Anyone interested in a 20 lbs of fuel long burn challenge?

Oh I wasnt talking about money there is money involved either way I simply meant if the power is out so are the pellets.

 

Yesterday I loaded up my 4 splits of Black Locust on some hot coals on a 200° ST.

11:30am loaded
11:45 engaged cat, air at #2 CT 600
12:15 closed air .5, ST 380, CT 1250
1:00 ST 520, CT 990
2:00 ST 520, CT 1110
3:00 ST 570, CT 1035
4:00 ST 460, CT 850

I left the house for dinner then went to my pool league and didn't get home until 11:00pm. ST 250, CT 480, still was plenty of fuel so I let it go and went to bed. At 8:00 am the ST was down to 170, CT 320, had enough coals to reload four more splits and repeat.

 

In my excitement to learn the capabilities of my new stove, I created this thread thinking others might want to do something similar. Calling it a challenge was probably a bad idea; this is more about sharing results, not a competition. Going forward, I will create a Fixed Fuel Load Test Results thread with the following default criteria:

1. 20 lbs of fuel
2. load onto coal bed (no cold start)
3. end of burn marked by 200 STT.

Anyone who wants to post results using different criteria is free to do so.

 

Here are my results from last night. Loaded 8 pieces of 2 x 4 oak pallets (about 20 lb), just about all that would fit in my 1.4 cu ft fire box on a small coal bed. It did take a bit longer than usual the get the wood going as it was packed tightly together. Started at 8:00 last night, and this morning at 7:00 still had a few coals left.
BTW graph from Omega wireless data logger.

Goes to show that if you have the right kind of pallet wood you can get some good heat/burn times.

 

Ashford 30
Cold start house temp 70. Outside temp 26-46 degrees
19.6 pounds of Doug fir plus two sticks of kilning.
Thermostat was set at 3 o'clock.
Burn time was 22 hours. I had to move the wood around in the stove some to burn it all up at this low burn rate.
Stove top was up to 300 at the start and maintained 200 for the rest of the burn period.
House temp after the 22 hours was 75.

 

Yeah, I have had several thermocouples fail- all were genuine Chinese, no- name brand. The biggest problem seems to be the grounding of the thermocouple itself; wherever possible, insulate the end of the thermocouple and the problem seems to go away. Of course that is not possible on the firebox or cat. probes. The good news is that the cheap thermocouples are so cheap that you can sort out a few good ones and throw the bad ones away and it is still less expensive than 'real' brands.

Brian

 

A bit OFFTOPIC: but there it is, as plain as day. Nothing wrong with pellets, firewood, fuel oil, natural gas, propane, coal, solar power etc., etc. The key is to really appreciate the true cost, including effort, to each of us. As the prices of the base fuels change, it makes it even harder to choose the 'best' method or combination of methods to heat a house and possibly domestic hot water as well. But the first thing to get out of the thought process is that any fuel is 'free'; even if firewood really was delivered, cut, split and seasoned, it would still require carrying into the stove, tending the stove, cleaning out the ashes and overall maintenance of not only the stove but the chimney. Pellets are much easier to handle and burn, and there is much better control over the stove but the capacity of most pellet stoves is limited and often the pellets have been rather expensive and / or outright unavailable in the past. So everyone has to weigh what they want and what works for him / her best IMO. And all of these things make it tough to throw rocks at those who may be doing it 'wrong' also.

Brian