Graham Chiu

Thanks Phil .. but too late, I've already ordered some from overseas

Oh, and that Noori also needs a decent chimney.  Idyllic it might look but the thing is chucking out black carbon that the kids nearby are breathing in.

Those little camp stoves don't have enough of a chimney effect to pull oxygen into the fire so it seems reasonable to me to use a fan.  Does the biolite recharge its own battery using the Peltier effect?

If you need to use a fan then the draft isn't correct which may mean not enough oxygen is getting to the fire.
Soot burns at over 1112 deg F but you will deposit soot at the beginning of the fire along the exhaust path, and surely it will remain there as those temperatures are only reached in the burn chamber and riser.

Is the system smoking outside at all during the burn as opposed to just the beginning?

My 5 minute riser deposits soot as the fire starts up but as the fire gets going the soot burns off again.

Has it stopped smoking from the outside chimney now that you're using drier/harder wood?

The company that sold me the magnetic glazing system suggested I get the cheaper version which just used the plastic trim, and it gets nailed into place.  It would have been about NZD50 cheaper, and he said most people never removed the glazing once it was on.  But my experience with something I tried a few years ago was that you can't stop moisture getting into the gap, even with silica gel bags, and it's best to have something you can easily remove to swap out the silica.  

Interesting tip on silica gel. But I'm finding a problem finding anyone who has them!

My second morning with one acrylic pane in place

My daughter had a few sash windows retrofitted with thermally broken double glazing units.  I guess a lot of the cost was in the labour and there is a top pane, and a bottom pane, but it cost NZ$2000 per sash window.  This solution is less than 10% of that cost but it's a DIY solution so you need the time, and perhaps more care than I took.

And I bought a magnetic glazing kit last week and did one window last night.  Made a few mistakes but will correct that in the next attempt.  Not only should one measure twice and cut once, one should at least measure once!

Peter Sedgwick wrote:No trouble. Just don’t want to over mass the thing and lose drafting and reliability.

Any thoughts on how to approach would be very helpful.

Cheers Peter and crew

My understanding is that you don't want to take heat away from the combustion chamber as that needs to be as hot as possible to burn all the combustibles but after that adding mass should not affect the draft.
If you're seeing some smoke past the initial burn that suggests that your fire isn't as hot as it could be ... unless you're actually still seeing moisture being driven out