Proximity of wood to secondary burn tubes

[Kevin Dolan]

Does having wood close to the secondaries make them work better or is it the temp of the wood burning in the box that makes the secondaries work?
I find when the wood is stuffed up close to the tubes the secondaries work better and longer.
Thoughts?

 

[dafattkidd]

I find that giving an inch or so of air between the tubes and the fuel allows for good secondaries. Honestly though, once in a while I pack the firebox to the gills and that usually works fine, too. But leaving a couple inches of air space allows me to better gauge what's going on in there.

 

[jeff_t]

I got no tubes, but I stuff the Spectrum up to the baffle. By the time the stove is back up and rockin', the load has already settled and made some space.

 

[blueguy]

In my 1450, I stuffed it to the gills and I found I had secondaries starting at lower stove top temps. To me, it seemed that the temps were able to increase quicker in the smaller space. Now whether they work "better" or not stuffed like that is open to debate

 

[BrotherBart]

What is getting called "secondaries" with the stove stacked to the baffle is simply the charring burn of the stuff up top. Then the torching of the stuff up there. With no combustion air space above the wood valuable heat is just getting blown up the flue. I used to play that game and got tired of the runaway stove adventures and went to loading to the top of the brick retainers. Got a little surprise. More even heat through the burn cycle and just as long a burn time. And less drama.

To each their own.

 

[blueguy]

There was a discernable difference in my 1450 between charring of the wood directly in front of the holes in the secondary tube when loaded that way and the rolling flames that came from the secondary tube across the top of the splits, so it was most definitely secondaries. I also found that the stove took longer to get to the higher temps that I would consider the start of a runaway in most cases, but as I've said earlier, my 1450 had one way of running - hot. The only variance was how long it took to get there

Edit: 99% of the time, I would load it up to the bottom of the secondary tube leaving an inch or so space to the baffle.