Good description of secondary burn?

There are several types of secondary flames. Some are more active, others are slow and rolling, and others are thick and slow moving.

 

One of my friends has the PE Summit and the secondaries look like a gas furnace, man that stove throws some serious heat.

 

Like Browning said wildwest and thats whats going on in the PE T5 right now. When i got up awhile ago i lifted what was still burning from lastnites bedtime load and put in a rock hard dead 3in block of elm and within a few minutes this was happening. I made a good air hole under it and will leave it alone till i reload before heading to work.



Maybe today you can make a small fire with just a few good dead smallish rounds with lots of air under/around them and slowly shut it down to see your secondaries light up.

 

It should be the other way around. Very dry wood will offgas quicker and should throw better secondaries when hot then green wood which is trying to boil off the water.

The flames in gangsta picture are from a really hot load. My stove will do that also when I have gotten it really hot for an intense burn or if I put fresh wood on top of a halfway burned down load. If you really want to see an inferno Lincoln log stack some splits and it will have some intense action. If I want quick and hot that's the way to go. I use this method if I want tot get a coal bed established quickly or just want to watch the flames lol.

With that being said I honestly try to not burn like that unless I am trying to get the house warm quickly and need the heat. On a normal load I will pull all the coals forward and spread them along the boost air channel at the front of the stove then I reload with the logs facing north south. Loading this way will cause just the front of the logs to catch on fire and start burning and also cause the secondary combustion to occur at the front of the baffle very quickly. When I set it up this way I usually end up with more of a floating flame in the top of the firebox with some jets out of the secondary baffle. As the load burns the secondaries may get a bit more active over the next couple of hours but they never go crazy. Setting it up this way will give me 12 hour burns without much problem and 10 hours of meaningful heat when the temps are above 20 degrees.

 

Mine is like an normal stove, but after you get it up to temp, there is a sliding baffle that you slide or push to engage the secondary burn. Instead of the smoke going straight up the flue, it has to come through an "s". As the smoke makes the turn at the front, there is a set of tubes front, middle and rear that injects the burnt smoke back into the top of the wood or top of fire. This is what you see. This is an EPA stove. If you have a non EPA stove, you probably Won't see this effect. This secondary burn also provides the air wash to keep the glass clean. These stoves run much hotter than a conventional stove. There is firebrick above the flame to retain heat for the secondary burn.

Getting the stove up to temp. You can see the flame at the front starting to make the turn upwards. I typically only see the flame thrower secondary burn effect when it's loaded up and roaring. It's hard to moderate this stove at a mild burn.









Short video after engaging the damper for the secondary burn. Click on the pic to get it to play



This is with the air vents fully open to get it going, once I choke it down, the rolling effect slows way down and the flames coming from the tubes intensifies. It took me the better part of two seasons burning with it to figure out how it liked to be burnt.

 

wildwest, sounds like you have the stove hot enough, but are you almost completely shutting down the primary air?
I'll get some slight 2ndary action once the stove gets hot before I do that, but once the air gets cut back.....well, everything (almost) moves to the top of the firebox and creates what looks like a massive rolling cloud of flame.
I too don't usually see much of the "gas burner" effect, but I haven't burned the stove more than about 550-600 so far. Don't know if that makes a difference.
I've got the NC30.
On our stoves, the 2ndary air is room air that's coming from the tubes after it's been heated by going through an air channel (I'm presuming your insert is similar, since it's an Englander).
The 2ndary action might last a couple hours or so.

 

Here are a few pictures showing how I set my loads up for long burns. You can see that it is just the front of the wood burning with a little bit of secondary action and a few small flames on the front of the stove. These shots are from different times within the same load of wood

 

Do you see smoke coming out your chimney. I think that is the best gauge to figure out if you are getting a complete burn. If you see smoke then the secondary isn't burning everything up. If it is clear then it's working, no matter what the appearance of the secondary is.

 

In my observations I have noticed that the less dense woods give up secondary burns easier then the more dense woods, if I have Green Ash in my stove and let it get good and hot I have crazy secondary burning.

 

A shot of my stove , secondary's burning gasses (smoke)

 

Love that video, Mine will do that to on a really slow burn I just don't have any pics of it.

 

Here is a quick vid of secondaries on the 300i

https://www.flickr.com/photos/90602641@N02/8229890673/

Video is sideways....have not figured it out yet

 

Look at my 3rd picture in the first post of this thread for what a "basic" secondary fire looks like in a 13NC.

http://firewoodhoardersclub.com/forums/threads/this-is-whats-its-all-about.7848/#post-190139

 

Nice Shot!