I had to reload one of the wood racks in the basement this weekend. 9 Wheelbarrow loads usually is what it takes to completely load one of them and each holds 15 days worth of wood if burning at the Butt Azz cold out rate. It's not too far to go! It was planned that way. The stove is running good. The secondaries are kicking and this is 4-1/2 hours after a load of various hardwoods, not really much heavy hitting stuff in this load, mostly middle of the road BTU wise for hardwoods. Saving the Beech, Locust, Hop, Oak and Hickory for the colder weather. I have to use the draft control on the stack going to the chimney because the 30 foot of chimney outside has so much draw that even with the stoves primary all the way low it still burns too fast. The following pictures show the various temperatures from the stove to going out the wall. I have the air shut down to where the splits are bunring slowly, the secondaries are kicked in and the burnt gas is moving up the flue slow enough to transfer most of the heat out to the room. Stove top kicking out the heat. Temp at the base of the flue. Temp halfway up the flue in the basement. Up near where the flue exits the wall and enters the 30' of insulated dual wall stack outside. This temp may be a little low for in the chimney from the books, but seems to work fine. Plenty of draft. Seems to be getting most of the heat from the stove tranferred into the house. I'm thinking this is how it's all supposed to work, but if I'm missing something please give me some feedback. I'm always trying to learn and improve.
Looks gooder MAF143! Is that double or single wall stovepipe? Are you seeing any smoke out of the chimney?
Thanks. The flue inside the basement is single wall to allow more heat transfer to the room. Everything going through the wall and outside is the insulated dual wall. We get some smoke right after loading till the firebox gets up to temperature, but once the secondaries are cookin' and the primary air is shut down, there is no visible smoke from the chimney at all till next load.
When it's below 30* it's about 8 hours between reloads. Longer times for warmer temps. Really cold days I can put an extra split in at 3 to 4 hours but then I have to spend a little more time on the reload to burn the coals down some. Overall though the 8 hour routine usually works out pretty well. I don't really mind the coal burn down process. I rake the coals to the front of the stove and put a Pine round about 4" thick on top of the coals, close the door, and open the primary air all the way. This keeps the stove temps up in a good zone for about 45 minutes or so. I set my timer on my phone and come back and do it again if I have time or do a full load depending on what's going on. I don't mind leaving the primary open to burn down the coals since the OAK keeps the stove from pulling any conditioned air from the house for this burn process.
No smoke = no problem from what I understand. That is impressive that you can get it to transfer that much heat
