My little Lopi has the perfect burn going tonight on a belly full of Douglas fir. 600° on top and throwing torches from the burn tubes.
I've been burning a lot of very dry doug fir tops lately. It looks just like your photos for the first couple of hours with lots of sparks and glowing red with enough outgassing to flare off the secondary tubes. Then it turns into a huge pile of red logs with cooler stove top. Is that what happens to you too? The red logs make heat but take a long time to burn to dust. Not much ash at all.
What size is that stove? Might be just the way the picture is, but it makes the stove look tiny! (and hot! )
Sounds about right. My wood supply is usually more of a mix, and burning 100% fir like this isn't my normal habit. This year's supply is mostly fir. Full loads of fir require more air in my stove, which takes some getting used to.
This was loaded from cold at 6:55am yesterday. Fir and alder with one piece of maple. The next pic was at 12:18pm with the stove top at 300°. So roughly 5 1/2 hours of heat.
You ever tried loading all n/s and starting a top down fire? In the past (and in an older stove) I have started fires like that, top down, and used a small hand plane to make curly shavings from a slab of the firewood. Works very well as a fire starter.
By the way, But behave a Lopi Liberty that I think is going to be much too big for the house. Have no idea of Liberty burn times.
I prefer NS loading but like to have some EW on a cold startup to give more air gaps. My starts aren't true top down style but I try to put smaller stuff on the top.
