I've been burning white oak for three weeks straight. And ,yes, I have too many coals to get burned down. Especially when that cat needs cleaned. We had a warm up yesterday into the upper 30's and I forgot to let it burn down so i could clean the cat, now I'm doing it today while its in the teens. It's not too bad when the cat is just cleaned but this morning the firebox was half full with nothing but coals. I know most here will say thats a good problem, but my Fireview is a cellar dweller and it takes more output to get the heat upstairs So i guess what I'm saying is I like the oak but not the extra coals. Then again its all free btu's so...It's all good
With just coals I'm at about 250-300 degrees stove top temp It's not quite enough heat for a cellar dweller pushing heat to the main level. And it takes a long time to burn down The wife put wood on at 3am before work, at 7:30 I checked it (just coals probably 10") and opened the draft a little(didn't add wood). At 11:00 I'm down to 150 degrees stove top and still 4" of coals. I opened the draft wide open and cracked the door. Should be cool enough now to clean the cat and get started again. I've been trying to clean the cat every week to prevent this
Reading this I get something different that others are getting. It appears to me your bigger problem is that you can't get the coals burned down. Yes, that can be a problem and we too had that problem when we first bought our Fireveiw stove. However, we did not change the wood we were burning but instead did some experimenting to find the best way to get the coals burned down. That proved to be rather simple. In the coldest part of winter, like we are and have been experiencing lately, this is when a big bed of coals can rob you of space to put wood. As stated, we had that problem but found no help that worked. But what we found was just before the wood got down to the all coaling stage, we open the draft all the way. We found this will hold the stove temperature while at the same time burning down the coals. Occasionally we will have to use the poker and rake the coals a bit to loosen them; get the air in there to burn them up. Then when possible we rake them forward. When there is enough room in the rear of the firebox, that is when we refill. We usually put a large piece in the bottom rear and that is the key piece toward getting a longer burn. Depending upon what we are burning, but usually oak in really cold temperatures, we sometimes will place a soft maple in the front bottom. That will light off quicker and burn hot, which in turn gets the oak going quicker. In addition to the heating properties and the coaling, one has to consider btu output. When cutting firewood, we have found that it takes about the same amount of time to cut good wood as it does to cut the softer woods and/or marginal wood, like stuff that has fallen down. Putting up wood is hard work and for those who have a time factor, it just makes more sense to cut good wood rather than cutting wood that will not give you long burn times. But then we also realize that some folks run their furnaces along with the wood stove and some also don't mind letting their homes get down below 70 degrees. In our case, we do not want our house temperature to get even down to 70. We want comfort in our homes and we want it without having to dress warm. Having written this, I also realize there is a place for the softer woods. We use them a lot. Not only in spring and fall, but also through the winter but use them when we are in the house so we are not dependent on having a long burn time. So if we're cutting some wood and see a certain tree should be cut, we cut it and burn it. On the soft maple, it is common for us to cut several during the winter months to help out the deer herd. We just knock them down but cut them up the following winter. They do not go to waste. So I am not against the "lesser" woods at all but I don't want them when we need long burn times, especially because we don't want the house cooling.
