Production Woodstock IS

Trilifter7 its currently 16 degrees, filled stove with 12 splits this am at 7. Airs set to a quarter cat, new one, engaged at 500 degrees. The stove room is at 82 the kitchen is at 75 and the bedrooms are at 68. Will reload before bed this is more normal running for me I probably burn 4 cord a year. Others with this stove that live up by me can't figure out how I get more than 3 cord a year in it. These people Brian knows 343 AMC and Hollywood among others.

 

I heat 2400 sq ft from my open basement with the IS. Usually if I can keep the basement above 72f degrees I can keep the upstairs above 65f. When it drops below 10f this usually requires loading up in the morning and before bed, and a small reload during the day but it’s still hot enough you can just close the bypass right off permitted the wood is dry. I think you would find you really prefer to use the cat.

 

Now going back and addressing your original question: You will really want to run the I.S. in cat./ hybrid mode, meaning you will want the bypass closed. It runs far more efficiently that way. While you could use the stove safely forever with the bypass open, it really does remove a lot of the stove's advantages. As far as your wife being able to reload it, IF the stove is hot and has a good coal bed or some engaged wood left in it, and you have decent wood, meaning it is reasonably dry, you or she can open the bypass, open the door, load the stove, close the door and close the bypass without ever touching the draft or anything else; the new wood will engage soon enough and with a fresh cat., it will either keep the cat. 'lit' or re- light it very quickly. So if you are wary of all the complexity of running a cat. based stove, or especially concerned about your wife running one, it is just not a problem with an Ideal Steel. The combustor is directly above the center of the firebox, and the firebox is extremely well insulated and these two things combine to make it very quick to use the combustor. Some other stoves are a bit more sluggish regarding having the cat. respond but the Ideal Steel is just wonderful in that regard, in my experience as well as quite a few other people's experiences. These stoves are very easy to handle regarding a reload.

The bypass handle is in the way of opening the stove door so the door cannot be opened with the bypass closed, even by mistake. Really, a very easy cat. stove to run.

A cold start does require a little bit of time to get the entire fuel load up to temp. and well- engaged just like all the cat. stoves I have ever seen but the I.S. is particularly tolerant and excellent regarding a hot re-load. And the stove does not need to be half- full and roaring either, a decent coal bed of, say, a couple of inches deep is more than enough to start a full load of dry firewood even with the bypass closed immediately after loading. Once I am 'in the cycle' of round- the- clock burning, the bypass is never open for more than a couple of minutes to either load the stove or rack the ashes into the ashpan below. Otherwise it remains closed for weeks at a time.

Brian

 

True enough- from the middle of the country, it may look like we live fairly close (about 4 hours apart) and both of us are in New England but we are at the extremes of that area. You are in a much, much colder and snowier area than I am and so we use the same stove very differently most of the time. Though lately as my house is not sealed (under construction) and the temps. have been unusually low for this area, I too have been leaning on my I.S. In fact, I saw 700F for the first time EVER on the stove top w/in the last couple of weeks. Very impressive for this area. Usually stove top temps. in the 350F or just a bit lower are more than enough to keep the house 'underwear warm' all winter here.

Brian

 

BDF I understand you keep your stove top at around 300 mine's generally closer to 500. As 300 is reload time. Its far better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it

 

Yeah, I would <like> to keep it at 350 overnight but it just does not happen- the temp. always drops off toward 300F and below.

In a perfect world, my I.S. would be 5 cu. ft. and this would be a non- issue but it does not look like that is gonna' happen. I have even considered a [few, little mods.] to make the stove bigger but unfortunately, it is so integrated with draft, ash pan, cat. air supply, the sides, etc., etc. that that is not practical either. There are practical limits to what a plasma cutter and welder can do......

Brian

 

Thanks for all the responses guys! It is sounding like the IS is going to be my next stove!

 

Thanks Unhdsm, The stove maintaining a decent temp for a longer period of time will probably be the biggest advantage the IS will have over my IR, and with that keep it simple enough to reload using the cat engaged

 

This is very reassuring to know. My wife will always be reloading on a hot coal bed so it sounds like she will have no problem engaging the cat. During moderate weather I’ll probably only be running 2 loads a day so she won’t even have to touch it then.

 

My wife does it, learned in 5 minutes. Never heated with wood before last 5 years. She says its easy and becomes a routine. She's doing it as I type this as stove living room dropped to 78. the horror, no way its wine time.

 

Same here. We have cat temp, stove top and flue thermocouple probes, and she has learned to run the stove based on these three inputs. Typically a low, slow cat burn above 25F and a more intense "flamer" below 25F. She has definitely learned what it means to be an engineer's wife! Only thing she won't do is cut and split the wood. I need to work on that.

 

but does she stack? Mine does

 

With my IR we monitor STT and flue probe temps and she’s very comfortable with them so adding the cat temp probe in shouldn’t be too bad. After understanding a little better about how easy this stove is to maintain a fire I don’t think she’ll have any problem

 

Another question I had pertains to the flue access. With my current setup my stove vents out the top then 90’s to go thru the wall then it 90’s again to go straight up about 18-20’. Bc of the outside pipe and 2 90’s in it I tend to get a pretty strong down draft at times when the stove has gone cold. Since my stove is both front and top load I can very easily lift my top lid and aim a torch straight into the stove collar to reverse the flue before I get the fire going. This helps me prevent getting any smoke into the house during restarts when the weather swings from warm to cool. Is it possible to lift the top lid on the IS and aim a torch torward the back to reverse a downdraft in the flue?

 

Same setup top vent, 90 thru wall, 90 to straight up x feet. Can you lift lid? Yup easily, how you get to cat could you put a torch in there to warm up I would say yes but have never done it.

 

Bummer! I was hoping to do something like this over the summer. So, the ceiling to floor fans just didn't do much, huh? I'm in a very similar situation...basement (split-level, 6" insulated walls) is 76 degrees, and the room directly above is 64. Can get it up to 65 if it's above freezing outside. It's enough to keep the furnace off, but not enough to get it cozy anywhere but the basement.

 

They definitely helped move the heat upstairs. I struggled to keep my upstairs above 64-65 as well and since I installed the registers I can now get my upstairs to 70 if it’s teens or above out. What I struggle with now is keeping it there. My current stove just doesn’t put out useful heat for very long so the house temps start dropping 3-4 hours after the stove was loaded. This is where I hope the IS can help in keeping my temps up for longer by spreading the heat out over a longer period of time to help hold a more steady temp.

 

Trilifter7, I am in upstate NY near Rochester which should be similar if not a bit colder than anywhere in Ohio. The part of my house I am heating with the IS (not including the basement level) is about 2200 sqft, much of it poorly insulated or with a lot of windows. The house was built in sections in 1850, 1940 and 1986. I would suspect you will need the same or less BTU’s than I do, so similar or better run times with similar fuel.

On a normal winter day I can get 12 hours from a load of splits, but the coldest nights it did drop off to about 8 hours and the House was not as warm in the morning as when I went to bed. I went looking for a solution to extend that a bit, especially for the weekends when I might not want to get up right away and add wood, but would rather stay in bed reading fire wood forums.

So, I decided to try a pallet of compressed brick fuel to supliment regular splits. These things cost a bit more than local firewood pricing, but they are super dense so you can get more dry weight and therefore more BTU’s into the firebox. I have only run a few tests so far. One with 54 lbs of bricks for 17 hours and another with 80 lbs for 27 hours. The first test it was low teens outside and the second one it only got up to 16, and my house still stayed warmer than I wanted for that long! You can see more info on the burns and photos on page 5 of the Fiber Fuel thread here: Fiber Fuel Wood Bricks (Lewis) If the stuff was cheaper I might run it almost exclusively, but the upcharge is not so much that I won’t be buying more to use when I want longer burn times and higher heat output on the coldest nights. It is a neat tool to have at your disposal to expand the utility of the IS without getting out the plasma torch and welder like Brian LOL.

As for fans blowing upstairs, they help a lot, but cfm matters. I have two fans that suck air from the stove room and blow it into two of the bedrooms at a rated flow of 340 cfm. With both on and cranked you can feel the “return” air flowing down the staircase. Even then I can still have a 10-12 degree variation between the coldest rooms and the stove room. Most of the smaller register fans don’t seem to move much air and probably can’t keep up. We are planing to open up a wall from the stove room to the dining room and add another fan or two for better heat distribution to the extremities of both floors which happen to be in the least insulated 1850 section. FWIW, the stove room that is often 80+ is in the newest construction area, but it is 24x24 with ceilings that pitch to 11 feet. Three walls are mostly windows and there are four skylights, so all in all NOT a very energy efficient room.

 

This is the exact issue I had with my last stove. 3-4 hours of heat on the cold nights. That and there was no safe slow burn mode. You could dial it back to some extent, but without the cat, it would coat the stove pipe and chimney with a dangerous amount of creosote in that mode. The IS is keeping my chimney far far far cleaner despite much more use.

 

I’ve been reading about you guys using the compressed wood in the IS, I might have to give that a try. What fans are you using that blow 340 cfm? Do they blow from downstairs to up?