We're still learning the tricks of burning the wonderful 30-NC. It really cranks out the heat on a high burn, and is burning through the night when we want it to. Great results. One thing I am wondering, as far as efficient burning is concerned, when we are awake and the demand is moderate - is it better to throw a couple of splits on every couple of hours, or load it up and do an extended low secondary burn? (Reminder, this is a non-cat stove.)
If I am around during the day I just toss a bit in. Mostly keep it wide open to reduce the coal bed as well. As I have mixed species of wood I can select a bit for kinds that won't form a ton of coals and save the real dense stuff for the long burns when absent.
I have a different stove than you, but I like short cycling with a few pieces of wood. It's hard not to overheat your place sometimes with moderate temps, and then (in my opinion anyways) you're wasting wood by having the home sitting at 80 F. Unless you like 80 F, then it's all good.
I've been putting in anywhere from 4-6 smallish splits, and once up to temp, cutting the air back until things get lazy. Open it back up, and let it finish burning down. Live off the residual heat for many hours. Had a fire like that this morning about 8, and just put in another load of 4 splits about an hour ago. Might not get us until bedtime on this one. I'll load up a full burn tonight and wake up to the house around 68-70 in this weather.
I've ran a lot of different stoves and have found in all stove no matter the wood, it is usually better to burn small fires at this time of the year. A bit more at night but this time of year, even if you have to restart the fire in the morning, I'd really hesitate to stoke up that fire before turning in. More like a medium load would be better.
It never seemed to me like it worked well "throwing a couple of splits on every couple of hours" but I've never ran an 30-NC. In fact that method actually worked better for me on the really cold days when I needed more heat, but still don't practice it. I always ran complete cycles, letting burn down to coals, the reloading. During the shoulder season though the size of the loads might be half instead of full, and I'd attempt to idle the burn as low as could still burn proper. During very mild temps I'd just burn overnight and let it go out during the day. Worked fine that way, just more of a pain to have to re-lite the stove daily.
