Lightning wrote:I think what is happening with the stove size is that secondary air is sinking into the fuel bed along the sides where it's cooler and then moves laterally into the center where it's hotter. Once there it has an opportunity to keep the fire burning.
Lets ponder some more about this and what it could implicate. With a mature fire, I've determined in the past that when I cut secondary air, I see a rise in over the load door temp and a decrease in flue pipe temp. Seems logical that this keeps more heat in the stove and less heat lost up the chimney. The result of less nitrogen hauling heat with it up the chimney.
So if it's true that secondary air alone can maintain a coal fire (with stove size coal) which the test above implies, maybe its also true that oxygen left over from its first pass thru the fuel bed (from the primary) can get yet another opportunity to react with the coal because of the mechanism quoted above. The bigger spaces that the stove size provide for convection currents to infiltrate the fuel bed, from above, I believe is the key to this whole debacle.
Maybe this is proof that stove size is more efficient at using the available oxygen that is brought into the stove and possibly the answer to whole riddle of the topic question. I believe Mr. Sherrick uses stove size in his base burners. Maybe this is why.
These are just a few things that crossed my mind in the last few minutes..
