Finally pulled the trigger...

You must be heating a large area (sorry if i missed it) , im running mine at 1/4 to 1/3 throttle and doing ok with the coals so far, the ash pan is getting full quicker then expected.

 

Yes I’m heating an 2200 square foot modular ranch with vault ceilings 10 foot at their peak. It’s quite a large air volume to heat. The Austral handled it well enough, but I was hoping to use less than 6-7 full cord to heat the house like years past. The first year with the Austral was a challenge too until I figured out how to run it.

I’m pretty sure I’ll get it figured out here with the tips I’ve been given so far. I still think I’m using less wood so far with the IS but was caught of guard with the coal issue.

 

Crank the air up.

 

LOL, you are my wood burning twin, just got the IS installed and had an austral for 2200 or so sq feet.

 

I thought I saw that in your thread… the Austral was a good stove but that beast was all fire all the time with little I could do to slow it down. This stove seems the opposite. Can go low and slow but just need to get the coal management taken care of. I believe it will come as I learn how to run it better.

I think this is what I will try next. Run it more like the Austral during the morning/day when it’s really cold overnight. We have a warm up coming with maybe some more single digits over night forecast for the weekend and beyond. I can see possibly modding that ash drawer in the future though. It’s a simple and elegant solution.

As and aside I should mention that with the Austral I would regularly have to run the evening temp up well into the 90s to keep the furnace from kicking on before I got up in the morning when temps would dip into the single digits. I have not had to do that yet, so the Ideal Steel is still out performing the Austral. The coal management issue is minor and I appreciate all the help fellers!

 

Glad i could help, brother.

Are you able to get by on 2 loads per day?
(On a somewhat regular day. Not windy or single digits)

 

I know how much pics help. Here I’ve just reloaded the stove. It’s kind of hard to tell but there’s a solid 2 medium splits worth of coals under/between those bottom splits. I’d say firebox is 90-95% full.

 

Tim I’d say on a regular day with 20 degree average temps it takes 3 loads to keep the house warm. Backwoods Savage and I were just talking about it this morning. I think I’m dealing with a greater heat load than I realize because of the ceilings, windows, and crappy modular skylights in the kitchen.

 

Just thought about this, B.
When you're down to just a coal bed, try loosening the latch on the ash pan door till you see the coals turn red. Open the cat bypass.

I'm assuming by now you figured out you can supercharge the fire the same way on a reload to get it going. But don't put wood in with no flames and then open the ash pan door. The firebox will fill with a thick white smoke and when it ignites it'll flash out the cracks and crevices.
Or blow the gasket out of the lid.

 

With 3 loads per day i can see why you're fighting big coal beds. Even burning ash.

 

Yep, a little under the grate air goes a long way to burning down the coals as the wood burns. I have a rotary valve over a triangle shaped cut in my ash pan door but if I had to do it all over again I would just drill a couple of 1/4" holes through the door and use a refrigerator magnet to adjust the air and then just leave it alone.

Enlarging the two holes on the inside of the firebox, at the bottom, and the one outside air hole, centered just below the firebox opening would probably work OK also. The downside is that the air is introduced at the front / bottom of the airbox, and those holes tend to get clogged with ash, coals or even splits now and again. Under the grate air will always find a way through the grate somewhere where there is a gap in the ash / coals / splits.

A very slight bend in the ash pan door handle will allow the door to be opened ever so slightly to get a fire going much quicker than any other type of air supply including leaving the door ajar. But that seems to be frowned upon by some folks and who knows, maybe it is something that only a terrorist wood burning person would do?

This is how I modded my I.S. ash pan door.....
Replacing Fireview with....?

 

Try to get nice lazy blue/yellow flames. If it turns to a bright yellow blast furnace it will foul the cat and coat the glass with a thick white mess that you'll need to scrape off with a razor scraper. Nasty.

 

Yep I have used that trick to get the party started faster. Will have to play with the ash door more to see if I can get the coals burned down faster. Like Dave was saying the issue here is getting the air down to the coals. The ash door seems to be the easiest path to accomplish that.

 

Ah now I remember it was a pic of your stove I saw with the modified ash door! I see a 1/4” hole in my ash drawer’s future.

 

Yeah, burning all winter with nothing but hardwood, I would find the stove 1/2 clogged with coals and at that point I could not load the stove with enough wood to produce enough heat for, say, 8 or 9 hours unattended. So I began to modify the stove to try and burn the coals AS the wood was burning. My goal was not any kind of nuclear fire or to triple the stove's output, merely trying to have the firebox burn so it was mostly empty when needing a reload.

And yeah, the easy way to perform this mod would be with 1/4" holes, perhaps three of them, covering them as needed with magnets, as seen in Tim's photo above. Please do do yourself a favor though and de-burr or chamfer the holes, inside and out, or they will be like little round razor blades just waiting to bite someone. And of course you can certainly start with one hole and see if you need any more. I need a bit more area than what one 1/4" hole will provide when it is bitterly cold and windy outside. Not in any way the fault of the stove, merely physics showing all of us how it will prevail.... sorta' like ladders and gravity.

The other great mod, IMO at least, is to very slightly bend the ash pan door latch so that it acts as variable as it goes through its travel. Only about 1/16" of gap at the top of the door is easily enough to start fires or restart a new load of splits over dark coals- crack the door and the stove will climb in temp. much faster than using the draft but it is absolutely controllable and not dangerous or even hard on the stove if used properly. Properly in this case is to never leave the stove unattended with the ash pan door open even the slightest amount. I have four thermocouples on my stove and monitor and record the temps. all the time and I never, ever allow the flue gas temp. to to above 750F but that probe has an alarm at 700F and it rarely gets there anyway. I also watch the top of the firebox temps. and never allow them to exceed 1,100F (this probe is literally in the firebox flames). Extra draft, especially under the grate is extremely useful but it must be supervised and controlled- cracking the ash pan door and taking a shower is an epically bad idea.

 

I'm sure you guys are aware, but for some newb reading this is the future, that's also a good way to turn some stove parts red (hot)...no way would I leave it like that for long...and you are just asking for it if you walk away leaving it like that!

 

Yeah I’m pretty much in the same boat. Just looking to have the coals burn down better for reload. My experience with the Drolet before the IS was that a lot of the “tricks” for burning down the coals just resulted in wasted time. The one thing that worked was mounding the coals in the center of the stove and treating them like a split. That hasn’t been all that effective for the IS but has so far resulted in coals burning up pretty close to as fast as I’m putting wood in. So I guess good enough for now until I can make things better. My tool and die maker dad would probably slap the back of my head if I didn’t drill a proper hole.

 

I think it’s good to reinforce the message that it’s Dangerous to leave that ash pan door open unattended Dave. I also think BDF has done a more than adequate job of throwing that disclaimer out there when he’s mentioned such activities.

 

Yep it would go Nuclear.
I think that's been covered.

When i loosen the latch, I'm sitting at arms length watch it.