Physical properties of the universe
Oct. 4th, 2022 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI got six cords of birch for the woodstove this year, enough to last me roughly two scant years, depending, since it was priced way below value and birch isn't even often available here. Besides, if we're post-dead-pine, I'll need to keep two years' worth on site to season.
To start, I have a fancy catalytic stove, a Blaze King, which is definitely larger than my house needs. It has a catalyst, a grid over which the smoke passes, which burns a lot of the stuff in the smoke so gives me more heat and less dirty chimney and waste for the amount of wood I use.
I have a certain set of expectations about how the stove works from the last five winters, how much heat it puts out with wet or dry dead wood (though the density of wood varies, as does the resin content, and that shifts things), what the shape of heat output looks like (big spike at the beginning, another spike when the catalyst is engaged, then a long long cooling period), how dirty the chimney and window get, how to start it, all sorts of things. For all the time I've been burning beetle-killed pine, killed roughly fifteen years ago or maybe twentyish by now, that was standing dead all around and was easily harvested for firewood. It had dried/seasoned, standing, for a long time and didn't need much management on this end.
I did a test fire a couple days ago, it got the house super warm even though I didn't fill the stove more than a scant half full, if that. The birch barely caught; once I put some pieces of pine in it went long and warmer than expected. I added a couple more pieces of birch overnight, three small splits, and the house spiked up and held at 26C or so, well above my summer comfort level.
I've let the house cool for a couple days, that basement holds thermal mass from the stove well, and then just now lit another fire. It's just an amazingly different wood. I'm going to have to order a little more pine to start fires, the birchbark will burn right off and leave the wood itself scorched but unlit. I can't tell how wet it is (need to get my measuring device out of the storage) but it's super heavy, I cannot tell if that's density or water or both. It burns much cleaner than pine right at the beginning, but dirtier later in the cycle. It seems to be hotter, and maybe (?) more reactive to the controls in the beginning -- possibly because there's no resin to light?
This will definitely be some learning.
To start, I have a fancy catalytic stove, a Blaze King, which is definitely larger than my house needs. It has a catalyst, a grid over which the smoke passes, which burns a lot of the stuff in the smoke so gives me more heat and less dirty chimney and waste for the amount of wood I use.
I have a certain set of expectations about how the stove works from the last five winters, how much heat it puts out with wet or dry dead wood (though the density of wood varies, as does the resin content, and that shifts things), what the shape of heat output looks like (big spike at the beginning, another spike when the catalyst is engaged, then a long long cooling period), how dirty the chimney and window get, how to start it, all sorts of things. For all the time I've been burning beetle-killed pine, killed roughly fifteen years ago or maybe twentyish by now, that was standing dead all around and was easily harvested for firewood. It had dried/seasoned, standing, for a long time and didn't need much management on this end.
I did a test fire a couple days ago, it got the house super warm even though I didn't fill the stove more than a scant half full, if that. The birch barely caught; once I put some pieces of pine in it went long and warmer than expected. I added a couple more pieces of birch overnight, three small splits, and the house spiked up and held at 26C or so, well above my summer comfort level.
I've let the house cool for a couple days, that basement holds thermal mass from the stove well, and then just now lit another fire. It's just an amazingly different wood. I'm going to have to order a little more pine to start fires, the birchbark will burn right off and leave the wood itself scorched but unlit. I can't tell how wet it is (need to get my measuring device out of the storage) but it's super heavy, I cannot tell if that's density or water or both. It burns much cleaner than pine right at the beginning, but dirtier later in the cycle. It seems to be hotter, and maybe (?) more reactive to the controls in the beginning -- possibly because there's no resin to light?
This will definitely be some learning.
