From right after dinner and cleaning ashes out. There were a lot of coals left. Beech, sugar maple, and ironwood.
Highs in the teens today , expected to hit about 4 by morning.... this load will take me to midnight. Starting out this afternoon at 65 in the house, that's when the house heater took over at 10 this morning... so 10 hours at basically maximum heat needed... not too bad.
OK, Bobby D is back in the game after slogging through odd sized junk and too long splits that ended up being E-W loads. Tonight, all Black Locust.
Awesome load! I love all the fillers. Too much patience for me and I'd never be able to burn it up fast enough to load in the morning before work.
I did that last night, and it worked well. The stove got a bit hotter than I wanted, though. Tonight, all N-S, mostly douglas fir, a little maple, and a little pine. Because it was on a good bed of coals, it lit up before I could get a good Tetris picture. 4 below outside, 72 inside
Tonight load... Oak, Mulberry, honey Locust and two big slabs of Hedge........ see how this works out. It's already hit 4 degrees outside.... 76 and climbing inside... at Midnight.... ....
I have yet to load either one of our stoves like this so far this entire season......just haven't had any real extended cold snaps yet... Two or three oak/locust/hard maple splits in at 11:30pm and house stays warm all night, still a huge bed of coals to restart at 6:30am.
I don't always put a piece of kindling E/W across the top when reloading, it depends on how many coals I have and how hot the stove is when I get ready to Reload, but when I do I only put one or two pieces (usually just one) of approx 1x1" to 1.5x1.5" kindling, that will get the top of the stove and pipe plenty hot quick enough. On a cold start I will put three or four pieces up there. I've never tried it with a big piece up there
Alright, count me in! Not stuffed tight, but there's three 6" rounds E-W. Then five 5" rounds N-S. Then half of a 10" round E-W Three minutes later