When I use to burn in my stove I loaded straight in. I think the air moved through the stove better. Now with my boiler it is straight in all the time. Not suppose to load the other way. Lose gasification easier and lose fire altegether easier.
Open side door and straight in. When cramming it full at night, they end up going any way they'll fit.
I like to load mine crooked. Confuzzles the heck outta the stove. Seriously though, n/s so far. BrowningBAR has suggested I do some e/w loads to improve burn times.
From the top! Yes, I'm one of "those" top loaders. We aren't always proud of it but my family has been top loading for generations. The early Vermont Castings years are a dark time in our history, we don't really like talking about it.
About 4-6 hours to a load of oak Will still have some coals in the morning to throw some pine kindling on to make some flames and heat up to get another load of oak going, about ten hours max . Stove is fairly cold though at ten hours. It is only a 2.2 cu ft fire box and that's with no ashes and it is not very tall.
Our Lopi Liberty will take a 24 inch split loading it east/west, it will give us a longer burn time but we load north/south so we don't worry about a split rolling off onto the glass, you also will get less burns on yourself loading north/south.
EW on the small Efel upstairs, and I'm hoping NS on the BK on order for the basement. that is how they had the display model loaded.
The WS IS loads best E/W for me. All my splits were cut 18"-20" for the Oslo so I can't really fit them N/S. I'd like to try a few loads N/S sometime soon, just to compare the burn vs. E/W
