High Temperature Alarm?

Glad to hear all is ok WS. Thankfully your son knew to wake you up. There are a few options that have already been mentioned for alarms. I have a thermocouple in my flue wired to an alarm in the bedroom.

 

I suppose most fears are centered around the extreme--- that being a runaway stove which leads to ignition of some combustible material that can then spread to the entire house. Clearance to combustible distances are created by laboratories to account for these extremes (one would think/pray). Having said that, do you think labs actually go through a "worst case" nuclear meltdown situation on every model? I wonder that myself... so I always go further on clearances and am obsessive about my chimney.
Damage to the stove/pipe is obviously a secondary fear that is also tied to the aforementioned terrifying scenario of a house fire; damaged stove/pipe = unsafe future operating conditions = house fire.

 

Glad all is well WS....I had a little scare tonight, had let the stove go cold since last night and then dropped the cat shield and did a little clean up. Started back up about 9:30, got a small fire going with some kindling and a few small splits. After that caught I pretty much filled the stove and figured I would let that catch good and get up to temp on the cat to engage. Took the dog out after it had been burning for a short time, cat probe climbing but not high enough to engage. I turned to look up at the chimney and could see orange and some small sparks. Not a chimney fire, as the liner is clean, but I think with the heavy wet air and the good dry wood there just was no smoke to slow the flame. I have went outside many times when a new load is catching just to see how much smoke I am producing and never saw this before. I made a bee line for the stove and slowed the air way down, only was 1/2 open anyway. After it slowed and then I opened the air back up started smoking out the chimney like a normal new load catching.

 

If I am not going to sit and watch the stove after a reload for a few minutes, I set this to 10 minutes....:

http://www.amazon.com/Presto-04213-...&qid=1423499776&sr=8-2&keywords=kitchen+timer

Works nicely...

 

I always wonder if anyone (manufacturer's, EPA...) ever tries that? Stuff a hot stove with really dry wood, like split up 2x4's or something, open it up fully, bypass cat (if a cat stove) and let it rip and see what happens... in a safe lab type environment... Personally, I think this should be a mandatory test and the results published. This way you know exactly what to expect, good bad or ugly at least you are informed.

Anyway, on the old site somebody once posted they had tried this on the PH stove. They loaded full with all very dry, small splits and kindling, opened it up fully with bypass open and let it rip and it got hot, but didn't over fire. I don't know if that was somebody from Woodstock or something?? One of the many reasons I selected a PH....

 

I have the Auber thermocouple with digital readout and alarm. I ended up disabling the alarm because it was going off prematurely. Maybe I just got a bad unit or I'm not operating it properly?

 

How do you have this hooked up, to your pipe or your stove top or what?
I am just wondering I couldn't begin to tell you what is wrong

 

I'm told the test labs run these stoves hotter that you or I would ever dream of to get there specs.

IIRC there was a PH overfire from someone accidentally unlatching the ashpan door. Messed up parts of the stove but didn't seem to hard to fix.

 

Yes, I remember that. Well, leaving a door open is a whole other story....

 

I'm very envious of this setup. Any idea on what it cost to set it up?

 

The alarm temp. should be programmable to any temp. you want. It looks like their most inexpensive model has a programmable alarm function, as well as a max. temp. recording ability. What model readout do you have?

Brian

 

I've had it hooked up to the stove top and cat. There's a couple high and low level alarms, I set my low alarm at 0 because I wasn't worried about that and set the high level alarm at about 50 degrees less than max stove or cat temp. I think it went off more at lower temps when the stove was cold or close to reloading. I'm not too worried about it, I just wanted to monitor the temps, really don't need an alarm. Its a model AT200.

 

I would not want to suggest that a PH could not/would not overfire with the air open a lot.

 

How loud is the built-in buzzer, compared to a smoke alarm ?

 

I built my own stove top and flue temp alarms. I would not run without it. Its so easy to load and forget. Plus if there was ever a run away or even a flue fire(?) I would get an alarm.

All built from ebay and Digikey components. Probably under $150 IIRC.

Only thing I need to tweek is the stove top thermo. It works, but it was made for my previous stove and my Alderlea's cast grates on top cant be closed with the probe in place, I need something more low profile. It'd be nice to get one of those epoxy on thermocouples for the stove top.

 

So it seems to me that the next obvious step is automation, at least of the very basic air control function(s). Has anyone experimented in this realm? My thought has always been this: a button that is depressed upon reload that triggers wide open primary air and resets the recording of flue temps. As the flue temps increase the primary air could either be cut incrementally (a little more difficult) or simply down to a nearly full closed position most likely a against a preset minimum. Then it would track flue temps through the burn and as they drop below a certain level it would begin (or fully) opening the air control in an attempt to maintain a certain minimum flue temp. If that minimum is not attainable at full air after a set length of time then the primary air would close fully again (to maintain some coals) and set an alarm of some sort; audible, text, red light etc.

I know this would take some of the romance out of the wood burning process for some of us but I think it *could* give others piece of mind as well, not only when we're tending the fire but when our SO's happen to be.

Unfortunately I don't possess the talent, or patience, to figure out the electro-mechanical controls required to put this together but I'm sure someone out there does. I'm positive it could be programmed (closer to my realm of expertise) through an arduino or something similar once the probes and actual air control are figured out.

 

This is on my short list of projects.

 

Peoples are on it! Here's the smartstove controller.

http://inveninc.com

 

No news or updates in 2 years