What Is In Your Stove Right Now?

[stoveliker]

The oak took 16 hrs to get down to reload stage, with the last 4 hrs on high.
Now put in 4 pieces: 5" round of birch, 3" split of poplar, 3" split of cedar, and a 2" branch of oak. It'll be 40 F today (minisplit territory), so I'll out this on low to keep the stove warm for a proper reload at night.

 

[stoveliker]

Those 4 soft pieces lasted 5 hrs. Put a bunch of odd shaped small pieces in for tonight; low of 30, tomorrow morning already 35, and 49 max. So the minisplit will be there to keep us warm; will let the stove go out on this, hopefully around 2-3 am.

 

[thewoodlands]

We had 21 this morning, we're still burning Cherry.

 

[Grizzerbear]

It's 42 out now with a low of 28 tonight. I have another load of post oak and black jack for the heat tonight.

 

[MoDoug]

Anyway, loaded with mostly cedar, and some oak and maple. Will see how long it will last today.

There's been comments here about how hot and fast cedar burns. How does the mostly loaded with cedar go, wondering how your experience is?

 

[johneh]

There's been comments here about how hot and fast cedar burns. How does the mostly loaded with cedar go, wondering how your experience is?

It would not happen around here Cedar burns too hot and too fast
for a stove fire on its own. Great to start a fire but I can see some poor
guy with creosote in his chimney learning all about chimney fires.

 

[thewoodlands]

We had 31 this morning with snow, the rain and the wind (40 mph gust) will move in after ten. The fire while having coffee was more Cherry.

We still have two face cord of Beech, Sugar Maple and some Red Maple leftover from last year, just waiting for some colder weather to move in before using it.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

There's been comments here about how hot and fast cedar burns. How does the mostly loaded with cedar go, wondering how your experience is?

Remember that @stoveliker has a BK now which uses a thermostat to shut down the air if stove temperatures rise too high. His experience of cedar may not match the experience of a tube stove.

That being said, we burn lots of "Texas/Mountain Cedar" (really Ashe Juniper but a cousin of Eastern red cedar) in our non catalytic stove, and we've had no problems either with overfiring or with having a good overnight burn. We burn lots of small branch and trunk wood that is unsplit as well as some really large split pieces. We have tons and tons of cedar on our property that needs to come down (and tons and tons of stems that are down that we need to process still), so I'm thankful that it is a perfectly fine firewood for us. If you have a stash of cedar, I'd try smaller loads when you can supervise to see how your stove handles it.

 

[stoveliker]

There's been comments here about how hot and fast cedar burns. How does the mostly loaded with cedar go, wondering how your experience is?

These were 7 or so 3" splits of 10" long red cedar. I stacked those in the back of the firebox. In front I added some blocky cut offs of oak, maple and sassafras.
The stove did not run hot; the BK thermostat took care of that as @DuaeGuttae said. In fact the air coming in over the window (door) made the box burn up front to back, so the oak and maple were gone first and the (tightly stacked) cedar went last.

I did think about a tightly stacked load of easily ignitable soft wood during the (less controlled?) charring phase but it went amazingly well. All in all it behaved not any different than the oak load (other than the total burn time - but that's to be expected given the difference in BTU put in the box).

 

[MoDoug]

These were 7 or so 3" splits of 10" long red cedar. I stacked those in the back of the firebox. In front I added some blocky cut offs of oak, maple and sassafras.
The stove did not run hot; the BK thermostat took care of that as @DuaeGuttae said. In fact the air coming in over the window (door) made the box burn up front to back, so the oak and maple were gone first and the (tightly stacked) cedar went last.

I'm new to the world of burning wood, just coming up on my one year mark, so it's a sincere question on my part. Obviously the stove makes a lot of difference. I have a basic cheap stove, and it would be a completely different story for me. I have cedar available that I'm going to cut some for kindling mostly and maybe a little aroma here and there. It will be good to have some on hand.

 

[stoveliker]

I'm new to the world of burning wood, just coming up on my one year mark, so it's a sincere question on my part. Obviously the stove makes a lot of difference. I have a basic cheap stove, and it would be a completely different story for me. I have cedar available that I'm going to cut some for kindling mostly and maybe a little aroma here and there. It will be good to have some on hand.

Sure, not a problem. I'm here to learn too!
If you have a lot of cedar (as in too much for kindling), you could mix one or two pieces into each load.

I don't understand the aroma remark though; if you have enough draft and the stove is properly sealed, you should not smell anything as everything goes up the chimney?

 

[Caw]

Brought in a few loads of red oak today. Going to be a good few days of burning!

 

[heavy hammer]

I have been burning still just a mix of ash and walnut. Christmas eve, Christmas and yesterday we had some pretty cold temps in the teens so I ended up burning some four year old locust. The basement stove was getting over 12 hour burn times and the heat. It is definitely a difference when the stoves have that to burn.

 

[MMH]

Got home from work this morning and moved some wood to the quick grab on the porch, refilled inside as well. Stove was cold when I got home, House was 65F so cleaned out the ashes. Threw some pine in for the start up, lows in the negatives again for next 2-3 nights, brought some more mahogany and juniper in for tonight.

 

[olesmoky]

Red oak that was cut, split, and stacked in October 2019. It's a mix of what was standing dead, and some pretty live stuff. I check pieces randomly for moisture and it's almost all under 20%.

It's always Red/White oak before bed and before I leave for any more than a few hours.

 

[MoDoug]

I don't understand the aroma remark though; if you have enough draft and the stove is properly sealed, you should not smell anything as everything goes up the chimney?

Our stove doesn't have the best burn times, and it's not the largest of boxes, so I probably open it more than most, whenever I do we get a brief aroma of whatever is in there.

Tonight it's oak and elm, and a tad of walnut. A low of 24 tonight, tomorrow it looks like our first real bout of winter is coming, snow, rain, wintry mix.... It's been very mild for us so far.

 

[Tar12]

Still enjoying these White Oak and Black Locust loads....lots of steady even heat for hours on end.

 

[Grizzerbear]

Its 31 now and it's going to stay pretty steady there for the night. I have a load of black jack and post oak again for tonight. Expecting some rain/freezing rain tomorrow morning and hopefully snow but probably rain thursday into friday so I filled the porch stash up again to beat the nasty weather.

 

[MMH]

Well usually January is my coldest month, but I’m looking at a chilly few days! Attached a forecast til Wednesday, looks like I’ll be pulling in a lot more mahogany than I thought. Tonight is 4 pieces of mahogany, 2 pieces of juniper, 1 pine, and little pieces of pine filler. This juniper round tricked me apparently and is just a smidge to big for an E-W or N-S loading, no matter it’ll be my diagonal piece for tomorrow’s heat (it’s 8” diameter).

 

[stoveliker]

This juniper round tricked me apparently and is just a smidge to big for an E-W or N-S loading, no matter it’ll be my diagonal piece for tomorrow’s heat (it’s 8” diameter).
View attachment 270616

Why not cut off an inch or two to make it fit? I'm collecting a bunch of round disks that I plan to stack in the stove at some point.

 

[NickW]

Just fired up a full load of beech and sugar maple.

Full loads are way more controllable now that I'm not making a tunnel on hot restarts and they last longer too. Thanks Begreen!

That hot spot in the bottom center is the doghouse air trying to drill a hole through a big maple split.

 

[MMH]

Why not cut off an inch or two to make it fit? I'm collecting a bunch of round disks that I plan to stack in the stove at some point.

I suppose I could, but I didn’t notice it until I tried to reload tonight, so insteadI’ll just throw it in with tomorrow’s haphazard load

 

[Grizzerbear]

Its 32 with sleet right now with a high of 36 today. I loaded the buck with post and black jack oak.

 

[thewoodlands]

Sine they forecast a cold morning (we had 14.5) we ran the pellet stove overnight but switched over to the wood stove for the day. Our high today was just over 16 degrees with a breeze.

 

[MMH]

Currently -2 F out tonight is 2 pieces of mahogany, 5 pieces of juniper and a couple small pine splits.