What Is In Your Stove Right Now?

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It's 18 degrees out at the moment, I'm burning down coals that should be ready around 10, the basement is 81, the living area 69 & 70 and the sleeper temp is 68 hopefully hitting 69 before the overnight fire.

The overnight load will be 4 or 5 splits of ash with 3 splits of ironwood, that should give us enough heat throughout the night. Tomorrow the temps will be in the 30's so we'll be burning pine all day tomorrow.
 
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Back from my trip. Loaded the cold stove with six splits of sugar maple (18 at the moment going up to 30 by tomorrow afternoon). The heat pump brought the house to 71 by the time I was back. Turned the pump off, LP is cozying up the upstairs and the BK is in slow mode working on the lower level of the house.
 
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jblnut said:
It looks like a choo choo train until it gets done with the initial firing. There seems to be a fair bit of moisture in the coal so I’m sure that’s not helping. No worries on the questions lol.

Pics speak. Honestly though it looks like this the first firing after I reload it with wood that isn’t nice and bone dry. Closest neighbor is over a half mile away and burns way worse stuff than I ever have so he’ll never grumble lol
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Holy bag filter leak Batman! My method 9 form just burst into flames!

There is a cattle farm I pass on the way to work that runs coal and wood in their owb too, it’s real easy to see where the air layers are above his farm. I’m pretty certain he burns a lot more coal than wood though.
 
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Couple hours ago, I tossed my last cord down the bilco doors to the basement. With temps hitting a low of 18-19*, I'll be building a bigger bed of coals before the "overnight" reload. More maple, ash, locust, and oak in it now.

Thankful for a calm night without windchills. Hopefully I can score a couple pick up loads of dead wood from jobs. I have just under 5 cord in the basement now. Went without a truck for a year which, put a beating un my wood stash with nothing new coming in. I was 2 yrs ahead in supply .... Starting over this winter and summer.
 
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Burnt a few splits of ash this evening to reduce coal while keeping stove hot.

Temp will be in the low 20s / high 10s tonight and mid 30s for high tomorrow. Looks like a couple days of hard running coming up. For tonight it's a full load of locust with 3 biobricks filling in the space on the side.
 
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Tonight our temp bottomed out at 16.3 before heading north to 18. I loaded up the wood stove with a 5 & 4 load, ash & ironwood. The last I checked the stovetop temps were 525 on the left, 550 on the right with a stack temp of 325, those should rise some.

The basement started out at 77, the living area 69 with the sleeper at 68.
 
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Dozed off a bit early and been up again for an hour. Nice big bed of coals greeted me for fresh splits. 2 sugar maple, and more ash lit almost upon contact. Added a nice black locust round. 4'' diam and 24'' long. Going back down now to stir it all up a bit and add more fuel.

Trouble is, I'm wide awake now. This is my 4th season lacking sleep. I can't wait for a gasifying OWB. So much less work with all at the boiler. Oh, and I'll be able to sleep normal hours.
 
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all night moe said:
Dozed off a bit early and been up again for an hour. Nice big bed of coals greeted me for fresh splits. 2 sugar maple, and more ash lit almost upon contact. Added a nice black locust round. 4'' diam and 24'' long. Going back down now to stir it all up a bit and add more fuel.

Trouble is, I'm wide awake now. This is my 4th season lacking sleep. I can't wait for a gasifying OWB. So much less work with all at the boiler. Oh, and I'll be able to sleep normal hours.
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I've just done 3 full nights sleep...last time I did that was pre-covid

stove is out after discussions with the missus. Fears of what might be occurring with CO alongside my MIL's vertigo getting worse (she doesn't do much to counter it other than talk and make Drs appts)...and I've been struggling with some vertigo-type issues for about 10 days now. My issues started after 7 days in 8 in a nacelle demoing this barn. Got a Drs appt on Jan9. I think I have a sinus issue...but I'd also never spent any time in a nacelle before.

so, more CO detectors and new window seal for the evil Panadero and back to electric heat until the cold rolls in next week.

weather here is frightening howling wind and torrential rain...dark as night at 0900

Missus wants to run the stove only in waking hours...I'm thinking to leave it unused for longer and see if there are any improvements on the vertigo issues.
 
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ctreitzell said:
I've just done 3 full nights sleep...last time I did that was pre-covid
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I'm a light sleeper. I never sleep straight through. Getting up though is a whole different story. Usually I can crash back out. This time, like many others, I'm still owl eyed. Work is going to drag tomorrow.

Sorry to hear your troubles. I know economic times are tough .... wishing you some good fortune and a new stove .... with an adequate chimney.
 
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all night moe said:
I'm a light sleeper. I never sleep straight through. Getting up though is a whole different story. Usually I can crash back out. This time, like many others, I'm still owl eyed. Work is going to drag tomorrow.

Sorry to hear your troubles. I know economic times are tough .... wishing you some good fortune and a new stove .... with an adequate chimney.
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very kind! thanks

I've been happy with 5hrs sleep since my night shift days at MTV in the early 2000s. I've always preferred doing something awake than sleeping.

I'm already fortunate in that I've been working for myself from home since 2009.

But yeah, between Brexit crushing my business and COVID, work has dried up. Oh well, at least I have income property...and just got my french health card which took 3 years after being married 26 years!
 
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Rusty18 said:
Holy bag filter leak Batman! My method 9 form just burst into flames!

There is a cattle farm I pass on the way to work that runs coal and wood in their owb too, it’s real easy to see where the air layers are above his farm. I’m pretty certain he burns a lot more coal than wood though.
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What’s a bag filter ? This stove is wide open from firebox to sky. Once in a while I let it get good and roaring and squirt a squeeze of lighter fluid in the upper flue and light it all on fire to clean the flue and stack out. Shoots a nice flame out the stack and cleans the creosote up right nice.

The way I look at it is simple. The wood in this stove will get burnt in here and turnt into heat for us or get burnt on a giant pile in a field somewhere. This thing re-burns the smoke decently so it’s got to be better. The coal would get burnt and turnt into electricity one day so I may as well use it here. It was more of an experiment to see if it extends my burn times overnight more than anything. I don’t know that I’ll get more for next year yet or not.
 
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Our temp this morning was 21.9, the basement started out at 73 (lots of nice coals) the living area was 67 & 68 with the sleeper temp at 67.

After burning down some coals, I added about five splits of pine this morning.
 
Getting into the "fight the ash" weather. Big pile of coals yet from last night but the house is getting chilly, so pushed most of the ash to one side and put some aspen in the middle and other side.
 
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NickW said:
Getting into the "fight the ash" weather. Big pile of coals yet from last night but the house is getting chilly, so pushed most of the ash to one side and put some aspen in the middle and other side.
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After burning almost 10 face cord of pine this heating season, the coals from hardwood is nice until the real cold weather shows up.
 
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ctreitzell said:
we had minus temps in Nov...well, minus in celsius
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Interesting bit of useless trivia I remember from high-school Chemistry class, which I believe to be true, unless our teacher was fibbing to us:

Celsius was the guy who came up with the idea of using the freezing and boiling points of water as the basis for the temperature scale, after Fahrenheit had based his scale on the freezing point of brine (0°F) and human core body temperature (~100°F). But Celsius got it backwards, and put the freezing point of water at 100°C with the boiling point at 0°C.

This obviously created some unnecessary algebra for those using it in formulas, and didn't work at all with the concept of "absolute zero" (Kelvin), so the scale was reversed by his followers, and renamed "Centigrade". This is why you probably remember your grandparents almost interchangeably using the terms Centigrade and Celsius, before "Centigrade" somehow fell out of common usage.

So, when someone says "40° Celsius is a hot day", they're not kidding! Of course they mean 40° Centigrade or 104°F, not 40° Celsius, which would be 140°F.

I can't remember the last time I heard anyone outside of science class use the term "Centigrade". It may be the proper term, but it's fallen out of common usage.
 
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Ashful said:
Interesting bit of useless trivia I remember from high-school Chemistry class, which I believe to be true, unless our teacher was fibbing to us:

Celsius was the guy who came up with the idea of using the freezing and boiling points of water as the basis for the temperature scale, after Fahrenheit had based his scale on the freezing point of brine (0°F) and human core body temperature (~100°F). But Celsius got it backwards, and put the freezing point of water at 100°C with the boiling point at 0°C.

This obviously created some unnecessary algebra for those using it in formulas, and didn't work at all with the concept of "absolute zero" (Kelvin), so the scale was reversed by his followers, and renamed "Centigrade". This is why you probably remember your grandparents almost interchangeably using the terms Centigrade and Celsius, before "Centigrade" somehow fell out of common usage.

So, when someone says "40° Celsius is a hot day", they're not kidding! Of course they mean 40° Centigrade or 104°F, not 40° Celsius, which would be 140°F.

I can't remember the last time I heard anyone outside of science class use the term "Centigrade". It may be the proper term, but it's fallen out of common usage.
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I remember it as you recount it

nevertheless, the weather report and units in EU and UK is termed "C" so I reckon it could denote either...?
 
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anyway...wood burner currently has cold coals in it
 
24 this morning. Flue still warm from last night. 4 medium small splits oak and maple and two smaller splits for top down. Rigorous secondaries great draft. Primary air 1/8 open. STT 550 and climbing.
 
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it's absolutely howling wind today with orange flood warning...doesn't affect us up on the hill here, but the salon, landing, kitchen and bedrooms are 15°C/ 59° F without a fire in the wood burner

it's warmer in the office at the other end of this building with 2 elec heaters

there's probably a cold start on the docket :-/
 
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ctreitzell said:
it's absolutely howling wind today with orange flood warning...doesn't affect us up on the hill here, but the salon, landing, kitchen and bedrooms are 15°C/ 59° F without a fire in the wood burner

it's warmer in the office at the other end of this building with 2 elec heaters

there's probably a cold start on the docket :-/
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I don’t know how one can function in 15C indoor temp. Sweaters and blankets I guess. I keep my house at that temp when I am away.
 
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