Single Digit Overnight Load in the Princess

I can't load the stove full during the week in the evening and burn it up fast enough. Here is what my weekday evening loads look like. It's always hard for me to look at the stove with it not full and wonder if it's enough for the night.
Loaded this around 10:30 pm.


Here is what it looked like this morning after stirring the coals and turning the air up around 7:30 am.



About 10 minutes after full air with the blowers on medium.


Coal bed spread out and daytime load shoved in. Still had too many coals to get a full load.(note coals up to bottom of the door) 3rd season and I'm still figuring it out.



Oh yeah stove room was 77 when I woke up and t-stat in the hallway leading upstairs was 69, same as when I went to bed at midnight. Outside temp reads 6 right now but it's probably closer to 9 or 10. Yep this stoves rock!

 

Awesome, great pics! Thanks!

 

It looks like with a tweak here and there you will have the master plan down pat.
I envy your morning coals and temps, I'm not that lucky.

 

The BK load photos always remind me how much I hate burn tubes. They always get in the way when reloading.

 

No pics, but I had it stuffed full of ash, cherry and soft maple last light. I was up around 2, and the stove top was around 700, with the blowers on high and the stat around 2.25.

House was comfortable. I guess I still have a lot of work to do here.

 

rdust, do you have to intentionally burn down the coal bed or does it maintain itself?

 

So true, I'm always banging mine when I fill'er up.

 

I hear ya.

 

Heh. When I say stuffed, I mean stuffed. I'm a little more careful with the Spectrum baffle, but not much.

 

That's a nice coalbed left...

 

They will burn down fine if I let it burn(have the time). Pulling the charred wood/coals from the back/sides to the front allows you to get better heat while burning them down. The impressive thing with these stoves is burning down the coals can provide hours of good heat in my environment. It's not uncommon for the stove top to gain 100+* after pulling everything to the front and turning up the air.

 

A lot of fist size chunks after breaking it all up with the poker.

 

Nice demonstration.

Was surprising to me how much heat is left in the coals, I get
hours of good heat when doing a coal burn-down. If you need more
heat, lay a split on top of the coals. I burn down on 3 to 3.5 & raking the coals
to the front every hour or 2 , helps clean the glass .

For my wood, I've noticed Birch makes coals more than spruce.
Not sure about lower 48 wood types & charcoal making.
Have notice I get more & bigger charcoal chunks on a low slow burn than on a
hotter , shorter burn.
Some variables on charcoal formation I haven't figured out yet.

 

Well missed that T-stat setting today! Came home the stove room was low 70's, hallway t-stat was 66(ouch) and the bedrooms upstairs were in the low 60's. Plenty of fuel left in the stove so cranked the fans and t-stat up. The stove top was 380 when I got in, after almost an hour it's cruising along at 480 and the rest of the house is warming up. Amazing to have enough fuel to bring up the temp in the house after 10 + hours.

 

Variables
Yea, lots of heat in a load.
You have more to figure out than I do. I have birch, you have
a variety of wood types & BTUs variables to work out

I still miss.
If the forecast is wrong I miss often.
Windy night are the toughest to dial it in.
Hit it good last night, was 28°, no fan.
OATs dropping so will turn the fan on low, & a touch more air tonight.

 

Never got out of the teens here today and last night was single digit cold. I dug a few gallons of ash out of the stove last night which gives me a little more loading room. You can notice the difference if you look at the picture below and the ones above. Here is the morning load about as full and I can get it. I'm dealing with a lot of smaller splits right now, I'm working through the last cord of wood I split on the smaller side before I got 3+ years ahead. No biggie either way really the BK seems to handle the smaller stuff just fine.

 

When it gets cold, making room for some more BTUs in the stove is
a "Professional Wood Burner" (PWB) move .

Great picture
Looks like a variety of wood types in the load above, types ?

 

Another thing I love about a stove with a deep belly! The ability to let the ash build up for weeks and pull it out when a cold stretch hits!

A few different types, ash, red oak, iron wood and hickory.(think that was it) Last night was a mix I never used before. White oak, Black Locust,(first time using BL) Ash and Hickory, that burned really nice.

 

And I just found a split that wouldn't fit in the door

 

It think you're confusing a split with a tree??