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[Scott7m]

Black locust from what I've read from different sources is 27-28 million btu per cord

[wicked weasel]

Check out "chimney sweep online" they have a good reference.Maybe someone could post it up. I am not that good with comp.

[MTJAG]

Good points.  Don't forget your elevation is a factor too!  You running with or without restrictor plate?

Yes, the restrictor plate is in, but with temps in the single digits, it doesn't seem to be restricting much 

[Ridgekid]

I'd like to do it over the course of 2 months, Jan and feb.   

Yes wood is 8660 btu per pound at 0% moisture content.

So if you have 20% moisture content, So if you had 1.25 pounds of wood at 20% you have about 1/4 pound of water and 1 pound of wood. So, at 20% moisture content the available btu is around 6930 or so.

TWO MONTHS!! I can't do that. Here's a compromise-

I do count how many pieces I put in the OWB. After this weekend, we average the weight of what I stock and multiply it by the number of pieces I throw in?

For example:
Today I stocked 5 pieces (so far)- The weights came in at 11#, 12#, 12#, 17# and 21#. They all had a 16% moisture content.

The average weight of those 5 pieces is 14.6#.

If I multiply 14.6 by the total number pieces used so far this year = 5007.8#

Based on that information- How many BTU do you calculate I used in 44 days of operation?

[Scott7m]

Based on this figures and let's say your wood averages 20% moisture per stick that equals are 34.7 million btu's

Thats assuming your getting about 6930 btu per pound, which would be great. 

Now you could do a calculation on how many btu your home Requires and how many of those btu u r using and losing. 

[Ridgekid]

2700 sq ft in my zone of the country requires 121,500 BTU to heat my house. My 50 gallon hwh is holding water from the dhwx which comes in at 57* water and heating it to at least 160*. Based on that I use 41,200 BTU.

I have no real way to figure how many times I drew heat off the Green Dragon to maintain that comfort zone. Do you have a educated guess?

[Scott7m]

I have no way of knowing that but I'll try to pull some numbers together from all of this.   

[Ridgekid]

Avg weight changed to 15.6#. I added four pieces to keep her going for the night.

I'll weigh all my pieces tomorrow too and come up with final number I can use with my wood count. I just have to keep the bathroom scale hidden for one more day!    Btw it's digital.

[Ridgekid]

Added five more pieces this morning changing the avg weight to 13#. On a side note: I walked back in the house and my wife is roflhao. What's so funny?  I seen you out there weighing your wood!    I guess it would look funny if you didn't know why.

[Scott7m]

Haha. I can imagine

[Ridgekid]

Final stocking for the weekend. I put in 19 pieces of wood weighing a total of 237#'s . This averaged my pieces to 12.4#'s each.

I'll keep up my wood count and use 12.5#'s per piece. Sound fair? 

[Ridgekid]

Scott-

Using your number 6930 btu per pound I went and figured a daily average.

If I used a average of 118# per day over the weekend I came up with 817,740 BTU per day? or we can look at it like this: 125,806 BTU per burn? (I had 6.5 burns per day-13 total for the weekend)

I already figured it takes 162,700 BTU to heat my water and home. I still can't tell you how may times I used HW or the heat came on. If I take 162,700 and divide it by daily total BTU it equals 5X. Since I recorded 6 burns my loss would be one burn or 125,806 BTU's? Of course this could be misleading too since the Green Dragon does not come on every time my heat or HW gets used.

I don't know, I'm just trying to get a clearer picture of what is actually going on. What are you thoughts?



 

[Scott7m]

I'll try to figure something up..

Now as far as what you need to heat your home, the btu calcs usually base it off the coldest weather we should see, is that correct?

[Ridgekid]

Yes.

The multiplier was 45-50 x sq ft. I used 45 Because my home is well insulated.

[Scott7m]

Yea so, so far this winter the actual heat load has been like 1/3 of what it will be when old man winter arrives. 

Seeing that you haven't burnt in really cold weather yet makes me think you'll be in for a surprise before long.  I don't mean that in a bad or negative way but when you get to single digits and less wood consumption really goes up.