First Overnight Burn interrupted by nightmare!

I am embarrassed to admit that I woke up at 12:20 this morning, turned the lamp on, and started running downstairs to the garage to get the fire extinguisher. In my dream, the chimney had caught fire. My heart was racing.

The positive of the story is that I found that my cat had stalled (I assume due to poor draft and damper closed too far). This morning I woke with plenty of wood left and re-loaded.

 

wait a second... A woodstock experienced a cat stall?


I feel a lot better now Its not just us poor VC owners who suffer.

 

Sure, I've even seen the mighty Blaze King stall. Engage any cat stove too soon with too little air and there's a good chance for a stall.

 

OK, time to ask questions BS. What position was the air damper in when you went to check on it?
Do you know for sure you had a stalled cat? Was the stove cold?
I see my flue pipe temps at 350 when I engage the cat but in say 10 minutes or so
the flue temps cool down to 250 or just below. I wonder what temps will stall it?

 

I've also got a question....why is the fire extinguisher in the garage?
The house will burn down by the time you go get it.

 

I had the air damper at 1/4 until I went to bed. I slid it to the 2nd tick mark before I went up. I am fairly certain it was a stalled cat. The stove temp had dropped to ~225 with a fairly full load of wood just 2 hours after it was near 400 and cruising. I opened the bypass, cracked the door for a minute, got the fire back hot, and engaged the cat. The temp steadily climbed from there before I went back to bed.

Great question. Prior to having the stove we had it in the garage that is right off the kitchen. I have always been told not to store the extinguisher under the kitchen sink. I suppose now another extinguisher placed on this side of the house would be a good idea!!!

 

Exactly- what is required to keep the cat lit and working! We're gonna' need data on the internal (Easy Boys!) temps, the cat temps and the flue temps, all recorded over 24 hour periods, to find out. I cannot wait to find out either but I have not seen my stove yet....

Brian

 

With a cat probe it's easy. Anything above ~55oF will light off the cat and the temp will climb.

 

Best place is by the door for the room so by the garage/kitchen door is a good place for it. That way you can get it on the way in or leave if the fire is too big. I've seen people mount the in the stove backsplash. Very easy to get to when your stovetop is on fire, don't you think. It also took me a long time to teach my wife that the fire extinguisher was not a coat hook but that's for another day.

 

BrianK , have you had any instances where you had your beta IS combustor stall out? Some of the previous posts have some interesting thoughts, can you add anything to help the new stove owners out?

 

Only once. I tried to do a low slow burn with oak to see if I could go beyond the 24 hour burn I documented last year here on the forum. I built a big hot fire then turned the air down to about 5% on my Beta stove and went to bed. I woke up several hours later to the smell of smoke in the house and a cold stove with an obviously stalled cat. I never burned it on that low of a setting after that and Tom at Woodstock said they eliminated that bottom quarter of air adjustment range that was on my Beta unit to prevent what happened with my stove in the future.

By the way, to further illustrate how Beta testing affected the production model, I drew the semi circle range of the air control on my ash lip in pencil, then drew in half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth marks, and marked off the 75%, 50%, 25%, 12.5%, & 7.25% spots. Tom liked that and they incorporated that on the ash lip to show the different air control settings on the production model.

 

Thanks BrianK for the beta info. The cat combustor is new to me and another part of the learning curve will be trying to eliminate the cat from stalling. In your response, knowing the air control has been adjusted from the beta to production models, I feel a little more at ease.
As others have mentioned, having more information on the burn process (probe thermometers and other surface therms) may show us just what's going on in there and how the stove burns so that by say mid November most of the new IS owners will be more comfortable with what they are doing.
I have had 3 small fires so far and along with the 'alarm clock' noise and the new subject of a cat stall, I feel a lot more informed.

 

Yeah, but the garage is a lot safer.................LOL

 

Other than not using the lowest air settings on our Beta unit, the stove really was idiot proof. Set it and forget it. It was very easy to regulate and putting a stove top thermometer on the front of the stove in the middle over the door, just to the right of the hole for the probe thermometer, will tell you the cat is working. Compare it to temps on top and near the flue collar. That spot is consistently the hottest spot on the stove.

 

Make sure you understand how the air control works. It is (brilliantly) NOT linear. At the end of the control you have a much better ability to fine tune but the last 20%(?) operates on a completely different "curve / range". I didn't understand how it worked until I put my head under and looked the inlet slider. I'm not really sure what this means in your case. You may just be dealing with poor draft because it is comparatively warm out still-- but I can see how the assumption the air control is linear would cause someone to shut it down too far.
Either way, I think you will find the learning curve for the IS to be short and you will be toasty warm all winter. Congrats on a great purchase!

 

BrianK , did the beta units ever have the bell ringing that the production units are experiencing?

 

Actually no, mine had a simple metal coil that opened and closed the pre-cat air. My unit was not reliable and did not work properly all season. They switched to the bimetallic piece to eliminate the coil. The bimetallic piece should be far more reliable, but appears to be causing the bell ringing. I have not installed or used mine yet so I don't know how big an issue the ringing bell will be.