Week 1 of 20

[ISeeDeadBTUs]

and so far, so good

Got the GW back together and fired up Sunday, 10/31. Had some big dry Oak in the boiler room, and about 8 cord in the wood pile. Still trying to get into the routine of pulling some wood from the outside stacks while its light out, instead of burning the good stuff inside. My goal is to gather enough wood on one day a week to burn for the whole week. Since some of it is a bit wet, I take a dry round from my wood pile, split it in half, lay the splits down on the coals, then place the freshly gathered stuff on top. Fires are lasting 10-11 hours right now. I think 5-6 hour fires tend to be more efficient with the GW (without storage) but the longer fires allow more time to blow the water out.

So far the minor remanufacture on the GW is doing well. I am amazed at how hot the skin is where the insulation is up against the refractory, versus the rear 1/3 of the side skin.

It's not staying consistently cold here ('sposed to be in the 50's and sunny this week :roll: ). Until the ground freezes there shall be no skidding logs down the road.

Though I like winter - the snow, not the below zero temps - by my calculations one week is down and only 19 to go.

 

[Deere10]

Had mine up and burning for 3 weeks now.Wood/Boiler shed stuffed full w about 10 cord.Getting about 8 - 10 hr burns. Not really loading it up as I did last year,so far so good.I have taken about a shovels worth of ash out.Each of the past 3 Saturdays I go out to the woodpile and bring in what I have used up for that week.Just a couple wheelbarrow loads and I am good.Just a good feeling knowing the shed is FULL.I have 3 more small dead trees to pull out into the field to block up. That will do it for next Sat. Then moving onto pulling the heads off my Duramax (no fun in that job at all).

 

[Trzebs13]

I've had mine going now for about the same 3 weeks or so. Have been burning 2+ year old maple. Boy I'm sure glade that 90 % of what I have is oak. Seems like I've gone threw too much for how warm its been here. The improvments are going well so far no dripping and absoultly none of the stink that usually went with it. Finishing off my shop so will be hooking that infloor up next week. Just bracing myself for how much more wood that is going to take heating that. It times like this that you hope you didn't make a huge mistake with underground lines. Wish I would have known what I know now about installing those.

Good to hear you got your GW back online.

 

[ISeeDeadBTUs]

Funny, well, not really, how it seems these RMND units seem to use nearly the same amount of fuel whether it's bitterly cold or somewhat balmy. Maybe it's my imagination. Seems to me that would imply lost efficiency which should be able to be captured with water storage. Yet I've heard NoFo mention that storage does not make a huge dent in efficiency, so who knows?