WOW MIKE
![shock !!! !!!](/talk/styles/default/xenforo/smileys/shock.gif)
! That is one HUGE pile of wood! and nice wood - looks like maple & oak. From AC's pics earlier I see you have huge (wood) piles also - I gather you both have your own forest to cut from. You are very privileged to have that much wood available and so much space to store it. Thank you for the video.
I agree it is hard to quantify how much you are burning - like you are showing in your video Mike, that small stuff will burn up faster. I have not (in my whole month -almost - of WG burning) put anywhere near that much wood in my WG. That one load is more than I burn on a cold day. If I may humbly suggest - please don't be offended - your wood looks nice and straight, maybe try stacking the wood, kind of tightly bundling it in the WG so there is less air space (surface area), so it is more like one very large piece of wood in there, leaving a gap all the way around the outside - not touching any walls - it should give you about the same heat but burn much longer - just a suggestion to try, maybe save some wood - it is how I always loaded my forced air wood furnace and I have carried that over to the WG. I am very into burning as little wood as possible as I don't have the equipment you guys have or the space to store alot of wood. I cut mine from standing trees with a Stihl 028, a chopping maul and wedges, and haul it home with a GMC Sonoma S15.
My burning schedule is very similar to what you are describing AC - EXCEPT - I load only enough for a decent fire in the morning, bring the house solidly up to temp (78) let the WG naturally cycle off, then power down everything for the day. If it is no colder than 0F the house will stay above 68 until 6pm and I have burned no wood.
I took some pics - basically my full days burning for yesterday. Our daytime high was 14F and overnight minus 12F.
When it is cold like that we keep the low temp (sleeping & away) at 72, regular temp 78-80F.
In the morning there was still lots of coals so I added a 4 inch and a 2 1/2 inch round just for some flame. They didn't really burn by the time I powered off the boiler so they are still intact and are under the large piece on the right in the 6pm (catch up) photo. For whatever reason, my cheap camera will not capture flame or red coals as my pics look like the wood is not burning, especially the 11 pm pic, but you can see the red reflecting in the door frame. Those 2 pics are my full wood load for yesterday, there was nothing left but a bit of coals this morning, but my fluid temp was still high (170F). My wife was up before me, turned up the thermostat and did not realize there was no fire in the WG as nice warm air was coming through the floor vents.
Still figuring out this infrared temp reader. Adjusted its settings for the type of material it is reading - now getting temps closer to 400F (like Muncybob) on the cyclone - hard to know what is accurate with this thing. I am looking for fittings today and hope to get started on the cyclone heat recovery loop this weekend - every time I see my magnetic thermometer on the cyclone go over 300F I cringe at all the heat I am losing up the chimney.