Burning Pine Wood
In the last two years I’ve had good results burning pine firewood in the HeatHut. For the most part it will burn smoke free and give off a good amount of heat. Here’s how I do it.
I believe there are two to four key features that apply to burning pine wood:
1.Stoking (and starting)
2.Drying of the fuel.
3.Air supply.
4.No grates.[1]
First it is important to understand the design of my stove. It is a double barrel kit stove, of course the door is in the front and the stovepipe is in the rear (bottom barrel). Air enters under the door and around the door seal, that's for the original design. OK, there is no door seal. That’s all you really need to know, door in front and chimney in the rear.
Starting:
I, like most, started out placing my firewood in the stove with paper and added more paper near the door opening. The firewood was placed about in the middle of the stove. In doing so I would be trying to catch the whole pile of wood on fire and/or the fire would start at the front of the pile of wood and travel toward the rear on it’s way to the chimney. This made so much smoke that my stove was almost unusable and this was with hardwoods. I also tried a forced air fan and this did not help much of any. I also tried to preheat the air and this was not of much help.
Next I tried to build and maintain a small but hot fire. This was somewhat successful but it needed a lot of attention (repeated in the Stoking section).
A modification of starting a small fire was to place two fairly large pieces in the bottom of the stove and then build my small fire, with small pieces, between the two larger pieces of firewood. My theory was that the two large pieces would act as insulation for the fire and as the fire was going more strongly the two larger pieces would become more fuel for the fire. This allowed less frequent refuel from the start and was somewhat successful.
My current and most successful method is to place two medium sized pieces in the front of the stove, as close to the door as possible. Next in the rear of the stove, under the stovepipe, I place wadded up paper. Next I place three small pieces of wood on top of the two larger pieces but they are placed as rearward as possible. Next some more paper all the way in the back just like before but on top of the small pieces. Now it is time to light the paper and add more as needed. The paper flames tend to burn up the smoke as it enters the stovepipe also the ends (rear) of the firewood light first.
Stoking:
When I needed to add more firewood to the stove I would just open the door and place the new firewood on top of the remaining wood and coals. This made more smoke.
Next I tried to build and maintain a small but hot fire. This was somewhat successful but it needed a lot of attention (repeated in the Starting section).
My current and most successful method is to use a shovel and move all the glowing charcoal to the rear of the stove. Now I place the fresh firewood on the floor of the stove, as forward as possible, with only the rear ends touching the hot charcoal.
Drying:
On the right hand side of the HeatHut is where I store my dry firewood. By dry I mean it is dry enough to burn well. The left hand side, from about three feet from the floor to the ceiling, is where I dry my fuel. It takes a minimum of three days to dry. If the wood is snow covered or rained on I first allow the surface to dry in a pile on the floor so not to wet the wood below. Hence, rained/snow covered wood takes a few more days to dry. Also, the wood is warm (sometimes almost hot) when added to the stove.
I have pipes in the ceiling of the HeatHut that is part of my heat absorber (heat exchanger) and when the fire goes out, during the night, the temperature of the pipes will drop. Thus when the wood is still too wet to burn the pipes will condense water on their surface and it will kind of rain in the HeatHut in the morning. If the wood is dry this will not happen. This can be seen in the picture “drip”.
Air:
At first I had all my air entering the front of the stove. Currently I am plugging some of these holes and have made air holes in the rear of the stove.
[1] Grates:
I am not sure about this but I have good results with no grates. Maybe pine would burn too fast if used with grates or maybe hot charcoal would fall through them and heat fresh firewood that I add and cause more smoke. With this stove there is no way to really test this. So it is just a theory.
In the pictures called “peep” you will see what the flames look like with the stove door closed. Picture “inside” shows the inside of the HeatHut, behind the green panel is the stove and wood is on the left and right. The “stack” picture shows how smoke free the stove can be. It still will smoke sometimes but most of the time it is like in the picture.
Jeff Davis
stack: This is a picture of the exhaust flowing from the chimney. No visible smoke.
drip: Water condensation on pipes.
