Probably broaching on a repetitive subject in wood stoves and whatnot but this is besides the point. I would like to know what burn times you get out of your wood. This isn't exactly discussing your wood burner but rather the wood itself. Would really like to know if theres any difference in layering wood as far as hard and softwoods go. This is a conundrum in itsef because we know there are hardwoods that burn like softwoods and vice versa so not all woods are created equal but if there's a method to your long burning fire I want to know about it! I may want to bring up the question like how closed your damper or flue is at night compared to the rest of the day? Evenings... This might help Me prepare for leaving a fire (a damm short one) and going to work within a few hours in the winter or when you sleep. Saw a thread posted about how folks started trusting their woodstove to stay ok during the day and still come home to a fire that is ready for more wood. Thanks in advance Im new to this game its been about 25 years since the woodstove at my parents was removed and Im out of practice for the instance.
I don't have much choice but to burn soft woods. Once in a while I score some birch apple or oak. With my primary pine I usually have flames for 2 hours then coals for four hours after. I typically have to load when I wake up for my early morning pee. We will load the stove full in the morning and leave the air intake cracked just a hair. This leaves us with a house at 65F when we get home and enough coals to just throw the night load on and walk away. Hearth stone Heritage. I have a load of birch/apple in now spoiling myself as I am sick and too worn out to go to the pile and load a bin. I will see how long this burns and report back.
Sorry you're not well, hopefully a steam from the kettle on the stove would help. This is exactly what I was hoping to hear. I have a great mix of woods that can be alternative during warmer or colder spots, I don't mind making a fire ever. But this is giving me something I can look to expect. Ive got pines and firs as well as birch and a wood that is likely compared to buckeye, it actually burns blue and clean despite some negative reviews on the wood. I figure I want to see whats best in the long run. I'll figure it out along the way but its helpful when getting a general idea how fast one wood burns to another. I expect mixed results this isn't a constant. What can be measured as a better constant is when id be more attentive to a fire as opposed to not. With that being said I can determine if i leave my home and how long did the fire go out if it did. How big is your woodstove space?
I burn mostly softwoods, with a little bit of elm sometimes. Got an old franklin stove not very good burn times with pine and doug fir. It does put out alot of heat and when i burn juniper or elm the house gets way hot. During this time of year i try to stick with pine. Would be nice to score some madrone or oak for the coldest months but there is none in my area.
Birch when above 40°....About 24+ hr burns times Birch when between 30° - 40°.... about 18 - 20 hr burn times Birch when between 20° - 30°.... about 12 - 16 hr burn times '' '' '' '' '' '' '' '' ' " " " " "10° - 20° ... .......... 10 - 12 " " " " " " " " " " " " " " 10° & colder..... 8 hours on high ( A Full load is hard to burn faster than 8 hours) Wind shortens burn times Please Send a cord of shagbark hickory, & a cord of white oak Will do a test with each & report back
Birch actually is quite decent for its coaling burn im pleased with my supply. Looks like a good load of this would be nice in the stove for the night since it burns nice in my outdoor pit. Im doing the testing phase but theres too much open air to get the full benefit but definitely warm. If I sent a small pallet of oak in a pile on super snail mail to Alaska it might be seasoned by the time it got there. Birch only in your area? Its a pretty wood and love how the bark is amazing for its ability to start incredibly fast!
I think you would likely benefit from the madrone, if you can manage a trip to the coast or near it, see if you can apply for a timber pass of some kind and grind it out finding one. Id be very careful about it. This is one wood once it is seasoned, not to be underestimated...but likely to find a tree and do the same thing.
I find it interesting the varience from tree to tree among the same species. Lots of other factors involved, season time wind and weather conditions at the location where the wood is seasoned. I find that with the pine, fir, and larch trees the larger diameter trees usually make better firewood because there is more heartwood and the growth rings are tighter. Its not a huge difference but firrwood cut out of reprod trees seems to burn faster.
You do get more bang for the buck if you catch my pun on those trees. It just grows everywhere and you get also geta long burn tome out of that heartwood for sure
I have a buddy who works for a logging co in scappoose oregon. I could probly score some madrone through him. I might just hit him up next time we talk
Most wood, even silver maple I can get 12 hour burn time on 6 or 8 splits. Oak, locust and the like up to 18 hours. I burn a Buck 80 catalyst insert. In the livingroom where the insert is located I'm guessing the temps hit the low 80's. The thermostat at the opposite end of the house is between 72 and 78. The livingroom has vaulted ceilings. Last night I loaded the stove with 3 or 4 splits of red maple and 2 or 3 splits of cherry. That was at 2000hrs. At 0900 the catalyst temp was 900°. At 1230 the catalyst temp was 600° with a fair batch of coals. I pulled the bypass damper and let it burn out, which at1443 its not quite out.
Yes, this subject does come up from time to time but that is good so long as you realize there can be a huge difference in burn times not only depending upon the wood but also the stove. Another thing you should consider is that it is always better to keep the flue warm rather than starting a fire in a cold stove. If you do keep starting fires, be sure to check and clean that chimney more often because you will get more creosote. You will also burn more wood for the heat you get because a lot of the heat from the wood goes first to warm the flue and then to get all that metal in the stove up to temperature. All this before you get any benefit from the work you did putting up that wood. In our case, to show the difference a stove can make, before we installed the Woodstock Fireview we had an old Ashley. It kept us from freezing and did well in spring and fall but was not worth a lot in winter months. Today, we heat more rooms (the whole house) while with the Ashley we had to close off part of the house. We burned 6-7 cord of wood with the Ashley. We burn an average of around 3 cord with the Fireview (2.5 the last couple years). Now about the filling of the stove. Because of the ash borers we have burned primarily ash for the last 15 years. We do still burn some elm, cherry, some odds and ends and a little bit of oak (mostly pin or red oak). The oak is used only during the cold nights in winter, usually when the temperature drops down around zero or lower. Sometimes down to 10 or lower. But even then it is not usually all oak but a mix of oak, ash and/or elm. Now to the filling of the stove. For night burns or if I am to be away all day, I rake the coals to the front of the stove or at least far enough that we can fit a round or large split in the bottom rear. This is the key to long burn times. From there it is just a matter of filling the stove and packing it as tight as possible. If there are few coals I might place something like a soft maple on the bottom front to help the fire get going quicker but usually that is not a problem. That's all there really is to it. Pretty much every stove we've had we could do it like this or very much like this and have good results. On the real cold nights I might add a split or two, rarely three sometime in the morning before we get up or I might do that when getting up in the middle of the night to pee. It all depends upon the outdoor temperature and if it is windy or not. This is what dictates what needs to be done with the stove.
Your experience is thoughtful, Im intrigued with the thought of how you burn your wood because of how much difference in temps outside for you as opposed to mine. Trust me the temp drops but not often past Low teens. This helps figure out why I have reason to feel better that I have a small house and heating should be a snap. The good thing is that i will be able to open doors I normally keep closed because of drafts but Im not worrying about wood waste since this summer will be focused on the final drying and then need to get a good wood cover and move it closer to the house or at least a smaller rack that is easier to keep dry. If I close or keep the flue low, does this increase my risk for creosote as well? As long as my wood is dry im going to guess this adding with temperatures the woodstove needs to achieve best airflow and efficiency, shouldnt be an issue. Testing some of my wood now outside has shown me i have good options that exist and they burn clean without much smoke if any. Im almost worried the oak but used sparingly it would be best.
Yes, if flue temperatures get too low that is a big cause of creosote. Our setup is single wall black stove pipe running horizontally out the rear of the stove and into insulated chimney which runs up the outside of the house. Most times our temperature gauge (just laying on the horizontal section about 10" from the rear of the stove will read 250-300. I just looked now and it is at 220. Stove top temperature is at 340. Will be adding a couple of splits soon; probably within the hour. This is another thing I like about the cat stove is that we can run low temperatures but still not get creosote. Although we usually will run a brush up that chimney annually, most times we get nothing or next to it. We actually do get a bit more now than we used to because we added a section of chimney to get it taller. Of course this means the temperature drops more as the heat goes up higher but it is not a problem. Just a little bit of stuff in the bucket when we clean. Sometimes rather than clean we'll just stick a pipe up the chimney and tap it on the sides or even just tap it on the outside the chimney to knock anything down. This too is how we clean the cap but rarely do we get any buildup on the cap. Just tap it a few times to make certain nothing is building up there.
So if anything I can hire a sweep to do the cleaning and then if it seems feasible to me, do it myself for the rest of the life of having a woodstove? Im thinking theres nothing much to it other than being thorough and careful not to disrupt the stovepipe....
Yes, in most cases, cleaning the chimney is fairly easy. I really like the ones that can be cleaned from ground level or from inside the house. In our case, it is so easy that my wife does the cleaning and it takes only a few minutes to complete. We use the old trick of using a fairly large plastic can (in our case it is a coffee can). I punched a hole in the bottom of the can. That is places on the pole below the brush but is big enough it does not go up the chimney. It catches the crap that comes down then it can be dumped into a bucket.
Thank you for that tip! I know I will likely have lower burning temps the first year and then hit you guys with a barrage of "greenhorn crap not knowing how to use his stove" threads and make a night out of tweaking and be ok for the next few years. I think my stove will be simple but for a house just not much bigger than 750 sq feet I can't help but give a few feet for a heat source that will pay for itself in a few years. Anyways here's the stove in mind.
When you get the stove, the best think you can do is start a fire on the weekend and do it in the morning. Don't pack the stove but 3 or no more than 4 splits; maybe a half load at most. The big thing is to not have so much in the firebox that you won't be able to reload it a few times during the day. Do that a couple days but the second day, make one load a bit larger then at night, fill it, turn it down and go to bed! I think I forgot to mention that our stove draft has numbers on it from zero to 4. The number 4 being wide open. Cold stove, naturally set the draft on 4. Once a good flame is established and the flue warm we turn it down to 2, lest the flue get too hot. When up to temperature to engage the cat (250 stove top), we then turn the draft to 1. Usually then within 5-10 minutes we will then dial the draft below 1 to anywhere between . 5 and .75. All is well and we can pretty much forget the stove until it needs reloading. On reloads, we usually wait until stove top is anywhere from 250-350 with 300 being perhaps the most used temp for this. Set draft to 4. Open firebox door but do it a bit slowly and you won't get smoke coming out. Spread the coals out evenly (contrary to how we build a night fire by raking coals to the front), put splits in, and wait. When the wood is charred and there is a good flame, stove top temperature to 250, engage cat, set draft to .5 or .75 then relax as the stove will take care of itself for hours. Naturally there can be some small changes depending upon the stove and the installation but if one follows the above, he can't go wrong. As stated before, I've run many different stoves and found very little difference in how to run them all.
