The cold weather that has rolled in during the past week has allowed me to really fire things up. My stove will take a 20" split, (East-West) but unfortunately I only have 18" logs out there. I have added some smaller pieces (North-South) to the side of the larger splits to tray and cut down on the empty space in the box. My question is how tight do you load your stove and am I correct in that the less empty space, the slower the burn rate initially?