Does the size of splits matter for reburn and CAT burn. Talking diameter wise. (1/4 split vs 1/8 split wise) I am still trying to get my head wrapped around CAT burn on my new AS. CAT burn and reburn has improved over the last week. What maybe different. Different row of wood. The other row was mainly 1 year old Ash. This row is 2 year old wood. Mainly Ash with a good bit of honey locus, beech and oak mixed in. This row does contain larger splits. I love to run the splitter so my splits tend to smaller. Would you think burning the larger splits helped me? Different mixture of wood? I have been throttling the incoming air down more. Could this be the improvement? Like I said, I am still trying to get my head wrapped around this CAT thing.
<<CA burn and reburn has improved >> improved = more heat ? longer burn ? I find bigger splits tend to burn longer due to the mass. They also take longer to season ( if you are testing the center , which really should be your target ) How big kinda is dependent on your firebox size . If you have a big firebox and can get several biggies in you'll likely have enough mass/surface area burning to have a high heat fire burning for a long period of time. If you have a 1 cubic foot stove a nine or ten inch split may go out and be siting there half burned and stone cold 8 hours later. 3-6 inch splits is usually recommended for a average size stove. When splitting, I try to split even the small ones in half. This isn't always possible, especially with crooked oak branch rounds. If I can get my fingers around the end to grab a split that's usually small enough for the 1 and 2 cubic foot stoves we have. For my hand that's like 6 or 7 inches. I may not be able to grab and pick up a green oak split that size, but if I can get my hand on it and could pick it up if it didn't weigh so much that's usually pretty good. I like to split rounds at least in four but many are too small. To have exposed inner surface area for seasoning. If the wood has less moisture content you tend to need less air . Your fire is making BTUs. If you have well seasoned wood most of those BTUs will end up as heat . If you use not so well seasoned wood you'll have to spend some of those valuable BTUs to boil off the moisture content instead. You tend to need more air to compensate the losses to boiling off moisture content. Water doesn't burn, it has to be boiled off/away and that steals your BTUs.
More visible CAT burn when I open the lid and take a peak is what I am trying to figure out. Getting more heat and a little longer burn period when I have known CAT burn. I take my mm readings on freshly split pieces in the summer and freshly split room temperature pieces in the winter. For the most part my wood is under 20%. I have seen a couple come in at 20.1% to 20.3%. On my old stove the firebox was 1.6 cu. ft. so most of my wood is split small. Present stove is 2.45 cubes. Attempting to determine if I should split in larger pieces for the future.
Methinks the cat has no way of knowing what you are burning or what size it is. Just take some time to learn the stove Roger. It is a bit different but it sounds as if you really do understand it; just keep at it. Don't worry.
Yep, this answer. If the house is warm & the wood isn't sizzling the stove's doing it's thing. Split to a size you like to handle & don't worry too much. Bigger splits do burn longer & take longer to season. Even for the boiler I make my Oak splits smaller for a bit quicker seasoning.
Welcome! Just make sure the wood you load is well seasoned. Just about nothing will destroy the catalyst faster than improperly seasoned (wet) wood. Burn on!
Dry wood as others said. My Progress Hybrid likes to run with the air fully closed. My mom and sis both have Ideal Steels and they run with some air open. I dont toy with their stoves, let them decide and learn. The few times I have I pretty much concurred they like a little primary air. The trick is to find that sweet spot your particular stove likes. The less air you can feed it the better the cats usually like it. In a hybrid design it seems the cat gets the top of the stove hot and eventually the secondaries kick in because of that extra heat. My PH will “go dark” inside but heat increases. Then the secondaries come to life. Don’t be afraid to choke it down some more. If the thermometer is rising all’s good. If it’s dropping you stalled it and that’s not great. You won’t know until you try. Been running it three years now and I still haven’t figured out if I like big or small splits LOL. I tend to go small to help drying, seems more important. Now that I have a plethora of wood I’m gonna go a little bigger because it will have lots of drying time.
