Production Woodstock IS

When I heard it the stove was cooling down. I'm not quite used to running the stove yet and was doing some testing with the air damper and the cat engaged at low temps. I opened the air all the way up when the ringing began and eventually it went away. Last night before going to bed I choked the the air all the way down and never heard any bell noise through the night. I'm not sure what triggers it.

 

Speak of the devil, just as I enter the last post it started again. The bypass was open, the stovepipe temp was not quite to 250 deg yet and the fluttering began. At 250 deg. I engaged the cat and the noise lessened a bit but continued to flutter.
OK, it just stopped. The cat has been running for about 3 mins now and the damper is fully open.
My wife hasn't come down from bed yet and I'm sure I will get an earful when she does.

 

On the pre-production testers the air intake door could get a little off track from shipping and cause a slight humming noise. Easy fix was to just tap it back in place. Because of the air channels it was impossible to tell where the noise was coming from-- so if the sound is more like a hum I would try that. It sounds (pun intended) like there is a separate bell noise happening on some units. Any chance that one coincides with the correct time to engage the cat? That would be too perfect.

 

Too perfect would be an understatement. HAHA but you never know, will leave that one alone for the moment.
A humming noise I think I could live with, this is metallic, two pieces of metal coming together and fluttering. Similar to
an alarm clock bell. It's located (as you face the front of the stove) the upper right hand corner, or so it seems. It's definitely airway related, you can hear the air moving behind the panel when the fluttering is happening.

 

The thing is I only hear it when I cold start the stove. You may be seeing 250 at the stove pipe but that fluttering may still be cold metal beginning to warm. My theory is once the entire stove temp stabilizes at a certain degree and doesn't get below that all winter, you may not here it again until the next cold start.

 

While running a small load this morning off the overnight coals the ringing noise happened again, it lasted for a couple mins. The stove was cool but not cold, good bed of coals and a stove top temp of 20o.
Again this afternoon when the stove was cooling down from the morning load the ringing happened. This time I opened the door and the noise stopped.
I'm not quite sure what to make of it but if I'm getting up for work at 5 and I do a reload before leaving the house for the day and the stove decides to make the ringing noise while warming up, my wife won't be too happy.

 

I just think it will be less noticeable when we pack them full and run them hard during the winter.

 

Ship it to me; I'm sure I'll be able to rig something up. I'll send it back...eventually. I need a new toy to play with until I can score a 211.

Who is that? Frank Zappa?
Groucho: "You call this a party? The beer is warm, the women are cold, and I'm hot under the collar." ...and that ain't cool.

 

I just got word that mine will be shipping this upcoming week. Getting pretty excited now although I am not really looking forward to wrestling the old stove out and this one in part of the exercise.

Brian

 

Oooooh, another one!
Pics please.

And, welcome to FHC.
I didn't see you come in back in July.

 

Noisy or not, this thing makes some really great heat! Temps are falling into the upper 30s tonight here.

 

JA, you gonna fire her up?

 

BDF, get er dun! I was weird about it too. I spent part of a week thinking of ways to make the move easier and it worked out for me. Something that could have made 3 sore backs ended up taking 20 mins total and no sore backs.
I sold my old stove in August, rolled it onto the guys truck and used the same idea for the IS coming off my truck and into the house. You'll find a way. And congratulations. Has Lorin posted pics if your stove yet?

 

She's firing away. I'm riding at 600 degrees in front of the cat and 480 at the hot spot above the cat. This is a basement install. The thermostat upstairs jumped 4 degrees in the last hour. I had opened the windows and cooled the house down, then ran her full bore to see what she's made of.

 

Now that you have said that, please keep me informed. Interested to hear of your burn times and temp numbers

 

I joined but did not post 'cause I did not have anything to post about yet This will be my first 'store bought' wood stove and I did a lot of research, mostly on these forums, as well as a couple of trips to Woodstock Soapstone, to come to this choice.

My IS won't be anything special, just dark gray / black and simple cover designs I grabbed from Woodstock. But I am quite curious about the overall efficiency; I typically grab all but the last 200 F before letting the exhaust go up the stack. I will put some thermocouples on this stove and record the burns to get a better idea of how it goes through an entire burn cycle. Probably won't bother with any videos but I will share any interesting temp. / time data I get.

Thanks for the welcome!

Brian

 

BrianK has some vids up and a lot of info when he was a Beta tester for the IS.
Did you find any of his threads/posts?

 

Yep, all of them I think. There was another gentleman, I think on another forum, from VT who did an extensive 'running' review of beta testing an IS and what was interesting to me was that he compared it directly to the Progress Hybrid he had been burning in the same place before the IS.

I believe I looked at all popular cat (or hybrid) stoves with 3 cu. ft. fireboxes or larger before settling on the IS. I even caught a deal on the Bay for a brand new Regency F5100 (a hybrid even larger than the IS) for $1,700- that was tough to turn down. But in the end, I think the IS has the better design, a vertical CAT that is very easy to get at and <should> be more efficient on long, slow burns where the CAT is doing a lot of the heat production.

I am coming from fairly un- conventional stoves, top- loaders with huge ash-pans that are very user- friendly although they lack some finesse. I am hoping to trade off some convenience for that greater efficiency and hopefully, long burns that do not require nearly as much attention as the stoves I have used in the past.

My first major curiosity is how much air passes through the stove and at what temp. it enters the chimney. I hate seeing BTU's off into the sky :-(

Brian

 

New to this forum. I have installed my IS. Mine does have the metal noise on cold start up however, makes no other noise once warmed up. I did not hear the noise this morning when reloaded on bed of coals. Stove top temp was 230.

 

Hi haymaker, welcome to the forum, and looking forward to hearing more about your experiences with the IS. I've had mine installed for a couple of weeks but have yet to season it, the house is staying warm when it's cold with our PH. Are you finding the metal noise annoying or is it something you can live with?