What does it take to instrument a stove burn?

[Poindexter]

Side discussion in another thread about moisture content, how low is low enough, how low is too low, that sort of thing.

I have a new wood stove this year. On paper, in the lab, it is way more efficient than my old stove. I have been running it without needing a match to restart it for nine days in a row now. I "can tell" it is more efficient than my old stove, but I don't know "how much".

My new stove has one of those new fangled catalytic combustors in it. I got some wood at 16%MC, some at 13% MC and a little bit at 12% MC.

The old stove is gone, I am not worried about it. But I am curious to find out how much difference dryer/ wetter wood makes in my new fangled doohickey.

I figure I can eliminate one variable by doing both burns in my one house. Between Halloween and Thanksgiving I should be able to count on ambient temps between about zero dF and about -20dF for the whole month.

Should I do equal amounts of wood by weight (easy) or by volume (harder to calculate)?

I have a day job and I have to sleep at night, so hourly readings aren't happening indoors. I think I can find hourly outdoor temperature readings from the NWS station about a mile from my house online.

Target indoor temps are 80-85dF. Pretty warm I know, but it keeps my wife in shorts with her hair up not talking about moving to California. A man's got to do what a man's got to do to stay in the happy hunting land.

I figure I can average the outdoor temps during each burn separately so the final graph will have two baselines, one at say -10dF and the other at maybe -9.5dF. The the height of each curve can be degrees above baseline temp, with time running left to right on the x axis.

I think that will do, am I missing anything?

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Just burn it. By mid winter you should have figured out the quirks of the new stove and if you have gone through less wood than you should be able to estimate how much more efficient it is. I'm going to assume the wood is what you were burning before and is stacked the same.

 

[mellow]

My new stove has one of those new fangled catalytic combustors in it.

Maybe new to you, but cats have been around for a long time in woodstoves, early 80's was the first time I saw them pop up.

If you want to get technical and nerd out on data check out omega.com, plenty of sensors you can hook up to your stove to record and measure every variable.

 

[HotCoals]

I had a non cat BKK before this BKK cat.
I can tell you I save 1/3 the wood and the house stays at a way more even temp then before.
Wish I would have done it sooner but the only reason I did was because of the feds kicking back 33% up to 1k. in 2010.that and the great reviews on here led me to my present stove.