Lee192233,
I have discovered many of the same things to be true with my OWB, dry wood certainly makes a difference and having time to adequately load the furnace helps a lot. I have seen a big difference since having an adequate supply of well seasoned dry wood and not trying or forcing the system into 24 hour burn times. Back when the EPA was starting to crack down I knew things would have to change so I built a Wood Shed for storage and anticipating having to upgrade to a gasifying furnace that would require dry wood. Even the old style "smoke dragon" will burn cleaner if using dry wood properly loaded.
It always bothered me when the OWB salesman at the fair would try to sell OWBs as some magic boiler. My friends that have OWBs all burn over 10 cords of wood a year. I can't fathom that in our climate. But they only have to load 'em once a day. They are all way oversized for their houses.
I get the appeal of an OWB. The mess stays outside, split your wood next to it so there is less handling.
What bothers me is when on the reversion days with no wind it looks terrible to people who don't burn wood. There's a guy who has one in a valley near me and the whole valley will be full of smoke from him on those calm cold days. I feel bad for his neighbors.
I hope I didn't step on any toes with this rant. When I started burning wood I wasn't very good at it and my chimney would be pumping the smoke out. I had lots of creosote, burned way too much wood and I wasn't happy with the performance of my furnace. I just think it's worth the effort to learn how to burn wood as efficiently as possible.
Sorry for the long post,
Lee