Production Woodstock IS

It's quiet in here again. .. I hope you all didn't freeze. The stove is cranking tonight!!

 

Loaded up!!!

 

I'm "coaling" down after an intense run. 8 degrees and windy here. -2 and windy overnight. I think we are going to run some honey locust . Which means lots of coals again in the morning haha.

 

I came home from work at 4pm to a nice even bed of coals and 65 deg in the stove room. I cleaned out the ash on the grate with my rake and heaped the coals over the grate and opened the ash pan door. I have been using a Popsicle stick as my prop and then I close the ash pan door with the stick. About an 1/8" open gives me a nice even burn down of the coals. Reloaded around 5 with some ash and maple tonight. This load will keep us warm til bed and I'll reload at 7am

 

Filled the stove at 10:00 PM last night, set the draft at 1/4 open, closed the bypass and left it. It was 74F in the hall last night- this am at 7 it was 70F; outside temp. was 1F and it was quite windy (all night). So I consider this a raving success.

Brian

 

Let's see those graphs, pie charts and slide show. Seems you hit the sweet spot on that load.

 

10:00 PM was the reload, the the usual routine of igniting the new splits and finally damping it down, then the overnight burn. My wife opened up the draft fully at 6:30 AM, which you can see on the chart. The next thing is I threw in some small splits to drive the stove temp. up, and finally loaded it for the day.

The most important indicator in the graph is the stove top: at 400F, it will keep the house above 70F at all temperatures outside that I have encountered (down to -5). The key will be to increase the draft about 1/2 way through the burn to increase the heat output after the wood gasses have been burned off. Notice on this burn the combustor was making useful heat all the way to this morning. Also, I suspect the first 1/2 of the burn when the combustor temps. dropped down, and then rose up again to 1,000F, is where all the water was being vaporized out of the wood.

I will try to duplicate this again but with a little air introduced from under the grate and we will see if that makes for a more even burn, especially toward the end of the burn.

And before someone quotes this post and / or data and tries to reference how an Ideal Steel will 'only burn 10 hours', please note that the stove is still putting out a lot of heat at the end of the chart. The end of the data is NOT the end of the burn, merely the point at which I make changes to increase the heat output to meet the needs of my house in my environment. If I was in a warmer climate, the burn shown in the graph would be far too much, the stove would have been damped down much further, and the lower heat output rate would last much longer. I am sure it could go the mythical 40 hours if little heat was needed in a particular setting (45 F overnights, 55F to 60F by day).

Brian

 

What does the magnetic stove top temp read compared to the thermocouple it's holding down if that is still the setup to your using.

My magnetic thermometer is easily up into the 600*. Can't wait to get my thermocouple set up to see what it actually gets to and how long it stays there.

 

Yep, still using that setup. I do not look at the magnetic thermometer much of course but it always read pretty proud- at least 50 degrees above and often closer to 100 degrees F above actual.

Brian

 

Do you think they are purposely set up that way or is it just how they are made?

 

I think it just works out that way. It is a very simple, inexpensive device and it does work, and it is pretty repeatable even if somewhat inaccurate.

The other method, using a thermocouple and the electronics needed to display temperature, is by comparison quite complex and much more expensive so it would be reasonable that it would work much better.

Besides, what I find really unacceptable about coil wound thermometers is their inherent slowness to respond. If measuring flue temperature to make sure not to go over some limit, in an effort to reduce the possibility of a chimney fire, the actual flue temperature could well be 500F or more higher than the thermometer is currently reading. Sure it will eventually get to the right temperature but not soon enough to prevent the exact thing you are trying to avoid in the first place. Same thing goes for monitoring a combustor: a mechanical thermometer works OK once the stove is settled down into some steady- state burn but it is worse than useless to 1) know that the temps. are high enough to close the by-pass and 2) know that the combustor has 'lit' and is climbing in temperature.

Brian

 

Wow. So I just removed 4 1/2 pans of ash from the stove. I spent about an hour raking, emptying, and sweating like crazy! I'm looking forward to some extra space which should mean extra burn times !

I haven't seen the stove this empty since it was new.

 

JA600L, we were reading your thread on Hearth this morning. Do you think it is possible all that ash might be affecting the low end burn times on the IS? It could be possible there really isn't a low end burn problem at all. Maybe it's just a matter of keeping the ash cleaned out, making more room in the firebox?

 

Hey, it makes prefect sense. There had to be close to 40 lbs worth of ash in there. With this brutal weather we are pushing these stoves hard and it's hard to get in there and clean it good.

Let's say it was 40 lbs and that I can now fit 30 more lbs of wood in there, that would be an instant increase in burn time. Not to mention the good cleaning probably will boost performance to some degree.

It can only help. I suspect that many others would benefit from a good cleaning as well.

 

Another thought I had. Having all that extra ash and coals in there insulating the fire more, may have encouraged more secondary activity. I did notice after the clean up that it fell in to a cat burn only almost instantly and seems much more tame then before. Firebox temperatures are definitely cooler.

 

I have found that with too much ash, one can not load the firebox up real well and the burns don't stay hot as long. But the ashes keep the coals ready to re-ignite which will work well in the shoulder season.

 

Do you have the ash pan?

That was a huge selling point for me with this stove- the sealed ash pan and grate. Makes it easy to drop the ashes daily after the coals burn- down, and you really do not have to wait for the stove to cool or anything. I also bought the stove with an extra ash pan so I just swap them and empty the full out later.

Brian

 

Yes I do have an ash pan, but the coals/ash accumulation started to get out of hand. I always tried to sift the ashes but all the coals made it difficult.

Today I finally went at it. It is amazing how much room was taken up. The stove performs much better. More cat action.

 

Yeah, raking the coals back and forth IS painful.... which is why I went to the garage and got a garden hoe. Seriously. Now I can stand back, use two hands and raking the coals is very easy. I just have to be careful how I put the hoe down on the porch when I am done 'cause the end is a little.... warm.

You might want to go easy on the 'cat action', you may get some dog people all worked up.

Brian

 

Did that 'new process' get out into the open? Is the proverbial cat out of the bag?

Seeing as the grate / ashpan is only in the center of this stove, it would be great if the bottom were 'V' shaped so everything kind of fell toward the grate. Unfortunately that would also take up a lot of volume in the stove if we just jacked up the firebrick to sit at an angle, say on a bed of sand or such.

Ideal Steel Rev. II: deeper stove with 'V' shaped bottom and new air feed path plumbed into the existing air control.

Brian