docgogo said:
Ok, I know you are frustrated - I spent the whole winter that way last year - but you seriously need to see this through and NOT by throwing more money at this situation . . .
Your readings now apear to have TOO MUCH DRAUGHT, correct? Because that will piss away your wood.
I know that fully insturmented would be a great way to burn, but you still need some gut instinct. So . . . if the fire is up to temp and you add the white oak, what does the stack look like when the damper opens?
For my 'less than ideal' wood - assuming its cold out - you are going to get a reasonable large cloud of white 'smoke' (I think if you could analyze it, you would find a lot of water in it. After a full load and cold outside, the damper will remain open for 45-60 mins. When it closes you will now get somewheres between the aforementioned 'white cloud' and the coveted whisp of white. Now, when the damper opens the second time, you should get less than a minute of white cloud, then some thin blue for 1 min, then VSF. To me this means your water has been mostly baked out of the wood, and now you are back to burning efficiently.
The problems with the GW - in my experience - are
1)The refractory cracks to hell, and
2)It smokes out the load door
Item # 2 can be mitigated, and when placed outside, becomes a non-issue. Item #1 . . . the jury's still out on that.
If I were you, I would be wary of deeming 'wet wood' to be your problem. As someone else that runs a GW here said, you can burn wetter wood in these units. You will go through wood faster. You will produce more 'smoke'. But as Anthony mentioned, it's good to mix up your wood. One thing I have definitly found is that you want to burn all the way down to coals below the air inlets, then add a complete layer of dry wood on top of the coals, then alternate layers of wetter wood with dry wood. But lets face it . . . when its single digits or lower, stick with your better wood.
One thing I have found that sometimes helps with some wetter stuff you want to use . . . put it north/south on top of the pile. My idea is that it allows better air flow through the wet wood, removing the water quicker. Works for me.
OH!! Experiment for ya . . . . measure your draught, then remove a couple sections of that chimney you spent big bucks on . . . what does the draught measure then?
Jimbo
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- Smart-a$$ answers aside, a side arm might or might not give you as much DHW as you want, depending on the details of your setup, and your use patterns... Ultimately this is the case with ALL DHW producers. A side arm is typically setup to make a convection loop with your water heater and a circulator loop with the boiler / storage tank. As long as the sidearm input is getting heat, and you aren't pulling more out of the DHW tank than it can provide, you will be fine. If the sidearm isn't getting heat, it won't do anything to help... There are ways that others here can help with, to design your system to get the maximum benefit out of the sidearm, but there are limits. You may find that you need a backup heating system, or that some other form of dealing with heating your DHW is needed.