On 11/03/2021 14:05, David wrote:


Reporting back.

I found the pallet thing which the wood burner was delivered on, hidden
away.
That does the job adequately (shifts around but keeps the axe away from
the hard standing).

The good bit is that splitting the wood down a little further has made a
big difference to the speed that the stove gets up to temperature.
Once the coals are red hot the bigger bits burn well.

I assume the slow starting was due to the ratio of volume to surface area
- not enough surface area for the fire to catch well.
Also (see why wooden beams don't burn as fast as you would expect in a
house fire) the carbonisation of the surface can retard the spread of the
fire.

Anyway, worth doing.

Although it is getting towards the end of the log burning season and the
log pile is quite small now.

Cheers



Dave R


The "area to volume" thing you mention is correct, but the other good
argument for splitting especially if you use timber from logs is that
this gives them a better chance to dry. Most commercial logs are not
dried for very long, and often only in thick sections which dry slowly.

My local logs typically come as cylinders between 4 and 8 inches in
diameter, or sometimes split from bigger rings into pieces typically 6
inches across. I used to split a dustbin full into pieces that were
typically triangles of 3 to 4 inches on each side. I'd stack these up
each side of the woodburner. I'd burn from one side, then refill that
and start burning from the other. That way (after the first load), I was
always burning wood that had been split and in a warm place for a week
or so. This generates significantly more heat than freshly split wood,
because damp wood steals heat by sending water vapour up the chimney.