Finally pulled the trigger...

Great- glad to hear your mod. is working well for you. If you want to do another one to kick up the efficiency of the stove, try blocking the back of the radiator with a 2" high piece of sheet steel. It forces the hot gasses leaving the combustor forward and around the radiator thereby transfering more heat to the stove top. When I added this plate to my stove the stove top temps. picked up around 50F and the flue temps. also dropped by about 50F.

As to loading the stove, well that is, of course, all personal preference IMO, although at least some of us feel that slant at the top of the firebox is absolutely a hinderance. Overall, I would love to see this stove be about 20% bigger but it is not a big enough deal to me to move to a different stove. Just removing the andirons adds quite a bit of volume available for the splits and once out of the stove, they never tip forward again preventing the door from closing....

 

That looks like a reasonable amount of coals at 8 hrs.

 

I think so too. Way different too. That’s recognizable as just pieces of wood that haven’t been burnt yet. The coals I had built up in there before were more similar to clinkers. Almost like a bed of hot rocks. The ash was also heavy and dark gray. Since the mod the ash has been light and and nearly white.

 

Yep, the mod. works pretty well. Now onto the radiator mod. and a flue damper ......

 

Not sure I’ll go that far. I’m going to run it like this for awhile to make sure I’m happy with it. Tonight will be a good test. Supposed to go down near 0 degrees over night… I may call on you down the road for pointers if I do the radiator mod though.

I really do wish that secondary baffle went straight back without the taper for sure. That’s really keeping this thing from being perfect. Great stove still really.

 

All EPA stoves (that I'm aware of...and that use baffles) have an upward taper to the front...although it appears that maybe this stove has a steeper angle than some?

 

Maybe try bumping up the air another notch. Either from the start of a cycle, or, say 3 hours in, to get a bit more output and a better start on getting the coals burned up.
I'm pretty sure Lyle runs his hard due to northern climate and the need for more heat.

Or try mixing in some more SS wood that burns faster.

 

Great minds think alike Tim! I loaded the stove up at around 11 last night before bed. Ended up putting 3 of my hard maple private reserve splits in with the rest being ash. I loaded it right full using the method I outlined above. I’d say I had it 95% full and probably couldn’t have stuffed another split in there. I ran the air damper at two small notches above the first large notch. Around 1/3 open or half way between the first and second large notches.

I woke up at 4 am to visit the bathroom and couldn’t resist checking stuff out. The living room was 80 and outside temp was 7 degrees.

Anyway 10.5 hours later this is what I have
The living room is 70 and could use a reload… I want to note that this is really great performance! The Drolet would have needed a reload at 4 am when I woke up to go to the bathroom.

Those coals are about the perfect amount. Enough for an easy reload but not enough to take up too much room. Plus there’s still plenty of good heat in them.

At this point the stove is good to go for me. I’m able to exert all the control I need. It’s just down to me to learn how to set it for the conditions ahead, which I’m already well on my way with thanks to you guys.

 

Sounds like the stove upgrade is a roaring success!

 

It sure has Dave! This load here will run until this afternoon and didn’t require more than about 30 minutes and very little of my attention to accomplish.


So after mod I’d call it 2.5 loads a day to heat this drafty house.

 

I know how you feel...my earlier wood furnace installs were exercises in frustration!
I mostly run two loads per day in the Kuuma...maybe 3 small/medium size loads in this weather here of late...house stays in the low 70's

 

Dennis that’s a good question. Last night when I knew I really needed some good heat I really packed the splits in there. For example 6 splits along the bottom vs 3/4 in some of my pictures. I’m not kidding it would have been tough to slip paper in there. It’s breathing much better now, but some of that air space is carryover from my coaling troubles. As I get more comfortable with the stove, I likely won’t have so much space moving forward. As far as that that north/south layer there again carryover from the coaling issues. I’ll experiment more now that this thing is behaving better, but for various reasons I’ll still have some north/south splits along one side. I don’t see myself cutting anything other 16” splits after spending years seeing if any other lengths work better for me.

 

That looks perfect for 10+ hours!

 

Was wondering if you noticed any other changes in the stoves operation with the mod, it might be something i should try.

 

Not really much beyond being able to control the stove better. I should mention something I didn’t really think about until today as I was cleaning up the stove a bit. BDF mentioning the andirons made me realize I don’t really move those. I just work around them. Well what that means is I haven’t been cleaning ash out from under them. Idk but that may have affected the stoves ability to direct air to the coals. Something for you to check maybe. Otherwise I’ve been very happy with the ash door mod. It’s just made the stove much easier to use/control.

I was able to make the hole whistle/weaze like TurboDiesel mentioned. It happens briefly if I damper the stove down too quickly and kill the secondary flames. So the stove goes black box for a bit but then recovers after a few minutes and the secondary flames relight with a big puff and that causes the hole to quietly whistle for just a split second. It’s really a very minor change but worth mentioning. Otherwise I’m very happy with the mod!

As previously mentioned if you didn’t like the mod you could leave the hole covered with a magnet or just put a small screw in it to close it off. But I bet you would end up liking it if you try it.

 

Alright Backwoods Savage in honor of your question this is how I have loaded the stove tonight. Won’t be much of a test though as they are calling for balmy upper teens for lows overnight. Splits are loaded to within about an inch of the upper baffle all the way back. And there’s 3 splits north/south on the side there… probably 9-10 splits total with 2 nice hard maple splits mixed in with the ash. One of these days I should weigh all the wood I stuff in there just to see how much is really going in there…
One thing that I have observed right off the bat is this configuration takes much longer to light off… Maybe the trade off will be a longer burn time… Will update in the morning.

 

I'll take,
Loosen the the latch on the ash pan for $50, Alex.