Comparing the Ideal Steel to Progress Hybrid

This was the only type of blower that I found to be quiet running on a variable speed controller... Was on a Country Stove I had 20 years ago.. It was amazingly quiet...Near low speed , you couldn't her a thing..

 

Had about 6 pieces of standing dead oak from last year.. 20-22 inches long and about 6 inch splits... I didn't close it down, it sat with the air just cracked for about 2 hours on a half of a coal bed... Amazing with no flame to watch that stove climb... No closing her down, well just the crack that it was open... then a secondary show that looked like a nice gas heater for about 2 hours until everything was charred... I still want to try a pipe damper sometime, but in my heart I think the stove might smell out the secondary intake that never closes down once you try to damp the stove with the pipe damper.. Maybe not.. in fact it might work out very well... you never know...

 

Yea, you have to be carefull what you feed the beast if it's not real cold out. I have a hard time not overdoing it ( sitting in shorts with no shirt on as I type this aka boiling in here with 1 split of pine burning.). I have a hard time understanding where in the hell all the heat comes from sometimes, there's almost nothing in the stove, yet I'm baking the house!

 

That's a good thing What kind of draft setting burning one piece of pine? 1/4 open?

 

Cracked the smallest amount possible, 1/8th or 1/10th. Almost nothing left, no ashes, no coals, still ripping heat....

 

Back to the thread original subject, does the Ideal Steel hybrid stove have a damper to close when you want to run in cat mode? Does it operate in cat mode and secondary-tube mode simultaneously or do you have to flip a lever for only one or the other? I'm trying to grok how it could burn the secondaries with a closed damper.

 

It is a Hybrid stove, like the Progress Hybrid. So it has both and burns both simultaneously. It has a bypass to bypass the CAT, but that is only for getting the fire started and up to operating temp. Once the bypass is closed (CAT engaged), they both (CAT and secondaries) burn as required.

 

Thank you Machria. So, with the damper closed, everything will go through the cat - even super heated already-cleaned-up (secondary tube reburned) exhaust. I guess. Sounds like a way to REALLY cleanup the outgoing byproducts and wring some more BTU from it too. Pretty cool.

 

You got it. I don't know personally about the Ideal or other Hybrids (Cape Cod...), but can tell you the PH BLASTS heat with very little wood. I'm sure it's because it squeezes every little thing out of all the wood and gasses... NOTHING, and I mean nothing comes out of my stack, and there is rarely anything left but some fine white powder left in my fire box after a fire. Pretty amazing technology...

 

Agree, nothing but powder in the ash pan...And a big ash pan at that! I am soooooo glad I got the ash pan! I haven't thrown a single coal away!

 

I just emptied ash for only the third time this week since we started burning in the new Ideal Steel stove on November 23. I do think an ash pan would be worthwhile just to sort the ash from the coals.

 

The Woodstock ash pans rock! I don't know how big the Ideal Steel ash pan is but the PH pan is huge! I would recommend anyone buying a new stove to go for the pan! No coals thrown away ...

 

And I sit here and meekly say, "But it is so beautiful without the ashpan..."

 

I'm a big fan of the ash pan in both stoves. Both stoves are relatively deep-bottomed, so one could run without the pan, but if you are burning a lot of wood it is very handy to be able to dump it without slowing down. The Ideal Steel is a smaller pan then the PH (maybe a third smaller), but the smaller pan has been fine for us. I empty it into a metal pail, and the Ideal Steel pan fits within the top of the pail, while the PH spills over the pail edges some.

I think we emptied it on Sunday (I'll check with she-who-remembers-all), and I'll try to remember to get a photo of what is in it after almost a week of burning, tomorrow.

 

I've used some ash pans that were worthless. They were worthless. WS has a great system. I have two ash pans. When one gets full, I take it out and cover it. Install the other and I'm back in business in less than a min with Zero dust. Dump the full pan after a few days of cooling and set it aside for the next swap. As Charlie said, not a coal lost.

 

Burned some oil last night, -20 is just too much for this big house and one stove. Already up to -12. Rain in the forecast for Sunday night, and back down to single digits Monday night - hard on the animals outside.


So here is the ash pan. Nearly full after 6 days of steady burning (the pan is longer than the grates, which seems to keep things cleaner when I wait too long before emptying it).


And here is the volume of two weeks of burning. Note that we've burned close to one cord since we got the stove on December 12.

 

I use a 5 gallon pail myself which seems to catch pretty much everything... You know I've never used the cover that you can slide into the pan,,,, before you even remove it from the stove,,, how nice... I usually just slide it out and carry it out my back door with my welding gloves on,,, then dump it in the pail I set out in my yard... Nice fine ashes for my driveway...

 

Me neither. We were getting a lot of heat under the Ideal Steel on the right side, so I took a piece of sheet metal from a pantry near the hearth to use as a trial heat shield - turns out it was the PH ashpan cover, sitting there since we first installed the PH!

 

I use the cover, after I pull the pan out, I just lay the cover over the top and carry it outside to dump. It just keeps any light ash dust from blowing around as you walk thru the house. BUT, woodstock should make the cover slide in under the grate, so when you pull out the pan the grate stays sealed. You could then dump the pan, and then slide back in, and then remove the "grate cover".

 

Never used the cover, I assumed you could slide it into the pan while it was under the grate... Dumped mine this morning,,, fits right inside my 5 gallon garbage pail, no mess around it... Once that's full I dump the ashes into my 30 gallon garbage pail.. I usually have two 30 gallon pails with ash.. Then I load a pail into my tractor bucket , rope it off and now I can tilt it forward to make it easy to shovel out ashes as I move along my driveway... I have a big aluminum shovel with about 30 holes that are about 1/2 diameter , done with a step drill... Then I just sift the ashes onto my driveway.. Makes them go far and you can keep the shovel close to the ground if it's windy out...