Finally pulled the trigger...

Epa stoves are notorious for this, woodheat.org has a description about it on their site.
Best case scenario is stove is sized correctly for the house and you can let it run its full cycle before reloading, did not have any problems with it in drolet or the IS.

 

Full load goes without saying for me. I want as many btus stuffed in there as I can get. Good tip though. Thank you!

 

A non-commercial service in support of responsible home heating with wood - Too much charcoal? Here is the solution

 

Good summarization there man , I would like to also add your timing of when you load is very important here , gotta plan it out.
Timing is everything when it gets real cold, as is experience running your stove

 

Drill a 1/4" hole in the ash pan door.
I have no problem with excess coals now.

 

BDF

 

We occasionally use a 3rd reload per day when it's really cold. Poplar has been my go to for a fast hot fire with no residual coals.

 

Disclaimer I did not read this thread I skipped to the end

 

Where on the door did you put the hole Tim? I saw in one of the big threads where someone made a hole was that you?

that’s a good tip Dennis. I’ve tried that a couple times but I think I waited too long before I opened the air back up. I’ll have to try again with higher stt.

 

I drilled 2, but one works fine.
I keep an earth magnet over the one and next to the other in case i want to close it off. But i never close the one, and the second didn't make any noticeable difference except to whistle.

The ash pan door is double layered.

 

I just hot loaded to sticks of poplar on a big coal bed from a 4am reload.
STT was down around 325° . (Its 12° outside so the house was starting to cool off already. ) STT shot up to 450° in about 20 minutes. At about 50% air setting

 

Are you trying to burn "black box"? (Cat only, not visible flame)
That's when you get really excessive coals. Crank the air up and let her stretch her legs.

 

This time of year is when it's handy to burn pine, poplar, aspen.
Oak is great but it coals too much for these cold snaps.

 

Counter intuitive but fully understand your point, been mixing oak with ash or elm and that is helping.

 

Wow, yeah that's an interesting statement/concept and not what I would have thought.....

I am trying to learn and understand these concepts....
The pine, poplar and aspen this time of year....full loads of those species, or mix with the oak, or put in after the oak to burn down the coals?? Does the split size affect the coaling of any of these species?

 

These Shoulder Season type woods are for fast hot fires during a cold snap and when you don't want coals left over.

We do 2 reloads per day normally. The hot loads in between are to give an extra boost of heat between those 2 loads.
So they are hot loads meant to burn quick on top of the coals the from a regular loads. I wouldn't use oak on a hot load or you'll just add to the coal bed.

 

Not that I've noticed.
The cat stoves don't care about size because you can control the burn rate with air control.

(I burned all of my kiln dried kindling (about 1.5 cords) last year by just shoveling the firebox full and burned it like a regular load. I don't use kindling at all now)

 

Tacking onto this point- due to my smaller burn chamber size, it works in my benefit to split some pieces down smaller so I can fit more into the stove.

Terrible math here- but I might be able to fit 3 chunky splits in at once, but if I take the time to narrow them down I could fit the approximate equivalent of 4 or 5 of the bigger splits.

 

Nope. That was never a selling point for me. I like to see some fire action in there. But I have been running it at around 1/4-1/3 open for the intake air. Thanks Tim It’s helpful to know this. I’ll shoot for the higher side of that spectrum.

I think some of the issues have stemmed from Jaclyn needing to run the stove while I’ve been sick. She didn’t know to stir the ash out of the coals.

I have a steady diet of white ash for it and not much else. I have some spruce/pine from last years tree work but it’s not ready yet.

that's an excellent pic. I like it too. I control the air/temps on my ugly drum smoker the same way. So far I think I have it so the coals are burning down at least as fast as I’m throwing wood in. I freaked out when Jaclyn had the firebox half full of coals. I may try drilling a hole if I can’t figure out how to live with it the way it is now.