New Woodstock Ideal Steel installation

congratulations on a great stove, I cannot help with smoke because my draft is crazy.
one area to check is how tight the stove pipe is.. I also top vent does anyone else rear vent. I think Backwoods Savage does but it's not a IS


I do recall my asking many questions while learning stove. it is a different animal BUT once you learn it.. its great.

 

He did mention a slight noise from the pipe. Maybe seal that better.

 

So awesome to have this helpful community! Thank you all for your thoughtful responses! I am enjoying playing with the controls, and learning the stove. I know it will take some time, and the change in seasons will teach me a lot. I will take your suggestions and report back with anything new. She’s “choochin” away at 550 STT and a black box right now!

 

Noted in Qyota previous post that his flue path goes from 6” to 7” ID. That’s 28.24 sq. in. into 38.48 sq. in. area. Anyone else think this could have a bearing on reduced draft? I kinda do but not sure... thoughts?

 

Maybe but I would think only when the stove draft is wide open or perhaps when the door is open. Otherwise, the diameter of the flue is not nearly as important as its height and temperature. Once the whole chimney draft system (everything connected to the chimney, and including any leaks in pipes, the stove, etc.) is close down, the chimney will 'pull' on the stove and try to flow far more gas than it can because that flow is limited by the stove. At that point, the other part of how a chimney kicks in: the draw or pull of the chimney itself when it is not flowing much or any gasses. This is what forces air through a woodstove in the first place and is basically governed by the inside temperature (including the chimney's internal temp.), the outside temperature and the height of the chimney. Diameter does not mean much if anything at all, at least when talking about the difference between a 6" round, a 7 or 8" round, or even an 8" square chimney. If all are at the same temperature and the same height, all will generate the same vacuum on the stove, or at least so close as to be of no consequence. So going from 6" to 7" should not hamper an otherwise good installation as far as I can tell.

Just as an aside, if this was a gigantic, old time fireplace chimney, that may be a different story. Very large chimneys will actually flow cold air into the outside of the chimney at the top and flow the hot gasses up through the middle, and that absolutely will reduce draw or vacuum. But again, only for very large chimneys, something bigger than, say, 12" X 12" or 16" X 16", otherwise the top- down cold air flow will not occur, at least enough to show a drop in draw.

Brian

 

Good catch, Gark. Given what others have said - including Unhdsm and BDF, this isn't too uncommon for this stove. I did check with the Woodstock folks, and they said the 7" chimney would not be an issue, especially given the length. Other than the smoke spillage when the door is open, the draft seems really good! I have a short clip of a little secondary flame action to share, if I can upload it.

 

It looks like the wood burning is well below the top plate of the stove, which is fine and what happens when making small fires of course. But once it gets cold, and you load the stove fully, you will find the secondaries are much more aggressive and actually 'take over' the entire firebox fire. And each hold will make a little jet of flame that will actually bore holes into the wood from above. Very interesting to watch and a big surprise to most of us when moving from other, more conventional stoves to the Woodstock Ideal Steel. I do not know if it is really unique but I <think> it may be unique to this stove, at least in the fact that it happens very obviously even when the stove is damped down pretty far and the bottom fire (what was the only fire before the secondaries kick in) basically goes out.

The other interesting thing that this, and most airtight stoves do is what I would call 'ghosting'. The firebox will go black but if the glass is clean or reasonably close to clean, you will see a blue flame start somewhere and travel around inside the stove very slowly as the methane gas is burned off. Very cool to see the first time. Who am I kidding- it is cool to see it the 1,000th time too.

This stove is also very good about not back- puffing, which is when flammable gasses build up in the stove and once enough oxygen is mixed in, they ignite all at once. A lot of stoves do this, some pretty violently; I had a Tempwood that would lift the 12" diameter cast iron loading plate right off the top of the stove and it would fall back down with an impressive klang- scared the dog something fierce. The Ideal Steel just does not seem to do this at all, which is really a nice surprise.

Brian

 

This is not correct. A chimney has no draw without hot gasses flowing upward...in other words, if you cut off the air flow 100% and then wait a bit...all your draw will be gone. (just like with a hot air balloon, quit using the burner for too long, down we go) The exception to this would be if the wind is blowin across the chimney just right to cause a venturi effect...or the part of your house where the stove is has some kind of weird positive pressure thing going on due to how the wind hits the house and/or the level of air sealing the house has.

Diameter matters...a lot.
6" round has an area of 28.26 sq in.
8" round has an area of 50.24 sq in, almost double. That means in a 6" chimney, the flue gasses are flowing at X speed at a given stove damper setting , then in an 8" chimney the rate of flow will be almost half of X at the same given stove damper setting because the area is almost double.
And as far as square chimneys go, round is much preferred for modern wood stoves. Modern stoves don't waste much heat up the chimney and a square chimney will tend to collect more creosote in the corners due to turbulence and cooling there...also, chimney sweeps say that it is much harder to clean the creosote out of those corners then.

I do. If you put a 7" chimney on a stove designed for 6", it may work, but it will not draw as strong or as reliably as a 6" chimney...all else being equal. (meaning exact same chimney design, in the same spot in the same house, on the same stove)

 

brenndatomu ... I disagree with the first part.. because my draft was measured in June of year I built chimney.. nephews step dad works for chimney and stove company. stove was not on. he put some tool in stove pipe and told me I had iirc 50 pascal of draw.. it was 70 degrees outside. today it's 60 degrees if I open my stove door light a wooden match blow it out the drop match in my stove and leave door open it will suck smoke up chimney! Owner of Woodstock Tom, told me I got almost too good of draw and suggested a pipe key damper

 

Due to venturi effect, or the way the wind pressurizes your house...one or the other, maybe a bit of both.
Think about it logically...lay a pipe on the ground, then stand it up, it is not all of a sudden going to start "drawing" simply because it is now vertical. But put some hot air in the bottom and boom, upward flow. Or if you put the bottom in a high pressure area (your house) and the top in a lower pressure area (outside) boom, upward flow.

 

Well, I guess we will have to disagree, which is fine and well IMO.

A chimney, or any other device that has a vertical change, will create a pressure differential between the inside of the chimney, and the area immediately outside of that chimney at the same level, as long as the chimney column is warmer than the discharge point. Very easily seen by sealing a chimney and using a manometer to check relative pressure inside the chimney. A chimney with a differential temperature (cooler at the top than at the bottom) will draw or draft without any flow whatsoever. Besides that, given you description, no chimney would have any draft with a cold woodstove as it was being lit and yet almost all do have a very good, positive (pulling upwards) draft, at least chimneys located inside a heated house for most of the chimney's run.

Diameter is more complex but for our purposes, it will not make much difference if a 6" chimney changes to a 7" diameter chimney along the vertical run. While you are absolutely correct in that velocity of the moving gasses will decrease, as the area also increases the larger pipe will flow MORE gasses, all else being equal. So the 7" portion of the chimney will flow more readily than the 6" portion, making the entire assembly flow more flue gasses than if it were 6" for the full run.

Brian

 

Warm air is lighter than colder air. As long as the chimney is warmer than the air is where it is discharging, there will be a positive draw or draft on a chimney, even without any wind whatsoever. We are talking about static fluid behavior here, not introducing any dynamic effect of wind.

If air with no flow does not and cannot have any pressure to move upward (i.e., draft in a chimney), then how does a hot air balloon work? No flowing air and yet they have positive buoyancy. Once the cause of a hot air balloon rising is discovered, so too with the cause of a static chimney draft as they share the same root cause.

Laying a chimney on the ground would indeed cause it to FAIL to provide any draft because there is no longer any way for warmer air inside the chimney to rise. It is the very fact that chimneys are vertical that causes them to function. Not a valid example or comparison.

Brian

 

All this science, I'm getting a headache.

To go back to page 1 and the smoke situation. I agree with some of the others, the wood source and draft.

 

Yes, agreed.

But with a chimney system you can't take the wind out of the equation 100%...and wind is the only reason that I could light my stove today, a day when the outside air temp is higher then the indoor temp, and still not have smoke back during the initial fire building phase (or any phase)...I've done it more than once.

 

Most human's rules are more like suggestions, and we break them (speeding, etc.) or change them (NO alcohol sold on Sundays..... OK, alcohol can be sold on Sundays) as we see fit. Nature's rules are really rules.

All the way back to the beginning and I stand by the only way for almost everyone to have a device with such a large door, feeding into such a small chimney and having that chimney slurp up all the smoke from the fuel in the stove, as well as the air pouring into (and out of) the gigantic hole where the door used to be is..... a mechanical device to make the chimney flow more air than it can normally flow. Yep, a draft inducer.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with Woodstock or the Ideal Steel specifically, any stove with a large door opening is in the same basic situation and will pour smoke into the house while the door was open. We have had this discussion before and I remember someone (Flamestead perhaps?) chiming in about how his stove did NOT spill smoke into the house but his wife complained of the stench while he was loading that very stove. I am sure some stove / house / chimney combinations spill more smoke than others, and some amount of smoke may be acceptable to some people. But in the end, a draft inducer will pull ALL the smoke, and a lot of other air, up and force it out the chimney. And a really big plus, at least to me, is that I can be quite cavalier and lackadaisical about having the stove door open, lighting the fire, placing kindling and generally tinkering without having to hurry or worry about how long the door has been open.

Honest, try a draft inducer one time and there is no going back, just like sex with wimmins!

Brian

 

Ok, new question. Stove got a reload about 45 mins ago, and is now cruising at 610 STT. I’ve shut the air down to 1/2 for now. My question is, is there a situation where the cat should be engaged while the air is fully open?

 

I can't say I have ever run my IS that way, not even to test it or learn more about it's control early on.
I have only had the manual damper fully open on reloads or cold starts and when the stove gets to temp I
shut things down after the CAT gets engaged again.

 

I'm constantly trying to solve the mystery of which to shut first- the bypass or the primary air. To be honest, I haven't noticed a difference. You would think that getting the secondaries going would light the cat easier or (the other way around), getting the cat engaged would fire off the secondaries better. To my disappointment there is nothing to solve. Get it hot and shut it down in any order you want (but I do move the air control in stages).
I think the WS engineers told me to start shutting the primary air in stages and then the bypass; but I change the way I light this thing all the time- to zero drama.
If you are talking about cruising with the air fully open then don't. You risk sending unburnt fuely air up the chimney.

 

I don't have that stove so I don't know the exact set up but with my cat stove, ready to start my 4 year so have learned a lot by practice, experience and unfortunately errors. I would answer this NO.....if I close my bypass/engage the cat with full air I can cause flame impingement damage to the cat.