Wood stove heat

[Nutball]

Hickory smells so good, sometimes I waft some smoke into the room with the stove door.

 

[Cobleskill]

Chesnut Oak was the nicest smelling wood ever for me. Burned exceptional too. Too bad hardly any around here.

 

[Burnham]

The native bitter cherry is the nicest smelling firewood I get.

 

[lxskllr]

Regular black cherry or apple is the best I've noticed. Never burned chestnut oak. They're around. but still living. Hickory's nice too, and I've had black locust that smelled a bit like smoked ham. That was pretty good.

 

[davidwyby]

Mesquite is quite smoky and strong smelling

 

[Altissimus]

Love all the different smoke and smells indoors and out. Except for Poplar and Staghorn Sumac , of course Cherry and Apple love ... best smelling heat is Juneberry. Small trees so it's irregular and random when on the pile

 

[cory]

Great comments but, er, I rarely if ever smell any smoke in the house by stove (while feeding logs etc) nor outside so are you gents talking about campfires?

 

[lxskllr]

My stove needs work. The glass is messed up up front, and I feed it on the side. That causes smoke to puff out when I open the side door. I need to fix it, but keep kicking it down the road. Easiest fix is to block off the windows entirely, but I like seeing what the fire's doing without opening doors. There's a few ways to fix it readily in my skillset. I just need to pick one, and make the time to do it.

 

[cory]

The window is mad key imo

 

[flushcut]

Apple with some hickory, mic drop peace sign Thank you! And have a good night!

 

[Nutball]

Those incense sticks would be a whole lot better if they used hickory or cherry for the stick instead of bamboo.

 

[Nutball]

Mesquite is quite smoky and strong smelling

I use it for smoking meat mixed with other woods. It gives a stronger sharper flavor.

 

[flushcut]

World have fun

 

[flushcut]

^What the hell is that post!
Anyway new old stove

She kicks some heat!

 

[Burnham]

Those are great old beasties. Far too many have been kicked to the curb in my part of the world due to not meeting EPA regs when a house changes hands, per local law.

You did good!

 

[Dave Shepard]

Is that a Fisher? I'd like to have something in my fire place for supplemental btus. Or win the lottery.

 

[flushcut]

Thanks B! I feel it’s a score.

Yes a Fisher grandma bear in great shape.

I had it running all day today, shop day and rainy. Great heat output!

 

[cory]

Yoooo. Question here. Now that I'm retreaded, I'm burning a lot of wood everyday. And I'm happy to report btw that my wood supply is working out quite well I think bc I made sure to cut all pieces reasonably short to help with the 100% hand splitting and I split all pieces a lot as in no big chunks. Those 2 factors I believe facilitated faster drying in my large stacked pile covered only on top with one sheet of clear plastic.

The problem I'm having is with coals. When I load up the empty firebox in the morning I get great heat out of the resulting roaring fire. Eventually of course, the logs burn down and the heat output lowers some and I then add more logs and the output rises again. Rinse and repeat. But after about 5 hours of this, eventually the level of red hot coals builds up quite high in the fire box thus physically limiting the amount of room available to add in more logs so therefore I get a reduction in heat output despite the box containing a large amount of coals.

No doubt you wood stove savants have some answers...

 

[Cobleskill]

I have been meaning to make a mesh shovel for the purpose of saving the coals and charcoal but letting the ash fall through it. Collect the coals while you clean out the ashes and dump the coals back in.

 

[cory]

Maybe I should just remove some of the coals when they build up too much though I smell a rat regarding handling large quantities of red hot coals

 

[Cobleskill]

I find there is usually a lot of ash under the coals. I sweep the coals to one side and shovel the ashes out, the sweep the coals to the other side and repeat. If you had a metal container to hold the coals and had a safe place to set it down I don't see any rats.

The sweep method works ok, just not great.

 

[SeanKroll]

Stir and poke the fire.

 

[davidwyby]

Close damper to keep in more heat from coals or open to let them burn up?

 

[treebilly]

Open it up a bit and let the coals burn down is what I found to work

 

[Burnham]

I handle it like Rich does, though burning somewhat less dense fuels like we have here in my part of Oregon (Doug fir, BL maple, red alder) that issue doesn't really come up often. A deep bed of hot coals generates plenty of heat output from my stove, generally.