5-1/2 hours of daylight does that to you We get a little "Birchy" this time of the year I'll be glad when the earth starts rocking back to the south
I burn almost exclusively western larch (19 mbtus) and a small amount of birch (19.5 mbtus) for my overnight burns. My day time woods are doug fir, lodgepole pine and a bit of spruce and then around 10:30 pm - midnight I load my firebox to the rafters with larch/birch. Ill start off with a few bigger splits and then go down in size from there and then will split a few pieces to fill in the holes. I will wait up until I can shut the air down completely and when the stove top is hovering around 550-675f I hit the sheets. Even with increased draft at low temps Im still having to rake the coals forward at 9 am and wait it out to do a reload which is not often my "good" stuff unless Im gone all day. Reloads in the morning are, idk around 250-325 f Im thinking, so its not much good for heating a house during big boy outside temps first thing in the morning. Ive become fond of the term Im a 23/7 burner.
I have oak, so I burn oak. I'll have a nice bed of coals, and I'll put a thick piece of oak in the back of the woodstove. I'll then put a second piece on top. Then, close down the damper. I seem to have a better chance of having a nice bed of coals 7-8hrs later by using two medium sized pieces stacked, than a single larger piece. Sent from my XT1030 using Tapatalk
Good topic. I usually put in 3 large rounds or splits of Maple or Hickory, sometimes cherry or ash. 20-22 inches long, roughly 10-12 inches in diameter. Fill it up at 11 and have a huge bed of coals when I go down around 5-7 AM. I have the forced air furnace, so depending on where I set the thermostat I can maintain a fire for a good 6-8 hours. I try to stack the pieces in the stove with as little space or void between them as possible also. When I am half asleep it is a mental challenge to lug these chunks around, but well worth it when i get up and the house is 70-75 degrees....
I like to get a good bed of coals going and then around 9:00 put my biggest split or round 22" long in the back. Usually oak. Then another 2 or 3 large splits of oak, beech or hickory go in next. I add a little air to get the whole thing going and then shut it down for the night and engage the afterburner. I don't add any at night, just set it and forget it.
I can relate.. I have to bite my tongue sometimes. I want to tell someone all about the wood I just loaded up into the stove. I can often tell the species, how long it was seasoned, where it came from in the woods, when I cut it, the general moisture readings of the stacks, etc... I keep my mouth shut mostly so the wife doesn't fully realize the extent of my obsession and think I'm totally ....
For overnight fires we like to burn the coals down first so there are not too many as it then leaves more room for the fresh wood. The coals that are left we rake to the front of the stove (where the air comes in). In the rear of the firebox we like to place a round or a large split then fill it with splits or small rounds. It will depend upon how cold it is forecast to get to determine what wood we put in and the size of the wood. Like last night and tonight there will be mostly or all oak. If the temperature stays above 10 degrees then we don't put oak in. So far this year we've burned mostly soft maple and some semi-punky ash. Most of that is used up and we'll probably use the rest within the next week or two burning it during the daytime and then we'll burn mostly ash and a few elm and, of course, oak during the cold nights. We don't have a lot of oak here so we tend to save it for those cold nights. Last night I stocked the stove around 7:30. Got up at 7:00 this morning to a huge coal bed and the stove still 375 degrees. Room temperature was 78 degrees. I put in 3 rounds of soft maple before we left for the big city. I put in some punky wood a little bit ago. Stovetop temperature right now is 600 degrees. Room temperature at 82. Sweet! Nice and warm. The only shirt I have on is a t-shirt and I feel great!
That is some funny stuff. My wife now asks me when we are loading it into the tractor "Which tree did this come from honey", and I say I dont know...I would say 80% of the time I can remember since many of the trees are quite large. Once she realized how much I was on this site she knew I had a problem......
I usually go to bed late, around 12. So I rake a "valley" in the coals, add three or four 5" splits of oak/locust mix or just straight oak, get it flaming, shut the stove down low and it's good til 630am. ...
