Didn't work today...............too cold never got about 4*F here at my dump today. Decided to do a little bit of experimenting loading the stove today; trying to get longer burn times. Unburied my power miter saw and cut a bunch of mulberry splits in half.......7-9" or so...........to see how much wood I could get into my Englander 13NC which only has a 1.8cu.ft. firebox. Really like NS loading, as you can easily get about 30-50% more wood into the firebox. My first load of Mulberry 1/2 splits essentially equated to 6 of my normal sized splits; where a BIG load EW is 4 splits, so that as that low front split burns away from the doghouse blowtorch, the log on top doesn't fall forward and hit the glass. Don't have to worry about that. With these single digit highs here for the last 3 days; even my 4 medium splits were just giving me about 4-4.5 hours of "usable" heat due to the increased draft. I have red hot coals out to 6+ hours, but the stove is well below 300*F by then; which is not a problem when it's 30-40*F, but is when it's -0*F at night and not much more than that during the day. First load of 1/2 splits went about 5.5 hours before reloading. So a bit of success. Here's a picture of my 2nd load........................ Changed up on this load though..................that's 2 4" Mulberry rounds on the bottom with 3 medium Mulberry 1/2 splits on top. Hope y'all can see that she's pretty well stuffed. May have to play with this a bit longer. In perfect 20/20 hind site, I wish I'd gotten the 30NC instead of the 13NC................only for the longer burn time.................this little 13NC .................I call her the "Little Big Stove".
This load is now cruising at 650-700*F STT with nice easy lazy secondaries, and with a flue probe temp. of 600*F. I may be on to something here!!!
Um to cold to work? Buddy I have been changing fuel filters and dumping diesel 911 in class 8 trucks for the last few days. Lots of uneducated truck drivers out there. But the O.T. is a good thing. You in the trades?
Self-employed Farrier. Horses don't like nails getting hammered into their feets when it's real cold like this. That; and when I bring my tools into the barns, they get 1/4" of frost on them until they warm up!!!
