Smoked up the house...again...arrgghhh

I remove my screen today, I was getting fed up with it plugging up.

 

Here's a picture of inside the box. It was a warm picture



Is the long box looking part the old catalyst or does the catalyst go on the front of this rack? I still haven't ordered one, but am almost talked into it.
Filed the box about 3/4 full last night, let it get to temp and all wood charred, then closed air until flames slowed and stt steadied close to 600. That was at 11:30 and at 8:15 this morning there was a good coal bed for a quick restart. I'm pretty happy with that but the combustor sounds like it would do better yet.


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I can't answer your question about where the cat goes, but I do wonder if the metal is intact enough to hold it properly? The picture may be deceiving, but it looks pretty rough to me. It might just be ash though.

Anyway, the cat would make that a totally different heater.

 

I do wonder if the metal is intact enough to hold it properly? The picture may be deceiving, but it looks pretty rough to me. It might just be ash though.

I'm not sure, but the metal that is there is solid. I'm gonna keep searching and pull out the old book on this stove and see if there's pictures or a good write up about cat maintenance and changeout. Maybe best to wait till summer when I can give the inside a super cleaning and scrape away loose stuff from that tray. But for now,
Happy burnin!


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Love the show. No tubes or cat but very cool to watch.


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Bringing this back to life. Had two times of not doing things right and clogged up my cap again. Just cleaned — sorry no pics this time— was just happy to not fall off the snow covered roof. The cap pile was completely covered except for about 1” or so in the middle. All lose and thin stuff that was easy to grab and removed. Scrubbed the cap and back burning now.

If your still here, here’s what happened. Dec 30th, we were to head to a wedding at 4 I think. Stoked up a fire at 3 but the wood must of been less than ideal and it just wouldn’t take off. Wife was in a tizzy as it was time to go so decided to set air slightly higher than normal and deal with cleaning later (that became today )
Came home around 9 that night and glass was black but fire was now burning great and temps were about perfect. Outside temp was -10f hence the burning

Fast forward a few weeks and my wife, who’s still getting the hang of starting a fire or adding wood, had stoked it up, but forgot to open the air... I came home and saw smoke billowing out of the stack and ran down to open the air without making a huge deal about it.

Lessons keep being learned and I’m sure there’ll be more. Cleaned the cap and used a mirror and light to look down the pipe and the pipe had a bit of soft fuzzys but not much. Thankfully it was all at the cap.
Anywho, happy burning.

Couple pics so as to not completely waste your time

10 minutes after restart-






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I remove the screen from the cap in the heating season. I got tired of it plugging up.

 

Basement installs are always a recipe for back drafting, add a couple 90 deg bends makes even worse. Then add an exposed flue system ( even the insulated ones) and you get cold plugs like mad. It is very hard to keep an exposed flue warm in negative temps with out a roaring fire. A chase around that exposed flue run would help a lot.

 

Try to get ahead on your wood supply so "less than ideal" rarely becomes an issue.
Your chimney will thank you for it.


Basement install and 3 year plan makes wood burning a breeze.