Its getting closer to full time burning and I think it would be great to go over what to do in case of a runaway stove specifically for me a Woodstock fireview. Im still pretty new to burning and I think it would be a good review for me as well as for any other newbs on here. So if anybody has a good checklist of sorts for what to do in case your stove starts to get out of control please post them up.
Never had my Fireview run away in the one season I owned it... Backwoods Savage could tell you more as he's had his for quite some time.. I know he had mentioned about opening the draft more. to actually cool the cat...
What Charlie is referring to is one day I came in the house and my wife was standing right next to the stove and looked really worried. Come to find out she had been there for some time. As the stove top would get to 700 degrees (Woodstock's recommendation for maximum), she would open the bypass. This would cool the stove then she'd set the cat again only to watch the stove top go right back up to 700. I looked and she had the draft completely closed. I simply told her to give it some air. Quite naturally she gave me that look that said I was out of my mind. Why would I want to give it air and make it hotter? So, I simply reached over and turned the draft to 1 and told her to watch what would happen. She about flipped when the temperature dropped. I had told her to not close the draft before but she had forgotten. So please remember this one in case yours does the same. One thing you can remember too with the Fireview is if we hit a really strong cold spell and it is way below zero, you may have to run the stove with a bit more draft than normal. (Normal for us is a tad below 1) What will happen is that the stove top will not get as hot but the sides and front of the stove will get hotter. You can check this with an IR gun if you have one but if not, worry not. Just know it works. On the other hand, some stoves will tend to sort of run away, especially if burning something like super dry slab wood or lumber cut-offs or pallet wood, etc. Sometimes it is a good idea to have a bucket of ash or sand handy. Open the firebox door and throw in some of that and it will cool that fire right down. Hope this helps. And for what it is worth, we've only had one or maybe two times that the stove got over 700 and no harm was done. I also happen to know someone who had a Fireview and you may not believe the temperature he reached. Good thing was, no harm was done to the stove. That thing is built like a rock. No pun intended.
Thats it Dennis thank you. I recall talking about this last year with you but I couldnt remember the details of the conversation or find it. I was trying to talk to my wife about it as it looks like our first fire will be on Wednesday and I wanted to go over everything with her and myself as a refresher but got stuck on that topic. Thanks again Dennis and please keep the great advice coming.
Has anyone ever loaded a Progress hybrid, left the bypass open and left air all the way open? I recall somebody saying they tried that, and it still didn't runaway.
NOT! But two things: 1. Would love to know the results of doing it, if it were to occur on "accident"! You know, load the stove, get coffee, phone rings with a "emergency" from the mother-in-law type thing, get sidetracked....., I use a small 10 minute cooking timer I bought on Amazon for $20, and set it (click the button) each time I load to remind me to turn CAT just in case. Irarely goes off, Itur th cat prior and kill the timer and walk away, but its a great safety habbitI think. 2. I recall somebody posting that they tried this, even with a full load of nothing but small splits/kindling! And they reported that nothing happen! Many stoves would go "nuclear" with that, but the PH handled it well if I'm not mistaken. So its a good testiment to the PH. I'd like to hear that story again, to gie me a peace of mind.
When I was at Woodstock picking out my PH, I remember looking at the back of the stove at the air inlet.. Wow that goes across the whole back of the stove... Like a 4 barrel carb! Seeing that I'm surprised the stove wouldn't run away.. but..... unlike the Fireview,,, all the fire box heat must pass through the front screen no matter if the cat is engaged or not.. I 'm thinking maybe that's why there is such a big draft intake area and also why maybe the stove doesn't want to run away.. I would never want to take a chance.... I like my stove too much..
Although that rear intake is big and long, wen it's shut down, there is almost no air coming in it. The draft adjutment plate goes completely across it, and closes it off, with just a tad of air maybee leaking around the edges sinceit's not an airtight seal. To demonstrate it, something you should try to learn you new stove: Get a decent fire going with a 1/2 full stove, now shut the ar cmpletely down. The fire will go completely out (aka no flames) after between 1 and 5 minutes depending on how raging it is.... Now wait a minute, and open the air 1/4 way, and in 30 seconds to 1 minute, you will have a full blown fire again. Now shut it down, and it will go black again. Now open air 1/8th or less, now it will take a little loner to fire back up.... basically, you control the fire. The PH is very controllable, one of the things that supriseme the most about it.
I agree about the stove being controllable,,, sometimes after about 2 hours I will suddenly get secondaries blazing away, yet other times it has been strictly a cat burn with no flames on a closed draft.. I just love the heat that it puts out... Now I'm glad I have a heavy stove,, the heat life of the stove just rocks! I can't imagine the heat output really loading it chuck full! My stove drafts so well I might talk to Woodstock about taking the smoke apron off the top of the door.. Wonder if anyone has done that?
I don't think that has anything to do with "draft", I think it helps keep smoke from spilling out when reloading.
Yes I corrected myself in my post,,,"smoke apron"... I called, Penny said she knows no one who has removed it, so I will leave it be...
I brought this up last year when my Fireview started to get out of hand it was rolling along nicely when we noticed that it was getting really hot in the house so I went to open a window and looked at the stove the thermo was up over 700* I started to freak out but Dennis talked me through it and calmed me down. Now this year I couldnt remember what to do but no worries I wrote it down and put it in a safe place.
Another idea about settling down a runaway stove (besides a rotating flue pipe damper) is to have a way to further restrict the primary air intake. Some EPA stoves may have additional small uncontrolled intakes to keep them burning hot enough for clean emissions. Finding these EPA holes ahead of time and having tinfoil or kaowool ready seems a reasonable precaution.
I need to get one of those for my BIL. I'll try to get him to use the alarm in his phone which might be pretty good: Set it once, then use the snooze. The timer would be easier....less to do to program it. There's usually a lot going on over there and I'm worried about him getting distracted. He's doing well but the novelty that's keeping him on top of it will wear off in time. I'm looking for a timer that a) is LOUD and b) keeps alaming until you turn it off. I would cry like a baby if that stove was harmed.
This is what I bought and use, and love it. $4 hard to beat. Set it to 10 minutes, then just press the start button and it counts down to 0. When you hit stop/reset to shut it off, it resets back to 10, so to use again, just press start. Really easy to use. http://www.amazon.com/Presto-04213-...&qid=1382804278&sr=8-1&keywords=kitchen+timer
I have my wife and children trained to set the timer on the kitchen stove to go off in 7 to 10 minutes. My 17yo son runs it the most so he knows if he is loading on hot coals to set it for around 7 minutes, if a cold start 12-15. We use the stove pipe temps to decide when to engage the cat, not stove top. I usually let it get towards the upper quarter of the yellow temp range then engage the cat on the Fireview. It will be interesting to compare operation between the Fireview and the new Union/Steal Hybrid.
I like the idea of the timer Im going to look into one of them and Brian I look forward to your reviews on the new stove.
