So, the claim of heating with one tenth the wood has been proven repeatedly. Further, I heated my montana home with 0.60 cords of wood last winter (a particularly cold winter) while maintaining an average of 69 degrees inside. And finally, while these designs have been dramatically optimized over the last 20 years, many of the heaters from 20 years ago are still running well.
If a person thinks they are some sort of super builder and they wish to have tests and are unwilling to use google - then it seems pretty straightforward that such a person can quickly perform their own tests.
I had to use that google to see what Cunninghams Law was. I don't have time right now to re-read all 8 pages of this thread - maybe (hopefully) later - but seems to me most of the wrong (or evasive) answering has been given by yourself.
And I don't think anything has been proven especially on the 1/10 claim.
Some of what has been said throughout is just simply not believable. As several have pointed out - there is only so much heat potential in a given amount of fuel. And 0.6 cords of wood over the course of a winter averages out to the equivalence of 14kwh/day - even assuming maximum 100% efficiency (benefit of doubt) for the wood burner. (Someone can run numbers and correct if I got that wrong - see page 3). In other words having a 1000w electric resistance heater running 14 hours a day, or a 600 watt heater for 24 hours. So, yes, it appears quite unbelievable that you can heat an entire 3 bedroom house to 69° for an entire cold Montana winter with a 600 watt electric heater. (The same as 6x100w lightbulbs. Hey, that's one for every room with maybe an extra for the biggest one
). Who can find fault for someone being skeptical of that? Maybe, if you spent your entire day & night in very close proximity to that heater, you yourself might not get 'cold' - but there are going to be areas of the house that are going to be intolerably cold. Sorry, but the math just does not add up - and directly dealing with that math seems to be something that has not been done yet - that I have seen - by the RMH crowd. If someone experienced a 10x decrease in their wood consumption, it has come at a price of reduced warmth throughout the entire house, and a necessity of spending a great deal of time in close proximity to the heater. Plus they were doing something very wrong when they were using their previous appliance - if a house could be kept warm with 0.6 cord of wood with a 100% eff. (benefit of doubt) RMH, there is no way it would take 6 cords of wood to heat it to the same level of comfort with any modern wood stove. Even if it used 2 cords, that would mean the stove was only operating at 30% efficiency. People here have been through their own tests, every winter, winter after winter, with their own wood stoves. They are not seeing what you are claiming from wood stoves, they know what they can heat and with how much (little) wood and to what level of comfort. Hence the great skepticism (perhaps putting it mildly) to the claims - quite justified, I believe.
If language was changed to something like 'I was just as warm on 10x less wood', it would be a little more believable, especially with all the pics of people sitting and laying on their heaters. But claiming to heat an entire 3 bedroom house on 10x less wood to the same level of comfort - which is what I think I am reading - is just an 'out there' claim which I don't think is helping your cause much. As I said before, I have no doubt a RMH is a very efficient heater. And I (and many others) have seen (and experienced for going on 6 years now) first hand what burning wood at maximum burn efficiency while recovering and storing the generated heat for later use after the fire goes out can do for getting the most out of the heat potential in the wood pile. And it isn't a 10x decrease in wood consumption. But it might be if I used a big radiator in the middle of a room and spent most of my time next to it while letting most of the rest of the house go cold.
