Ours has worked fine on natural from day one so we never hooked up the blower. Just gotta make sure to rake lots of coals to front. I usually put a layer or 2 of smalls on the coals and then monsters with more smalls along the sides if there's room.
I burn all of the junk I can't sell in my OWB. Could be cutoffs, partial rotten, big nasty knots etc. I just throw whatever I have near the unit in it, close the door and forget about it. Here's what I have at the moment. All sizes and shapes.
Yup! Same here. Holding off on the tires and railroad ties until the colder weather gets here............
Usually to much black smoke to get a good reading on the tires! But at least they aren't bug infested and they don't rot.......!
My wood is like that. Whatever I get, cut, pull out of the woods ect. I burn a lot of smaller splits that are seasoned because the golf course members only take the pretty, clean wood.. i.e the stuff that was just cut and split lol.
I am glad that you found your problem. Last year my fire went out and I had a heck of a time trying to figure it out at 1am around 2 degrees. Would fire up big when I open the flue. I went as far as bringing my tractor up, shoveling out all of the coal and wood using a shovel to get all of the ash out of the fire box, then cleaned the reaction chamber, used the rod supplied to dig the ash out of the heat exchanger area and clean the chimney. Load all of the coal back in, a little ash, all of the wood that was in there, more dry wood and left the door open and let the fire get roaring, closed the door and the flue smoke stops coming out of the chimney I open the door and smoke comes billowing out, so much for cleaning it. I popped the clean out cap back off of the chimney look in and see a tab that my rod would fit in, pop it in and lift the tab up and found 8 chains hanging from it, part of the heat exchanger. bounce them around a few times and you could hear the ask hitting the floor of the reaction chamber. Cleaned it out really good and I have had a great fire ever since. I have thought about doing a series of youtube videos just to help out on my specific OWB, how to start it, run it, clean it ect.
Anywho thank you everyone for commenting and selecting an answer in the poll. The goal was to bring in a good amount of knowledge from everyone and how you do what you do. Ive been doing some experimenting this year from running small splits 4" ect your typical indoor fireplace sized wood, medium splits 6" ect what I ran pretty much all last year and right now large splits anything smaller than 8 inches stays whole, anything up to 12 " is split in half, the big ones split accordingly. Based on a 0630 fill and 1830 fill- 4" I have to split way more obviously so time wasted, it burns way to fast so my coal bed is burning out. there is still sufficient coal bed to keep it going after the fill but not a good healthy bed. 6-8" splits a little faster a little less work, easy to move, still dry's pretty quick. can stack them pretty well. Good burn times, better coal bed but still thin. Big stuff. Ive been splitting big rounds in half or thirds, can still move them easy ( I don't want to throw hole rounds in because I don't want to risk damaging the fire box and Ive been a grunt and paratrooper for my entire adult life = my back is sore enough). I can throw in 4-6 chunks, come back 12 hours later still have a good amount of wood in there, have an outstanding coal bed about 4-6 inches deep, nice big hot coals . Now when I come to refill I only need to add 4 or so. Hopefully it will get cold I am sick of all of this rain and want to see how well this keeps working in below freezing temps. Being bigger pieces, I'm splitting less, I split a weeks worth of wood in about 20 minutes. So this is what I think I am going to run from here on. Big pieces and toss in a few 6-8 " to fill gaps.
For anyone interested my stove is performing much better now. I’m running it natural draft & will continue to do so. Also it seems my wood consumption has dropped, another benefit! Thanks again for all the input folks.
I think I've finally figured out the way my boiler likes to be loaded: 1. Burn it down to a nice be of coals. 2. Push the coals toward the left and right side to expose the nozzle. 3. Place one medium sided split right on top of the nozzle. 4. Push the coals back up along the sides of the split over the nozzle. 5. Place a big split on top of the coals along the edges. 6. Place a few smaller splits on top of the medium split in the middle. 7. Top it off in a pyramid shape with as many big/medium splits as you think it will take to get to the next reload. 8. Put one or two smaller splits sideways in front to fill in the gap between the pyramid and the door. Sounds kinda complicated, but it really isn't. About 7-9 total splits is currently lasting me about 24 hours right now in this weather. After 12 hours I'll push everything toward the center and occasionally add a split or 2 if I think it needs it to get me to the big load in the evening.
seems like next week will be interesting in the Midwest with calls of highs in the negatives and wind chills of down to -50 during throughout the day as ive heard. and drumroll please tddddddddddd. tis Im out of split wood lol. Its going to be a busy weekend. I need a tractor with a grapple, dump trailer and a friend. Ive been wanting to rent a processor and I have about 10 dump trailer loads of sticks cut down at the golf course that need to be bucked and split and brought home. Would be easier to knock it all out in a day or two lol
Processor would definitely speed things up, sounds like its going to be a busy weekend with that much to cut and split! What type of wood is it?
