Introducing Burnwell

[seastump]

Hello Hearth!

Last year was my first winter with our Hearthstone Green Mountain 60. I grew up with a wood stove, but had a lot to learn as a first time owner. This forum helped me tremendously, but I also found it useful to track how often I loaded wood into the stove. The entire season I "logged my logs" meticulously on a spreadsheet, and was able to see interesting patterns in efficiency (see attached screenshot for data & learnings). The logging was tedious but worth it. Towards the end of the season I committed to doing it again this year, but I wanted to make it simpler and with more variables. So I built an app for the task called Burnwell, and recently released it in the Apple App Store. Burnwell will help me "log my logs" this season, and give me an easy way to evaluate how efficiently I use my stove. I'm posting it here in hopes that members of this community find it useful too.

Burnwell is very simple right now. It lets you enter data and export it for analysis in a spreadsheet. I intend to keep adding features throughout the winter. I have many in mind and will build them for myself, but if you have ideas and/or feedback I'd love to hear it. You can DM me directly or submit at http://support.burnwellapp.com .

For now Burnwell is iOS only, but I would like to launch it in the Android Play Store. To do that I need to run a beta test for Google, and I am looking for Android users who would like to participate. If you are an Android user and on this forum then you are the perfect candidate! Please visit http://android.burnwellapp.com for further details and sign up.

Burnwell is completely free and doesn't require a login. I hope someone besides myself finds it useful! Enjoy.

 

[begreen]

Time between reloads corelates to the temperature outside for our stove. It's not really a measure of efficiency.

 

[seastump]

Time between reloads corelates to the temperature outside for our stove. It's not really a measure of efficiency.

Is the correlation that as the temperature drops the time between reloads gets shorter?

 

[stoveliker]

Add a possibility to include the difference between the outside temperature and the desired inside temperature. (See heating degree days)

 

[seastump]

Add a possibility to include the difference between the outside temperature and the desired inside temperature. (See heating degree days)

Thank you! Will do. Temperature recording is definitely on the list.

 

[begreen]

Is the correlation that as the temperature drops the time between reloads gets shorter?

More than that because I adjust the load size according to the temp too. It's 41º outside now at night so I am running half-loads. I won't be running full loads until that is the daytime max temp. The load size usually stays consistent once I we are burning 24/7 but then the reload interval will vary according to outside temp. ie: from 32-40 we'll be on ~12 hr reload cycle, but from 25-32 that will go down to 8-10 hrs. Then if it gets below 25º I am likely switching to hardwood. Whether the that changes the reload time or not depends on the quality and species of the hardwood. An all locust fire could boot me back up to 10 hrs.

For these reasons it would be nice to annotate the results. That would be easy afterward in Excel.

 

[seastump]

More than that because I adjust the load size according to the temp too. It's 41º outside now at night so I am running half-loads. I won't be running full loads until that is the daytime max temp. The load size usually stays consistent once I we are burning 24/7 but then the reload interval will vary according to outside temp. ie: from 32-40 we'll be on ~12 hr reload cycle, but from 25-32 that will go down to 8-10 hrs. Then if it gets below 25º I am likely switching to hardwood. Whether the that changes the reload time or not depends on the quality and species of the hardwood. An all locust fire could boot me back up to 10 hrs.

For these reasons it would be nice to annotate the results. That would be easy afterward in Excel.

Thanks for the follow up!

Yes there should be a strong correlation between outside temp and reload interval. Sounds like you use that correlation effectively by leveraging outside temp as an indicator of when to switch to hardwood in order to extend your burn time. That’s the name of the game, and Burnwell can help you discover which combination of those variables will help you get what you want from your stove.

Right now the app is basic but effective. Make a record whenever you add wood to your stove and then export those records to spreadsheet where you can analyze them however you like. With comments like yours I hope to discover which features to add to make the app even more useful (like a notes field for annotations!).

 

[begreen]

Yes, notes would be handy. Another factor for some houses would be days with particularly strong winds.

 

[seastump]

Yes, notes would be handy. Another factor for some houses would be days with particularly strong winds.

Absolutely! One of the reasons I moved to an app instead of sticking with a spreadsheet is so I can auto-record weather conditions based on location. Wind, outside temp, barometric pressure, etc. is all coming.