My thoughts on burning
zogger, why don't you use a damper anymore?
I'm an old nerd and woods hippie, I have a fixation on wondering why, and how to do something better...it is built in...
Short answer- I found I didn't need one, and it keeps the chimney from sooting or creosoting up. When I used a damper before, it was like every other month had to pull the stove pipe, clean that, then once before and once during burning season clean the chimney.
long answer and some thoughts--Got sick of that noise, I think having to do that just sucks..never liked it So, one day sat down and thought about it, thought about a wood heater as a combustible gas heat engine. Like a car. You don't put a restrictive muffler on a car to get more power or more mileage. Wood heater is the same, sometimes you want more power, sometimes more mileage, but both is nice as well..how to do that, on the cheap??? the expensive way is on sale for big buck$$, I never have that, so...
So I am like, "why the heck am I supposed to be using this exhaust restricter again, does this really work, or is it old wives tales junk science like so much other crap in our society"??? (I got a suspicious mind about a lot of that stuff..)
I'm staring at the chemistry and engineering and dang if I can see any so called benefit to it. So I yanked the sucker out and started experimenting.
If you want more power, you go to bigger displacement and/or more fuel and air delivery. If you want more mileage, less fuel and burn it better and be happy with a little less whizzbang down the road.
In neither case do you restrict your exhaust. Neither. anyone who knows engines knows that, worst case a very slightly modded expenasion chamber, or crossover pipes, but that's the nature of a reciprocating piston engine, which the wood stove ain't got.so it ain't needed...
Wood is the fuel, the stove is the engine, so I adjust-to follow the analogy- if I want to run on from one cylinder to eight, I do that with what species and what size of wood goes into the heater. then I adjust the air intake for my "throttle".
The exhaust, I run a straight pipe, no muffler at all.
And that's it, and it works.
I get half a cup maybe of real real fine soot/ash out of the pipes once a year, and the chimney stays clean, there's hardly anything there *to* clean. No cat, no turbo extra air intake gizmos, nothing.
I get the heat I want, just by being more careful with how I feed it and when and how often and adjusting the little air intake. I can go from full blast max heat thin split real dense hardwood with the air intake wide open, to a huge chunk of something cooler burning like poplar, then adjust the air down to the crack around the door. I get heat, of the quantity and duration I need, it works, that's it. Little more personal work involved because requirements change a little night time to day and day to day during the season, but you get used to it fast. And the heater is right here in out living room hang out area, so it isn't a hassle for me to load it and adjust it appropriately.
Maybe I'd use a damper if I had one of these 1000 buck used or whatever new stoves and it was required to make all the gizmos work, but..that is so far outside the budget it ain't funny, and I am still not convinced a damper is needed if you adjust the fuel load and air intake correctly. And I check my chimney, very rarely do I get visible smoke.
I've done it both ways now, and see no downside to not using a damper, as long as you pay attention to things. You can slow the exhaust with the air intake, no need for a damper then. If you want to add an additional multi pipe heat exchanger and fan deal in the stove pipe, you could do that I guess. If you want a lower output fire to last longer, just throw in a much bigger piece of wood, less surface area on fire. That's why all my stacks are mixed sizes and species. I can drop a big 10-12 inch piece medium long in from the top, or a gnarly crotch chunk. That burns a long time with either warm or mild temps. If I need a lot of heat, back to splits and smaller rounds and loading more frequently and opening the air inlet more (and I have a second air inlet I can pop open, but rarely use it or need to use it).
And that's another reason why I harvest much smaller stuff than most guys, it helps me adjust for the heat output I want. I stack one inch to almost twelve inches diameter sized pieces,10 to around 18 inches long. The shorter ones are the thick sweet gum pieces, because I have a lot of them to burn and won't try to split them, waste of time, so I cut them a little shorter so they season with the rest of the wood. They burn roughly like soft maple for heat output, decent enough to keep. I cut some of the harder woods like that, but longer, like if you get a bend or elbow in a thick branch, I cut that elbow part out special, just to have an oddball big piece to put in at night on real cold nights (for here), and it gets blended in with the other wood, so one is always handy. I cut small, all the way to over three hundred lb rounds, because small is just like splits, just less work, and it's right there for taking on the tree, so why not? I'm standing right there with a saw...most guys leave the small, cut big, then go out of their way to go back and split small again! They just left a ton of small pieces out in the woods!
I learned to keep the small as well as the other stuff when I was cutting with a bowsaw and using my boots for the skidder to get it out of the woods, and my splitter was also my do everything axe with a 2.5 lb head. Small Is all I could handle really. Anything that needed splitting was done with the dinky axe, so I learned to be very careful splitting and do it right the first time, I learned technique in reading the wood and speed and accuracy over brute force and blunt force trauma with some gigantic maul like a sharpened anvil. I tried one of them things once..man..I'll take technique and a lighter axe. (this is why I love the fiskars). Learned to use small a lot because a third of a horse power human can do a lot of work, as long as it is lighter duty. I can drag out an entire small tree if I have to. Cutting thirty inch rounds and getting them out all by hand, with a biodrive saw, and dragging the stuff or carrying it..nope. You'll keel over, even if you are hoss cartwright. So I learned small wood can work. (this was in maine, yes it got cold, uninsulated single bare wood plank and tar paper cabin, did around 4-5 cords a year heat, another few for sugaring. I did own a chainsaw, but that was strictly for wood for sale, about a cord a year I sold some small bundles) All my own wood I did by hand, because....my nature. Felt like it. I like a woodrobics workout some. I liked quiet a lot more back then. Now I am deaf enough..it's always sorta quiet...HAHAHAHAHA
Now I have a tractor and chainsaws now, the cabin is still uninsulated but at least there are two layers of wood in the walls, plus I live in the south now, so all that helps with my neogeezerhood physical abilities. The wood heating theory is the same, and so are the trees. Trees got from less than pencil sized wood on up, and it all burns, and you can use it if you've a mind to.
Cutting by hand, I would drag entire branches/small trees/small logs off trees in, buck it up to the point where it was real small, then make a pile with the left over twigs, and a year later, next heating season, when they were real dry, break up all the little stuff with my hands or by stomping on it, put it in buckets, and burn that too. Some I would wrap in used hay bale twine and make my own "artificial logs". Great for in the morning, throw one of them in, whoosh, instaheat..man, I miss those little birch twigs....
In other words, the entire freeking tree minus the stump in the ground, every single bit of it.
You get a lot of heat out of little stuff, it just doesn't last long. *shrugs* feed the heater more often, it's that simple. It's good to get up out of the chair in the evening more often anyway. So I throw more on every half hour or so, I don't care, it is like three steps from where I am sitting.
Bwa! Lot of typing for why I don't use a damper, but...that's why.
