New adjustable height, top or rear flue, 3.2cu ft hybrid wood stove

Woodstock has the latest update on their blog regarding the new Union/Steal Hybrid stove:

Friday, October 4, 2013
Recent Posts

• Under the Hood 8: Rethinking the Leg 10/4/13
• Under the Hood 7: Catalyst Heat Radiator: another old idea in a new setting 10/3/13
• Design Challenge Odds and Ends & Video 9/27/13
• Beta Testing CUSTOM STOVE ART with the Kopp Family 9/20/13
• 
• Under the Hood 6: Smoke-free loading 9/19/13
• Under the Hood 5: Secondary Combustion Chamber 9/18/13

• 
• Two Recent Items from the Mail Bag... It's what keeps us going 9/13/13
• Under the Hood 4: Catalyst Air: we apply an old idea in a new setting 9/6/13
• Under the Hood 3: Andirons- movable, removable, customizable 9/4/13
• 
• Under the Hood 2: Catalytic Bypass 8/30/13
• More Info on Beta-Testing 8/29/13
• Under the Hood 8/27/13
• BBB Rates Wood Stove Manufacturers! 8/23/13
• Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? No, It's a Steal! 8/20/2013
• 

 

This is the fleur de lis design Beta stove that Woodstock is building for us:

Friday, September 20, 2013
Beta Testing CUSTOM STOVE ART with the Kopp Family



Click image to enlarge









The Woodstove Design Challenge has focused our attention on questions that we hadn’t really addressed before:

1. Can we make a really high performance woodstove that is completely affordable?
2. We don’t have the chutzpah to think we can produce a stove design that will make everyone happy. So, how do we make a flexible design that can harness our owners’ creativity?
3. How can we have fun with this product? How can our owners have fun too?

Part of the answer is that the Design Challenge Stove will offer custom design on the sides, the andirons, and the cooktop. You can choose from our design book (being developed), submit your own design as a graphic, or suggest a concept to us for review and execution.

Here’s an example of how we think this will work. Recently the Kopp family from Johnstown, PA sent a request for a design with a Fleur-de-Lis pattern on the stove. Here are a few of the images they sent to us.


We sent them the preview below, and asked them to send a couple of sentences explaining why this design was important to them. Here’s the preview that we sent to the Kopps:

Click image to enlarge
The Kopps asked us to remove the stars on the hinges, make the fleurs on the andirons a little bigger, and change the colors on the stove. We are using our blog to publish the revised design for approval - and here it is...


Click image to enlarge


Below is a video generated by our SolidWorks program showing the custom design elements:


Our plan is to credit each design to its originator, in this case Marie Kopp. We plan to retain designs and make them available to other stove buyers. Ideally, we will generate a design community on line. If the design contained a highly personal image (profile of a loved one, for example) we would not make it publicly available.
We are “beta-testing” the design/review process, as well as the mechanics of the stove. We are becoming quite adept with both the art programs and CNC programs we are using in this process, and we expect to be able create personalized stoves quickly and at very affordable costs.
We’ll show a number of designs from our employees over the next few days. We’re having fun doing this, and we hope our customers will, too. Many thanks to Brian, Sue and Marie Kopp for being our first test subjects!


Glenn Sperry with first test cut for Bird of Paradise pattern

 

Friday, September 27, 2013
Design Challenge Odds and Ends & Video

We haven’t posted much this week because we’ve been so busy! It’s getting cold and we have to take care of our customers (who all wait until the first frost to order stoves, ask for advice, or order parts).

We are scheduled to send our Design Challenge stove out for EPA testing at the end of next week, so we’ve been doing final tweaks to the combustion design and sending the stove through our internal testing regime most of this week - continuing into next week. We should have EPA test results around October 16-17, and will publish the results here. We expect quite good results.
There’s a short video below of part of today’s high burn test.

The picture below shows the test cutting of the Fleur-de-Lis for the Kopp family.


Trial cut for the Fleur-de-Lis

Trial cut painted gold
We also cut a detachable Fleur-de-Lis pattern that allows for easy changes of color, and future changes of design. You can see it below on one of our test stoves. A lot of our employees are designing their own stoves, and we’ll start posting some of those designs next week. We also hope some of our prospective beta testers will contact us with their ideas!


Detachable Fleur-de-Lis pattern on the end of the stove allows
for color changes and design changes. (pardon the obvious mismatching colors in this test stove)

We’re having fun with this stove! More to come next week. Have a pleasant weekend!

 

It's going to be a fine looking stove.

 

Friday, October 25, 2013
Under the Hood 10: RECORD EPA Efficiency


Preliminary EPA Results:

Over the last two weeks we have tested our Design Contest Stove at an independent lab outside of Montreal to (1) the current EPA standard, (2) the proposed EPA standard, and (3) the most recently published (September 24, 2013) ANSI Cordwood Standard. The test lab is accredited by EPA and CSA (Canadian Standards Association), and the results will be submitted to US EPA for approval shortly.

The results are “preliminary” because we are still waiting for the final EPA test filter to dry out. We also have one more cordwood test to run early next week, but the cordwood tests will not affect our approval.

The preliminary EPA results indicate heat output from 13,241 to 60,145 BTU/hr, with average emissions approximately 1.2 gm/hr, and average efficiency at a new record for EPA testing – over 82%.

High efficiency really does boost heat output. For example, our EPA low burn rate was 0.79 kg/hr (1.74 lb/hr). A non-catalytic stove would produce 9,546 BTUs/hr at a burn rate of 0.79 kg/hr with the same load, assuming the EPA default efficiency of 63%. Our Design contest stove produced 13,241 BTUs/hr, because it burned at 84% efficiency at 0.79 kg/hr. This is a 38% increase in usable heat output from the average non-catalytic stove to our Design Contest Hybrid!

Cordwood tests on this stove show very similar efficiencies and emissions. We will publish more results as they become available, and of course we’ll have information available at the Washington DC event.


Here’s a cordwood high burn test load. We really like the idea of a cordwood standard. It will provide much more accurate information about burn times and efficiencies with “real world” fuel.


Here’s the cordwood load just after loading for the high burn test


Here’s the load about 10 minutes into the test. More on this and other cordwood tests soon!

 

I just got an ETA on our Beta version of this new stove

Tom will be bringing my stove to the DC Challenge on November 16th:

I'm going to attend it also and will be bringing the stove home from there to save them shipping costs.

 

And it looks like they are specifically shooting for longer burn times with this new hybrid. In my reply to Tom this afternoon, I also asked him:

His response (my emphasis added),

 

Did not realize this was a top or rear exit stove.

 

Top or rear exit, adjustable height legs, longer burns than the Progress but a little less max BTU, 3.2 cu ft firebox, cook top, highly customizable with both designs and colors, highest EPA efficiency ever tested, $2000 price point. What's not to like (as long as it looks good in person)?

 

They designed this stove from scratch under the impression that was part of the requirements of the wood stove challenge. Are there any other manufacturers working on any single stove that breaks as much new ground as this model?

I think Lopi entered an existing model into the competition.

 

Post title is "The Hybrid Cape Cod Wood Stove: Most Efficient Wood Stove on the Market."

I think Woodstock has just slightly edged them out on that one with this new stove at "over 82%" efficiency.