Production Woodstock IS

250 pipe temps. That is low. We can make our junkers' pipes turn red but then again that's nothing to brag about. It just means we burn alot of wood haha. Might be why we can't heat our home without help from the furnace. What kind of pipe temps are you other Ideal Steel owners seeing during normal operation?

 

Hope you have plenty of clearance to combustibles for that pipe....

 

A typical overnight burn for me; the red line is the flue temp. and that is from an internal probe, not the outside of the stove pipe. The outside is considerably less, normally about 1/2 the internal temp. So my flue temps. at the pipe range from ~250F to ~150F.

Brian

 

Brian, sometime I would love to see what this chart looks like running the stove on notch #2 or #3.

 

Give this blog a look over. What you will see is that the Ideal Steel actually burns cleaner with cordwood then the EPA test. Blaze King and Woodstock are both very clean burning stoves, but the hybrid technology in the Ideal Steel provides that clean burn over the whole range of output. A cat only stove can't keep after as well as secondaries during a high output burn.

Something else to keep in mind is that both the Blaze King and the Ideal Steel are releasing the same amount of heat into your house as they are both around 80% efficient. The Blaze King has no advantage in this way. The only difference is how the heat is released. So if you really have a well insulated house with 1500 sq ft either stove should be able to keep your house warm. If your house is really good at storing heat then the Ideal Steel would actually be overkill for you. I consider that a good thing.
http://blog.woodstove.com/2014/08/why-catalytic-hybrid-stoves-are.html

 

Now that is some impressive data!!! How in the world did you collect that?

Am I reading that correctly? It looks like the flue temps ride that 400 line and then gradually drop off to a little more than 200 for the 10 hour burn cycle. So that temp is measured shortly after the exhaust leaves the stove right? So would this burn cycle be typical of what would heat a home like ours (1500 sf and well insulated) on a winter day where the temps are say 15 for the low and 25 for the high?

 

We tend to agree with you with everything we've read. The thing that we are having a hard time with is the useable burn time between the two. The Ideal Steel being somewhere in the range of 10-12 hours and the Blaze King 24+. What trick is Blaze King using to get that much more heating time out of a stove that is smaller (2.75 sf vs. 3.2 sf) than the Ideal Steel? Both seem to have some great burn technology. Could it be a difference in the air control?

 

Mod?? Do tell

 

I proved this morning that the Ideal Steel is more then capable of going 16 hours plus with good burning practices and completely seasoned firewood. It was nowhere near done either. With 30-35 degree temperatures outside the lowest I saw my upstairs thermostat was 69 degrees throughout the entire burn. That being said, Blaze King may still be a better setup for you.

 

Yes. Unfortunately I do not have the data on where the draft was set.

Brian

 

I remember when I was in automotive school my teacher gave us a great explanation about the burn characteristics of a spark plug I think it applies to this as well.

Take a piece of string and lay it on the table. The length of the string indicates the burn time. Bend 1" of the string 90 degrees. The upward bend indicates the BTU output.

Now increase the upward bend to 2". Your BTU output increases but your burn time decreases and so on and so fourth. It's not that cut and dry but you get the idea.

Both stoves have the same potential energy it just depends how their "string" is engineered and how much BTU output you need to keep your house comfortable. So what I think you are looking for is a stove that gives you the minimum BTU output over the longest time. You are looking at the best two companies to accomplish that.

 

Well, if we assume physics really works, then the energy released from the combustion of the same mass of wood, with the same amount of water in it and the same exhaust (waste) heat loss (up the stack), then it simply cannot be that any particular stove puts out the same heat for a longer period of time because the total energy content would have to go up.... and it cannot.

There are only two choices here: More time or a greater heat output (higher BTUs delivered). If you put 300,000 BTU into a stove, that is all you can get back out of it without involving magic. So the 'same heat for a longer time' is just not possible without some fundamental change in the chemical / thermal process, such as adding a catalytic combustor for example. But as the I.S. and the Blaze King are basically the same regarding constructor, materials and capacity, we are just out of variables that could yield a significant change.

To put it simply, if the same amount of heat is delivered in 1/2 the time, then it MUST be delivered at twice the rate. There just is not a way around it.

For whatever it is worth, another viable competitor would be Regency. Their latest stove is as large as the B.K.K. without the <ahem> 'visual detriments' in my opinion, and they are somewhat less expensive too. I came close to buying an F5100 but chose the I.S. for operational reasons as well as longer term maintenance.

Brian

 

Give it a couple of months The spring shoulder season is coming....

In the fall, I was burning the stove commonly on hash mark #2, with the combustor temps. down in the 600 / 700F range yet the combustor was 'lit' and burning smoke all the while. This is the first wood stove I have ever personally seen that can be continuously used with the outside temp. above 45F. Unfortunately, I have the data but not the draft settings or how much wood was loaded to go with it. I am working to correct both of those problems.

Brian

 

Last night's burn:



The big curve on the left is burning the coals down before the reload, stove packed pretty full, at 10:00 PM. Then I opened the draft to generate a little more heat at around 8:50 AM (this morning) but otherwise did not touch the stove including adding more wood or even opening the door. This can be seen when the all three curves slope upward except the combustor; at that point, there were no gasses left to burn and it was a pure charcoal fueled fire. Then at the extreme right the spikes indicate a reload. This is what I would call a 'medium- high' output for 13 hours or so. The draft was set at slightly below 1/4 draft initially and opened quite a bit (I cannot remember exactly how much) this morning. Temps. outside were in the low 20's with some wind; the house temp., in the hall, well away from the stove itself, ranged from 72F to 75F throughout that burn.

Brian

 

Stove modification: Well, it seems to be working pretty well so I thought I would post it.

I have always thought the exhaust gas path should be a little more forward above the combustor on this stove. The radiator is open to the front and to the rear but the rear opening is larger (Easy Boys!) and that is where the flue is. So I partially blocked off the radiator and the exhaust flow from the combustor so that more of it must move forward and under the entire stove top. Results have been the hottest point on the stove top has moved from right next to the stove pipe collar to the front of the stove, just in front of the center burner. Hard to say with any certainty but the flue gas temps. are down about 75F and the stove top is perhaps 40 or 50F warmer when running at the same settings.

As this was experimental I did not want to weld or in any way permenntly alter the stove so I used a piece of 2" strap stock (steel) and just wedged it into the radiator. Look closely at the photo and you can tell what that piece of steel was earlier that day....



Brian

 

It's great to share this information and modify how we're using this stove. Your post prompted me to try notch #2 today. I loaded her around 7 am, got the cat up to temp, and turned her down. The stove top temp was 300 degrees when I got home and the stove room (kitchen) temp was 70 degrees. This is on less than perfect wood (six month seasoned soft maple) on a 20 degree day. My wife didn't have to reload and I should be able to cut down on my wood consumption. Thanks for sharing your results.

 

I have a similar question as yours.
Which stove has the lower exhaust/flu temperatures? Wouldn't that show which is putting out the most heat in the room if each had the same pounds of wood? Has anyone ever had that opportunity to test side by side?

 

Well, not really. Exhaust temperature alone is not indicative of efficiency unless you also know how much heat is being produced in the device itself. And even exhaust temperature is not really meaningful unless you know how much air is flowing out the flue; if the temperature is lower by, say, 20 degrees but the volume of air is triple, the lower temperature exhausting stove may well be less efficient.

What we really need to know is how much heat a given device is putting out for how long on how much fuel. And basically my thought is that all stoves of the same basic type / material / design are very close to equal in efficiency so the last variables are how much fuel you can put in at one time (the firebox size) and how low the stove will run cleanly, meaning it is using all the fuel possible to make heat instead of smoke and creosote. The I.S. will easily run with the combustor temp. in the 600F range, the flue right around 200F (which is actually a bit too low- this is condensing right in the flue pipe) and a perfectly clear exhaust, at least to the eye.

Brian

 

Just out of curiosity how long did you keep it burning like that? Soft maple performs awesome in the Ideal Steel.

 

I put in about 3 or 4 medium sized splits around 6:30, got it up to about 400 stove top temp, and set her at notch #5. She'll cruise until about 10:30 when I'll pack her full tonight. I believe I recall your encouraging "low and slow" in another thread. Good advice.