Catalyst Life

Curious as to how long cats are lasting for everyone.

 

I'm on my second cat burning my IS since 2015.
I'll be looking at my third for next season, so that's about 3 years on average

 

I’ve kept records and after 4 or 5 and ceramic or steel, I am getting 2 years per cat with a long 8-9 month burning season. It’s not as cold here as it is in the east but it’s cool for a long time and hours is what wears a cat out. 10-12k hours is what the cat manufacturers rate them for and that’s what I get.

Failure is not quite like a light switch but pretty close.

 

This will be my 3rd year. Only 2 and maybe 1/4 of use. I expected it to last longer. Even though I’ve cleaned mine it is done.

 

I used to get about 2.5 years out of my Woodstock cats burning 3+ cords per year.

 

How do you know when they are done ??? Asking for a friend.

 

Ideal steel here. Two years is about it. It heats a 2200 sq foot house Oct-May.

 

Smoke. You’ll try and convince yourself that it’s steam but it’s white smoke. You’ll need way higher air settings to keep the house warm. Go through wood faster. Actual tar dripping off of the chimney cap. I also notice more brown fuzzy stuff accumulating on the cat.

Really though, they’re cheap. Properly functioning cats save you a ton of valuable wood so don’t try and eek out every last bit of crappy performance at the end. Just pop a new one in and enjoy the huge difference it makes.

Like a frog in a pot of hot water, you don’t know how bad it is until you replace it.

 

I forgot to mention my other cats... Got two female Calicos when I first left home - strays. Periwinkle, and Amundson. Indoor only - the sweetest cats you ever did see! Periwinkle passed at age 23 and Amundson passed at age 25. Not too shabby.

Gpsfool.

 

I'm on year 4 for my Fireview cat. Granted I don't burn 24/7 anymore (I need the boiler to kick on over night to keep the bedrooms warm) but I do burn about 1.5-2 cords/year. I give the cat a cleaning before the season and midway through the season if possible. I burned in a Regency I3100 insert (no cat) for 9 years before the Fireview and I definitely prefer the Fireview due to the cat and soapstone. My only knock on the FV is the firebox size as I wish it was a little bit larger. I'd love to get my hands on a WS Progressive Hybrid one of these days.

I'm going to order a new cat once WS has them back in stock and I'll probably install it next year if needed.

 

The PH is only slightly bigger at 2.8 cubes and is a hybrid with similar max burn time to your fireview. It’s more of a medium to high output machine. For a bigger firebox with similar or longer burn times the hybrid IS at 3.2 cubes has been designed to offer a lower clean burning burn rate for those long burns but also high output.

 

I am getting 10 t0 12 thousand hours of burn time or 2 years.

 

Does running a stove hard vs not having to run as hard (as in milder climate) have any affect on cat life? Or is an hour an hour, no matter the "intensity"?

 

You might think running a stove hotter is harder on the cat but my cat actually glows more and has more smoke to eat when it’s running at low settings. At higher settings there is enough air to combust a lot of the smoke in the primary combustion portion of the fire.

Hours are hours, pretty much, on average.

 

Wow I thought the Prog firebox was a lot bigger, around the same size as the IS...must of gotten those 2 confused. Thanks for the heads up.

 

I definitely don't burn 24 hrs, 7 days a week and never have. I have done a week or two on a 24 hr burn rate but typically I burn 12 hrs during the evening through the night and let the stove go out while I'm at work.

This is a typical burn schedule for us. I'm going into year 5 with my IS and I can tell the cat is slowing down, but it will still get up to 1200-1300 degrees. I'll order a new one probably at the start of the new year.

I'd agree, definitely an hours life with the cat as I probably burn half the hours as others on here do.

 

Well, I wrote my last reply to this thread on December 5th. That's actually the day I started a fire and it hasn't gone out through today.... (and will keep going to the forseeable future). Our natural gas furnace has an issue requiring professional service and I had a date for service scheduled, however my wife was infected with Covid from a co-worker at the beginning of December (actually came down with symptoms on the 5th) and I had to cancel the furnace repair.

I have to wait a few more days until I can test to return to work, so at least another week for the furnace service, but that's around Christmas so, ill wait until after to get it looked at. Anyway, wife is better and everyone seems healthy again....


Accept now that I'm too burning 24/7 I've noticed the cat is definitely on it's last leg.... So I'll be reaching out to Woodstock and ordering one... Definitely see a difference as its harder to keep engaged and tempts don't stay nor get as strong as it was newer.

 

Whew , good to hear she’s doing ok.

 

Well today I focused a lot more on the basics of how I originally ran my stove while teaching my oldest daughter how to operate it. I admit I've become lazy with the proper way of operating my cat stove and have been letting it get to temp and then engaging the cat, dropping the air to where I want to finish it and leaving it. I've definitely noticed my burns and heat suffer from this lazy action.

Today I focused on the gradual step down in air supply as one should do in my opinion (from past experience) and man a 5 year old cat, I thought was on its way out is working hard still... After the oldest let the cat probe get to 800, she engaged the cat, and then stepped the air supply down gradually until stopping it at the final low setting and the firebox is black, cat probe is at 1350, and the stove is cruzing!!! Pumping the heat like it hasn't in months.

I ordered a new cat last week, however if I can stick to this I'll finish out the winter with the old one and go from there.

Back to basics.

 

I am absolutely astonished at how the moisture content of the wood effects the operation of my AS stove. Get that load of really dry stuff and it’s a whole different heat monster.