Production Woodstock IS

As Brian (BDF) has said to us before, if you incorporate the cost of a cat into the mix of what it costs to heat your home with a WS IS, it's still worth the investment and cost to heat per season vs. gas, oil, electric or propane. I think WS may have been a bit premature in thinking they would last 5 years.

 

yeah, I have no problem replacing but if they have a deal at open house I'll wait.. if this stove hadn't made me lazy with 12 hour burns.. I'd settle for 8

 

Same here, the burn times have gone down with the original cat and lighting it needs more attention than before

 

Yeah, me too on the Open House, although I will go again just to see some of you fine folks as well as the fine folk of W.S..

I figured in the price of a combustor when I was considering which stove to buy and the original price I was given for an I.S., $125, was OK for a product I had never had last more than 1 1/2 years before. After the stove was introduced, the price of the combustor was $175, which is substantially more. But I betcha' if we 'pre- ordered' (read: paid for) combustors before the Open House and skipped on shipping, they could get back to around that price. Mine is actually working pretty well although not great, at 1 1/2 years old but I am burning very dry maple that is split too small, so there is very little moisture in the wood. Next year I will be mixing in heavier splits of oak and this combustor is not going to cut it with that fuel. So next fall is a fine time for me.

In a different world, it would be GREAT if we could just have the existing S.S. cats. sandblasted and then re- washed with catalyst; a new working part of the cat. without a new cat. But the world does not work that way and the production cycle is set to 1) make the foil. 2) wind / wrap / bend the foil to shape and 3) to enclose the finished foil in a sleeve. And somehow I think a 'big bucket' (technical term meaning a vat large enough to dip full size cat.s into and heat) of paladium and platinum is gonna' be pricey..... It is also quite possible that the stuff is sputtered or PVD deposited and therefor needs a relatively thin surface to go through the process.

Brian

 

Yeah well, I suspect that the vast majority of wood stoves out there have long- failed combustors and the owners are running along in blissful ignorance. As you said, when you do not know better, mediocre seems more than good enough most of the time. The only reason I know they deteriorate so fast is because I sorta' study things and noticed my first cat. stove putting a lot of stinky, black tar- like stuff in a masonry chimney. A new cat. and no more creosote so after that, I grabbed a thermo- recorder and watched the behavior of the stove over time (both for a full load of fuel and for the whole season) and noticed the drop- off in performance. But it is not anything obvious, especially because it happens slowly, so we tend not to notice.

Brian

 

Has anyone over fired their IS and seen some damage to their cat?
I found a small section of the cat 'honeycomb' with some minor distortion, not sure if I never noticed it and it came that way or maybe it's a result of overfiting??

 

I looked closely at the cells of both IS cats before even using them. The cells looked to have wrinkles or bulges down through most of them. I assume it is a mild labyrinth path through the cells on purpose. This would cause more turbulence of the smoke through the cat for better efficiency.
Sounds logical to me, anyway.

 

I haven't been on here much lately. I think my cat is also not working that great (this is its second winter). I only did the vinegar spray method nearer the start of the season maybe I'll do a full on soak. I can't hardly get the cat to glow or get the cat probe much over 1000 unless I run the stove really hard which I haven't needed to do. It definitely has a different burn characteristic lately even the secondaries are harder to fire off, I'm getting more of a primary burn that struggles to get up on temp. Maybe I got into some wetter wood too. Its 3 year css ash (that was standing dead when I cut) but I ran out of my inside and porch-covered supply and now going to the pile outside. Anyhow the season won't be much longer I'll give it a good clean before long and see what happens. I got lots of pellets still too so I may lean more on the pellet stove as we get into the shoulder season.

 

I swapped out my old (original) cat with the newer one I got from last years WS open house. The newer one got a full bath and looks like it's in decent shape.

I ran the old one for about 3 weeks while the new one was out for cleaning. There was definitely a difference on how each of them performed, I needed higher temps to get the old one to light and it will not hold a steady temp for very long anymore. The newer one is spot on, running as it should.

With the comparison of them both at hand, it's easy to see the differences in how they act. I will most likely purchase a 3rd cat sometime next fall, either at an open house or by mail if they don't have one this year. I'll run the current cat (#2) and have the brand new one (#3) on standby. The original cat (#1) will be used like I just did, when the current cat needs cleaning only. Starting to get confusing

 

Well you guys are finding out exactly what I have, which is basically two things: 1) catalytic combustors do not 'fail' suddenly one day like a tungsten lamp but deteriorate from day one. This also means we cannot put a specific point of failure on a cat. but only say that it is no longer running well enough to meet minimum goals. And 2) all of the usual stated life spans are at least a bit optimistic with most being outright wrong. Not blaming anyone here as it all goes back to the catalyst manufacturers who generally state a combustor will last between 10,000 and 12,000 hours.

Another big variable I think is where the stove is and how it is used. If the stove is pushed pretty hard, a catalyst that is, say, 1/2 worn out may work just fine because the firebox is never allowed to fall below a fairly high temp. so there is no 're- light' of the cat. On hybrid stoves this would be even more applicable because pushing the stove harder results in secondaries in the firebox and either much less load on the cat. or no need for it at all.

I still think catalytic based stoves are the way to go but I also consider the cost of maintaining a relatively new combustor as part of the cost of burning wood, more or less like wear and tear on a chainsaw.... there are more expenses to using a chainsaw then just fuel and bar oil. Now chainsaws all pretty much use (or can be converted to use) standard chains so there is not much difference in cost between the various brands to maintain the chain and bar. But woodstoves have very specific requirements for the combustors and some of them, such as a Blaze King King, are quite expensive.

Brian

 

I ran the stove normal last night into this morning, reloading at 7:30 am. I just got back from the gym and the stove has been running on a reload for nearly 3.5 hrs with the #2 cat in place, the combustion temp has held for the entire time. I'm happy knowing this cat is running as it should and it should take me into next season in good shape.

The original cat (#1) temp would have dropped by 200 deg after 3.5 hrs, so this solidifies knowing the status of this cat is purely a backup only now.

 

Good post, I have found even with my bk that three years of full time burning is 15000 hours and about it for a cat. Your last sentence is misleading. The new bk cat is 186$ for my princess. That's an oem cat shipped in two days with a new gasket installed. I thought I read a very similar price for the IS cat.

 

Is the BK cat SS or ceramic?

 

Either is available, both have been used in new princess and king models but the 186 price is for a ceramic. I have used both and see very little reason to spend more for steel.

The newest bk models have only ever been sold with steel cats.

 

I would be tickled pink with three years out of any combustor! As I said, I have found the life in my use to be closer to 1 1/2 years, and that last 1/2 year is not all that spiffy either. Ideally, a new combustor every fall would be welcomed but I cannot justify the cost.

I will stick the sentence you referenced in here (Easy Boys!) so the thread makes sense: my last sentence was "But woodstoves have very specific requirements for the combustors and some of them, such as a Blaze King King, are quite expensive." A Blaze King Princess uses a different combustor, which is why I very specifically said 'Blaze King (the brand) King (the model)'.

When I did my due diligence (read: agonized over buying a woodstove for a year) before buying a woodstove, I could not find a combustor for a Blaze King King for less than $350 anywhere, OEM of aftermarket, ceramic or SS. Often they were closer to $400 and on occasion, over $400. I believe the new model Blaze King Kings use a unique combustor that does not fit any other stove, and it is considerably larger than the combustor in a Blaze King Princess. Also, the older models of Blaze King Kings used (I think) a much less expensive 7" round combustor. And to expand on that, I also researched the price for a combustor for a Regency F5100, also a very large combustor, and also very expensive, being in the same range as a Blaze King King combustor. This was a very significant reason why I bought the Ideal Steel as they had given me a price of $125 for a combustor. As I cannot get more than 1 1/2 years out of a combustor, when running to an efficiency I consider acceptable, then that turns into ~ $50 to maybe $60 per year. Compared to the combustor in a Blaze King King, which would cost nearly $200 / year for the combustor alone.

Now moving away from a catalytic stove, the cost of maintenance would go down but the cost of fuel would go up. And running the stove low, as I have to in my relatively small house, produces a tremendous amount of creosote, clogs the chimney, greatly increases the risk of a chimney fire and is generally just not the right fit for me, where I live and my particular house in my opinion.

So again, I break this down to what it costs me per year to maintain the stove, couple that with chainsaw maintenance, splitter maintenance and the cost of the actual wood (assuming I buy it in log length), then compare that to my other choice of fuel, which is #2 fuel oil. The 'rule of thumb' I use is that a cord of dry oak is worth 208 gallons of #2 fuel oil. As fuel oil has fallen to about half the price it was just a couple of years ago, and wood prices are not dropping appreciably, as far as I can tell, buring oil is far less of a "horror" than it was very recently. Truth be told, I actually let my stove go out Friday and have been running on oil (and the crowd GASPS!) for a couple of days and I gotta' tell ya', I am likin' it a bit. Dis here newfangled heatin' system is pretty slick, and I have several zones of programmable thermostat controlled parts of my house so I can be comfy and reasonably efficient too.

And one last thought to this novella: I have a brand new heating system; new, high efficiency boiler, very high efficiency burner, new chimney, 'set back', programmable controller and I use an external storage tank connected to my boiler for domestic hot water. So while heating with oil will have some additional costs, they are minimized because I would be using the boiler, controller, circulator(s), etc., anyway to make DHW. If I ignore the woodstove, it costs me nothing while using the boiler costs me very little more than the actual cost of fuel burned to directly heat the house.

Second last thought: what the world really needs is a highly efficient wood burner that can be controlled, is robust and has no fast- wearing items such as a combustor and is large enough to take a day's worth of fuel (24 hours) and is easy to use. See avitar for example of a potential method to achieve this.

Brian

 

No hard data but it seems the world is moving away from ceramic cat.s and toward SS cat.s. I have used both and greatly prefer SS cat.s, they do not spall, crack, fall apart or anything else regarding physical failure. On the plus side, the light much easier and provide a larger flue gas opening for the exact same size cat. (the cell walls of a SS cat. are MUCH thinner than a ceramic cat).

Brian

 

You are going to have to start naming those cat.s to keep the story interesting..... for example, you could #1 'Black Belcher' and say what a mess Black Belcher made in my chimney yesterday. Or perhaps something like 'Young and Frisky' took off like a scalded cat or something similar.....



I watch what the stove does on reload to gauge how well my cat.s are performing. With a good bed of coals, and loading the stove absolutely full with dry splits, I close the bypass immediately and set the draft for long- burn mode. 'Young and Frisky' will immediately (less than 15 seconds) start to work and while the firebox temps. fall, the combustor temps. climb right on up to over 1,000F and higher w/in a couple of minute. 'Works but is lame' will hesitate for a couple of minutes, then begin to slowly struggle up above the firebox temp, eventually rising to maybe 1,000F but it will take 20 minutes or longer. 'Just ain't makin' the Trip' will stall and drop in temp. to the same level the firebox temp. drops to, basically shutting down the entire stove and smoldering. Re- opening the bypass and cracking the door (or introducing air under the grate- NEVER DO THIS) will get a conventional fire going pretty well in 5 to 15 minutes, and then closing the bypass and running the draft wide open will start to get a rise out of the combustor but it is agonizingly slow and I have to trim the draft back about 10% at a time or the cat. will again stall. Eventually I can get the draft set for the long burn but by that time a lot of the volatiles are already gone and the firebox temp. is too high to get a long burn out of the load of wood anyway. That is when I consider a catalytic combustor at the end of its useful life.

Brian

 

Any of you guys experiment with letting the firebox fill up a little with ashes in the shoulder seasons?

I'm thinking maybe a smaller firebox volume may help keep the box temps up and the cat fired longer at lower temps, for the black out burns. My theory is less wood so inturn less smoke to keep the cat 1000 or under? I find if I stack it full at least with a fairly new active cat (only 2 months old) it gets really hot. Like 1300-1400, which over heats the house a bit with the solar gain I get. If I use about 4-5 logs I get the perfect heat but darn near have to relight every reload. Which kinda stinks because I know it leads to an increased creosote build up at the top of the stack.

Any input or thoughts?

Yes I could just turn on the NG furnace but whats the fun in that and who wants to pay the gas man when you have 17+ cord of wood around?

 

To everyone who are having cat problems...


What percentage moisture is your wood? How many years are you ahead?

 

I agree with you there, keep the NG away from your meter.
I do have some burns where I only have 4-5 splits at a time. And those times I debate whether or not I even want to engage the cat because I only look for 5 hrs of decent heat, so I'm not looking to extend the burn time, just have a nice coal bed for overnight burn.

I know a full load will get me the same cat temps as your getting 1200-1400, but I also know the newer cat will light just as well at 1,000.

The IS seems fairly versatile when it comes to making adjustments despite having such a large firebox.