. I was unable to slow the heat with the damper while burning the lignetics log and that is spooky.
I will continue to burn these logs but honestly I am leaning more towards the long and low burn of the homefire log. More testing tonight. I was initially trying to find the NI logs but the Del's feed stores were out and didn't know when they would get more.
Did I burn these properly? Is my experience typical? please advise.
I bought 5 logs from two brands. The logs were purchased from a pallet at a hardware store. The pallets were unmarked except for price and SKU but I got some guy to admit that the logs were lignetics at 79 cents each and homefire "12-hour logs" at 99 cents each. Great, I'll take 5 of each for testing. So now I have 10 logs in my truck with no idea how to use them except to burn them.
I got home to a 300 degree stove with maybe enough coals to fill a lunchbox. I raked the coals up near the door and then set two lignetics logs north-south parallel to each other. My Lopi has a primary air inlet front and center below the glass and airwash. The logs lit up and started burning nicely but then the problems started. These buggers expand like crazy and were pushed up against the glass until they buckled and fell down. I actually opened the door and knocked a section ogf log off of the door jamb and into the fire. The gasket surface is clean and the seal is good. Phew, that crisis is over. Now the fire is going good, up to 450, I damper back to almost zero and the secondaries are extremely active. Whoa, climbing towards 500, shut draft to zero. Secondaries rolling like crazy. Temps continue to climb alarmingly fast. Blower now on full blast, starting to worry about combustibles, checking for redness, climbing to 550, then approaching 600. I stuff my welding gloves in the P&S air intakes but it only slows the fire a bit. I am putting away bottle caps and making the house presentable for the fire department when the temp rise stalls at about 615. Then the secondaries mellow out and the blob of snake coils just sits there glowing. Temps fall slowly to 300 after a total burn time of about 3 hours. Not cool. Thank goodness I didn't use three. Time for a beer. My impressions are that the lignetics burns too fast and too hot.
Now refreshed, I grab one (1) 1!, homefire pressed log. Supposedly 12 hours of burntime. This log has a single flat side and is darker in color. Feels like the weight is similar to the lignetic log. I set it down on the last of the glowing remains of the lignetics log. It starts pretty easily and flames actively. No secondary action and no snakelike expansion but much more flaming. Temps rise to 350 and I damper to zero after about 30 minutes and go to bed confident that the overfire isn't going to happen here.
I wake up 9 hours later to a 150 degree stove and a grey homefire log about half sized glowing there in the firebox. Not enough coal to heat the stove to a productive level but the bugger is still burning. I push it aside and start a woodfire and the box is to a predictable and controllable 600 within a half hour. I think I could have used two of these logs with great success.
Since intalling my SS liner I have become confident in my ability to prevent overfire while burning cordwood by shutting the damper to zero. I was unable to slow the heat with the damper while burning the lignetics log and that is spooky.
I will continue to burn these logs but honestly I am leaning more towards the long and low burn of the homefire log. More testing tonight. I was initially trying to find the NI logs but the Del's feed stores were out and didn't know when they would get more.
Did I burn these properly? Is my experience typical? please advise.
