I lit the stove this morning at about 7am we left for the day didnt get back until about 8pm the stove was still at around 150* on top the house was warm and there was enough little glowing coals in the stove to do a reload and get things rolling again Does that count as a 13 hour burn or what?
Sure if the house was warm and you could restart the stove with no matches sounds good to me. Congrats
I dont think I had much time left there wasnt much in there to go on and it warmed up this afternoon so Im sure that helped out but I restarted it without a match. Im sure in the dead of winter I might not be able to pull this off but if I can keep it up through the rest of shoulder season that would be great.
Thanks Dennis I guess the biggest reason I started this thread was because I am always reading about people getting 10+hour burn times (with of course the exception of Blaze King owners I understand that with the powers of aliens they can get at least 72+ hour burns off of some kindling) and Im curious as to what exactly that means especially since last year I was struggling with getting anything to burn.
Matt you are doing just fine. The difference may be in the wood itself or how dry it is. Most likely that its dryer than previous years.
Like Pete states, the wood makes a lot of the difference. But then, we could say we get 12 hour burns and more even off of 3 splits. That is because this time of year we typically put in 3 in the morning and 3 at night. That keeps the house plenty warm and sometimes too warm. But I would not consider doing that in mid-January.
The wood definitely makes a huge difference. I have to ask though how big are your splits? I cant get away with just 3 but mine are pretty small I split everything around 2-4" in order for it to season faster the stuff Im splitting now is bigger as I have more time for it to season. Im guessing that yall are going with bigger splits.
Sounds like a good burn to me! I vary my splits from 3" up to a few 8" pieces. I just started my stash last season so anything bigger than 5-6" I keep for more than a year out.
If the wood is well seasoned, the big splits start as easy as the small ones. Sounds like your stove is doing what it's supposed to do.
If you look on the left hand side. Near the bottom you will see a piece that is nearly square. I just measured that and it is 3 1/2" x 4". We don't have many that are any larger than that.
If were counting a warm house and coals still there to just restart a fire and 150-200f stove.....if that's the case I can get 24-36 hours on a full load!
It never fails to amaze me how long coal embers can last.. a great source of house fires here in the Winchentucky area of Massachusetts when people clean their stoves and do not properly dispose/store the still hot ash and coals. Add some air, and some new fuel and open the draft, and wait 5 minutes and you you get flames more often than not even when you can easily put your hand on the top of the stove. Those chunks just need some air.
