Introduction and intake air temperature question

[poindexter]

Greetings.  I live near Fairbanks, Alaska, use wood for some of the heat in my home and started fooling with rocket stoves about a month ago.  I would like to get more heat from less wood next winter.

I am running prototype #8 outdoors in my back yard, six inch single wall stove pipe.  The history of the prototypes is pretty well documented here:

www.permies.com/t/30134/rocket-stoves/prototyping-stove-running-variables 

What I am finding is the amount of wood I can burn in the stoves goes up dramatically as the ambient air temperature drops.  @ +30dF the stove can give me a clean burn on 1 pound of wood in 18 minutes, acting like it can't handle any more fuel.  At +1dF (6% increase in air density) the stove can burn 2.5 pounds of wood, nice clean burn, in 19:09, again acting like it doesn't want any more fuel.    

These are my only two instrumented burns, and my instrumentation is very limited.  I "know" from experience I can get even more wood in the feed tube at -25dF.



Why is that?



PS: Thanks to Satamax Antone for linking me to here. 

[satamax]

Welcome Michael.

Well, i gonna be a pain in the butt, but i think, since i've seen your testing; you should insulate.

To explain, your burning increases with dropping temperature, because either denser air contains more oxygen or you have more temperature differential between intake and exhaust which causes more draft, increasing the oxygen ratio. Hence burning more wood.

The first point we can't adress without using a compressor of some kind. But the second point is easily changeable.