Production Woodstock IS

So here is an expensive cat. $12,000. It's on a Case IH 500hp Steiger. The operator hit a power line cable and bent the top pretty bad.

I already thought about how I could fit that big thing on top of a wood furnace... unless insurance claims it.

 

It's doing the coolest dammed thing right now. I stuffed it pretty full on a hot reload and have been working to get it to burn a little slower rather than overheat the house all at once and it's gone polka-dot. There's a perfect image of the locations of the holes in the secondary baffle on the top of the wood stack. Each jet is making a glowing dot while the spaces between dots are completely black. It's really trippy looking.

 

Fire in the hole!

 

Hollywood, and anyone else using this model...
Does the display stay on indefinitely or do you have to turn the unit on each time you want to see the temps? How about the backlight? Battery life running of AA's?
I've been debating on this for a while, might pull the trigger. But I'd like a unit I can read at a glance without having to go over and turn it on, etc.

 

I'm using one on BDF's recommendation.

1) The unit will auto-power-off if it's not in logging mode. I don't know what the time-out interval is but it must be around 10 minutes. However, if it's in logging mode, it won't turn off plus there's a custom setting where you can disable the auto-power-off regardless of whether it's logging on not.

2) When in logging mode, it turns off the screen by default. You have to push the up arrow key to turn the readings back on after you start a log.

3) The backlight is only on after you push the backlight button and doesn't stay on very long at all. 10-15 seconds?

4) No idea about battery life as I am using wall power. The specs for the adapter are 9V, tip positive, 2.5mm ID, 5.5mm OD.

You didn't ask, but being able to graph the log and figure out how things worked (or didn't) is awesome.

Now for the bad news. BDF has two units that he's checked for accuracy and his are fine. Mine seems... mostly... fine. Every once in a while, it'll randomly display temps about 300F too hot if the actual reading is above ~1000F. I'm not sure why it's having a problem but trying to exchange a unit with the factory on the other side of a slow boat to China isn't the most delightful idea.


However, I am replacing this unit soon. The numbers are a little too small for me to read from across the room plus the backlight is useless because the blue messes with my eyes. Not to mention the possible problems with accuracy. Innovate Motorsports makes a 4-channel thermocouple reader that outputs on a serial bus. I'm going to connect that to a Raspberry Pi to read the serial data stream. The Pi will be hooked to a very small monitor so I can display all 4 values at once, big enough to see across the room, and with a backlight that doesn't turn off. It'll also serve the values on a web page so I can check the stove from any room where my home WiFi reaches from any phone or tablet. The server will also display a real-time graph showing the last 10-20 minutes (I'll have to experiment with the exact number to find the best balance between resolution and history) so I can see which way the values are trending. Trends are often more informative than the actual number. Best part is all of this won't cost any more than the ChiCom logger I'm using now.

 

Yep, those little cutting torches will burn holes right through your firewood if they're close to the top. I tried to photo this last year but my couple attempts didn't turn out the greatest, but this is what I got...

 

That's the longest video I could make before the radiant heat started to burn my fingers. It's disappointing you can't see the perfect grid of polka-dots in the video as well as you can in person.

I took some photos too but who knows when I'll get around to downloading them off the camera.

 

Yep, cool to watch. On the other hand, I find the secondaries a bit too big and cause the first 1/3 of the burn to be a bit too aggressive, while the rest of the burn falls off a lot in heat output. What I am discovering does work pretty well is to restrict the secondary intakes and introduce a little (keyword "little") air under the grate to really even out the burn over the entire fuel load.

If you run the stove very low and with a full load of firewood, and if that wood is hot (it only seems to work when the stove has been running for quite a few hours so it is hot on a re- load), the firebox will be black with the occasional blue- purple 'trail' of fire that will swirl and move through the firebox. Really interesting to watch and will actually distract me from watching TV for a few minutes. I think it is the time when this stove runs at the peak of efficiency and is really at its best.

Brian

 

I forgot to mention my favorite effect, which rarely happens, only when the conditions are just right. Taking a crop of the pic I posted yesterday...

When the conditions are just right that the secondary combustion is just wispy blue flames (a hair bit less than in my pic actually, but it's starting to show) the flames tend to 'disconnect' more from the air ports and 'dance' up and down as they are on the verge of going out... they seem more like coming up from the wood than down from the air jet. It reminds me of some translucent blue tentacle shaped sea creature coming out with a big mouth open from the corals below to feed and then retract back. Entertaining, and they really do look like they are all live little creatures dancing up there bobbing up and down. Usually after a moment or two the burn will go one way or another though, either the secondaries will go out or they will turn into more constant jets. It's hard to keep them on the verge where they form the dancing coral creatures.

 

Did a top down fire tonight. That cat probe is showing 800 but the lower layers aren't burning yet so not engaging quite yet.

 

How exactly are you accomplishing this? Restricting the secondary intake and introducing the "little" bit of air I mean. I haven't installed mine yet as my house isn't finished, but I think having the advantage of a slower longer output of btus will help me heat my 2800 sq ft better than the peak and glide I'm used to with the traditional secondary stove in the old house. I've been following this thread closely to get the maximum burn and heat out of this sucker!

 

Please understand I am 'coloring outside the lines' here and flying in the face of anything the manufacturer may say.....

To restrict the secondaries, just place something flat under the secondary draft opening under the left side of the stove. There are two draft ports there; the one that does not close is the secondary, the other is the primary which feeds the front of the fire by drafting down on in front of the door glass.

To introduce air under the grate, an opening must be made in the ash pan door. Not much, maybe 3/8" or so but it really makes a difference. And of course at the same time, the grate must have some opening(s) to the firebox and not covered in ash / coals. I do this by cutting a triangular opening in the ash pan door and covering it with a damper cover which I can open / close as I wish to, up to and including fully closed.

My suggestion would be to use the stove as supplied and only apply these or any other changes to alter what you may find as a problem down the road. And please understand none of these changes / alterations are sanctioned by the manufacturer.

Brian

 

OR the epa

 

Try it as is first. The stove is nicely engineered so that the secondary air intake does get closed off with the air control lever and not linear - they designed a complex shape to change the primary/secondary air ratio as well as how much the air is throttled per movement of the lever (most of the air is shut off quickly by the half way position then a very fine control of the remaining small opening across the rest of the adjustment range). You can get slower longer output by running the stove in 'cat only' mode by dialing the air back enough usually. I think Brian was just commenting after I and williaty were talking about the neat secondary burn show these stoves put on. It wasn't a discussion of efficiency, so not sure what his point was. Yes these stoves can run lower and slower (and slightly more efficient), even in stock design. Sometimes a higher rate of burn is needed, even if it means a reduction in efficiency, and these stoves can definitely deliver! With your house about the same size as mine you may need that high burn now and then. Of course mine is barely insulated, hopefully you'll be better off.

As Brian said, do mods if you find some deficiency down the road, or at least after you've fully learned the stove. Burning cordwood mine is pretty well mannered and I don't have too much I could improve except maybe keeping some more heat in the house with the baffle mod. When I run mine with a serious load of BTU's though, like packed with compressed wood bricks, I have trouble keeping it in cat only on a cold winter day, and have done the magnet over the secondary intake trick a few times. I have a flue damper I plan to install sometime I let the stove go cold that should help control the draft a bit better. As far as the ashpan mod I'm skipping that for now, I don't have problem with the burn characteristics there, and timing my loads around a regular workday where I load in evening and let it burn hot during the night when it's coldest outside then having it coast during the warmer day temps where I reload the following evening works out just fine for me. The stove is known for building up a big coal bed when you're not around to open it up later in the burn (ashpan mod would help this) but I only work for 3 or 4 day in a row shifts so after a few days of building up a coal bed I'll generally have a day off to give it a bit more attention and burn the coal bed down. Also helps to have a second heat source so you don't need the stove cranking all the time - but I know many of us don't.

Good luck with the new stove! It may sound a bit complicated or finicky reading all of this but it usually is not, it's quite a performer! We're just nerding out a bit, trying to squeeze every last drop of efficiency out of an already great stove.

 

Thanks for all the info. I hear you about the slow boat from China... one note there: this model is available from amazon from a US seller fulfilled by amazon, and the cost is only $10 more than ebay. Might be worth it in case of returns - should be much easier and cheaper, plus from amazon I'll save 3% of that using amazon card. Yes I am well aware being able to graph it is great, I have graphed my burns many times though I take all my measurements manually using IR gun and the Condar probe, but of course that doesn't work when I am at work or sleeping. Here is a graph of one of my longest burns last year for example:


I displayed the data points so you can see what is actually measured versus the rest that is just connecting the dots, but who knows what exactly happened during the time I was asleep, etc. That is where I'd like to have the data logger.

The Raspberry Pi sounds nead, my buddy has one of those but I don't really know anything about it. By serial data are you talking RS232? I haven't used one of those in many years. It sucks that many of these devices are so far behind the times, would be nice for an inexpensive data logger like these to have built in webserver or at least a lan or wifi connectivity, or bluetooth, etc. I haven't messed around with this kind of stuff in many years but way back 15 years ago when remote controlling things over the web wasn't even really known to the general public I did have a controller setup to my web server that ran my bigger aquariums, I could monitor temperature, control lights, pumps, dosing, co2 injection, and things like that via web interface. Since I moved to this house many years ago I've really not tinkered with anything electronics related anymore. I spend too much time turning wrenches and swinging axes lol.

 

The cheapo PID controller from eBay is working pretty well. It has an option to allow it to function as a simple on/off unit instead of using the complicated PID function that is typically used for heating or cooling operations. You can use the output as one alarm and the actual alarm function as another (I got the internal relay option). I plan to use a simple beeper to indicate low STT (and time to reload) and a blasting siren for the top end danger zone. Will probably add one to the flue and maybe another on the cat (just have a simple readout on it for now). My stove is in the basement, and I like the added comfort of knowing that it will alert me if something's up.

I am also playing around with an old cell phone as an IP camera on my home wifi system. It's OK, but I will probably get a wifi IP cam that I can control from my chair.

To anyone considering this stove: It runs just fine without all these gadgets. I am just a high tech hillbilly that enjoys playing around. However, as mentioned many times before, it is not a load and leave unit. It can go nuclear in a heartbeat.

 

A Raspberry Pi is basically your desktop computer from the mid-1990s condensed down to the size of a deck of cards and sold for $25. It runs a variant of Linux and can be made to do a huuuuuuge variety of different things.

Yeah, the inter-device communication between Innovate devices runs over a stupid headphone-like cable. At the end of the line, you have to use a Innovate-t0-RS232 adapter cable (and then usually a RS232-to-USB adapter for modern computers). The good thing is that Innovate fully documents their serial protocol and supplies that document to the public for free. It makes it very easy to do stuff like what I'm looking at because all the details you need to know to make it work are clearly laid out.

Oh god no!

The major attacks that took out giant portions of the internet several times this month are because of that sort of thinking. Marketing and engineering departments the world over are going "You know, wouldn't it be great if this thermostat/fridge/washing machine/stuffed animal/nanny cam had WiFi connectivity? I've heard this Internet of Things is going to be big sometime soon!". So they give the device networking capability, then fail to secure it properly, and the thing promptly gets taken over by the badguys and used to attack other people.

It's a MAJOR problem on the internet today and it's going to get worse FAST.

 

Excellent post and it makes me think that maybe I have given the idea that this stove needs mods. to work well or correctly. That is not what I meant and is completely wrong: this is an excellent stove as delivered and will perform wonderfully for anyone given decent, or even a bit questionable wood quality (it seems to burn wood that is a bit too wet just fine in my experience). These conversations we are having about improvements are merely 'cause, like T-Stew says, we cannot help ourselves And besides that, the improvements are probably not worth the time and effort they take in the first place, other than monitoring the stoves with thermocouples because I believe that is what it takes to really see and understand how they work- even stock.

Brian

 

Hey you're the one that brought up interfacing to web server and wifi... I was just following suit.
But I agree, I've been pretty much against integrating most of your house to the network, and ever since I moved to this house have not even set one up other than a wifi router. I used to run a couple servers and interface a few things (like the aforementioned aquariums) but now, 10+ years later my max speed out here is ridiculously slow lol so don't do much other than browse nowadays. And I don't believe having the connectivity is an evil thing, so long as it is secured, can be disabled if needed, etc. Heck it doesn't have to even be on the net just the local network, to make it easier than pulling an SD card out and manually downloading data (seems so decade or two ago lol) and since I run Linux at home (exclusively, for years) interfacing can sometimes be an issue, but with built in webserver that solves the connectivity with my linux machines, even if not on the web itself. Believe me I do believe Skynet will go live here before too long, and it will be our own dumb fault.

Sounds good. If I didn't want data logging that opens up many more options like your unit, if it's the one I remember it had nice bright LED display right? Yeah the PID would really be useful if you were controlling something closed loop, not really needed to monitor temps but might be good for automating the stove like Brian is always hinting at

Anyhow on the home front it's suppose to be our first sub-freezing overnight and I got the stove loaded up full with ash (the wood, not the combustion byproduct... why oh why did they have to name it that) and set in cat only burn. Don't need a ton of heat since the house was a bit over 70 and 30's and 40's out aren't that cold. But I like to load it mostly full and then not have to reload until mid day tomorrow. Have been burning spruce during the day but the burn times are shorter, so it's been working well to do 1 ash load overnight and 1 spruce load mid day lately.