New wood stoves: square fireboxes

[cahaak]

I have an original Myriad. I love the fact that I can get 20" wood in N S no problem. The bypass is stupid, I have never used it. I've modified the firebox with additional fire bricks and then ceramic wool insulation so that there is now no exposed metal other than the back air tube. It burns wonderfully, starts and runs like a dream. Helps that my wood is very dry and I have 23' of straight class A for the chimney.

 

[BillBurns]

I load mine north to south, then criss cross it after it gets going, or I build a Boy Scout teepee fire.

 

[stoveliker]

Most of the time I load N/S, but for a test, I loaded the T6 east/west for the last 2 fires. I haven't done this for awhile and was curious. Holy Moly what a difference! The fire is definitely slower to take off. Normally, with a N/S loading I have the air all the way closed in about 15-20 minutes. With E/W loading this morning it took an hour and even now, I don't have the air fully closed. The secondary burn has extended with more wispy bursts of blue flame instead of the fairly continuous secondary burn with a N/S loading. It's like running a different stove.

Last night I did a hot coal reload before going to bed. Normally I have this timed down to being able to go to bed in about 30 minutes. I had to stay up an hour before the fire settled down and again, the air control was not fully closed. This information could be helpful for people that have a tall flue system and want more control. The caveat is that the stove will warm up slower. I am going to continue experimenting. This is the advantage of a squarish firebox, with more options for loading and burning.

I have played with e/w loading a bit too recently, because I have some wood (oak splits and cedar rounds) that was cut for my old stove. Some 22" long, but a fair bit at 20" long. The latter fits e/w but not n/s.

I can second that e/w loading significantly slows down the fire taking off. Even in a stove with a thermostat that regulates air based on heat output. This makes sense as the Tstat was wide open anyway at reloading (so no regulation going on, at least initially until the load has fully taken off).

This was all 14 pct, so drier than most of my wood last year that took of faster n/s than this.

I don't know if my stove (regulating air based on some proxy for heat output) allows for a longer burn, I suspect not. It is hard to compare burn times because of a different loading density due to e/w.

But the initial phase certainly is slower by at least a factor of two for me. Possibly times when the Tstat opens up are also slower before more heat is produced.