Production Woodstock IS

That's concerning.

 

My wife has full-text access to the journal that published that article. She's going to download it for me sometime tonight and I'll try to get it read for yall sometime this weekend.

 

I wonder if this applies in any way to the catalyst that is in the converters of billions of cars driving on the road throughout the world.

 

Maybe you already looked, but check if the air intake sliders are opening/closing (sliding plates)seen on the bottom of stove, left side. The sliding plate should move while opening and closing the air intake lever.
It can be seen while laying on the floor, left side of stove, looking up at the bottom of the stove. Or put a mirror on the floor so you see the bottom of the stove.
Also, any possibility there's a partial blockage in the flue?

 

Yes, that was one of the things I checked very early on. The guillotine valves do open and close in what looks like a proper manner

 

Looks like you have done all you can do and have ruled out draft and fuel. I would call WS and explain your tests and ask if any other IS owners have run into this problem and ask for their suggestions. I'm no IS expert, but if you can snuff out a redstone once it has started, you are clearly doing this by starving it of air; if this happens when wide open air - there is a problem with the air supply.

 

Just a warning (if you haven't used them before, but maybe you have) those bricks are really hard to get going unless you're loading on a good established coal bed. They can be a very difficult to get going from scratch in a cold stove.

Hopefully you get your stove figured out, but it is certainly possible you got a defect, it has happened before.

Wow that is great! Not to often do we hear houses of any size heated with only 2 cords. I can't wait till I get out of this place but that probably won't happen for another 8-9 years. But I'm already writing plans and sketches of the place I want to build. This place sucks down 4+ cord, 4-5 tons of wood pellets, and usually 200 gallons of propane also, to get through the average winter.

 

OK, so I've been reading the Chemosphere paper on the use of Pt/Pd catalytic converters in small wood burners.

0) The researchers reiterate many times that there needs to be much more study on this issue done because they were the first ones to look at it and they had insufficient funding to test all the things that could be going on.

1) The test stove was a sauna heater. These are somewhat different to our wood stoves in that there's no attempt to release heat in a controlled fashion. They're run flat out pretty much constantly. The researchers say they believe the results can be generalized to other types of wood burning that are not well controlled.

2) Test burns were VERY short, 72-75 minutes total. Supposedly, this represents how the locals actually use their sauna heaters and that was the point of the research. So there's no information about the impact of catalytic burning on the kind of long, low burns people do with the IS or BK stoves.

3) The cat was produced by NVI. I don't know if that makes it a ceramic or metallic substrate design.

4) Several classes of very toxic chemicals were meaningfully reduced by the cat. Several other classes of very toxic chemicals were dramatically increased by the cat.

5) The researches say the situation is sufficiently complex that there really ought to be a proper wide-scale analysis of all of this if the EU and US are going to push the use of cats in wood burners.

 

12 hours after that medium sized load of maple and I'm doing a reload on hot coals. Gotta love it.

 

There are catalysts working for many applications all over, I'm sure cars are the most common. Gasoline Combustion engines may also have a different byproduct before the cat than wood burning does.

 

Less wood in stove. I used to fill it completely, stacking every piece like a jigsaw puzzle. I had the wood touching the secondary plate and against leaning against the door frame. For the last few poeces I had to angle one end of the wood up into the top opening to get it all the way through the door then lay it flat on top of the pile. I cut my fire wood to 20" so it's fills 95% out to the sides as well.

 

I was cutting to 20 but then I can't go north/south. I now cut to 18 and can load north/south and east/west. When I go east west I put one piece north/south to fill up the 4 inch gap along the sidewall.

Someone here mentioned it and it works out well.

 

I only load east/west. I rake the majority ash into the pan then the remainder is taken off the grate and piled along the sides of the grate creating a trench for air to flow under. 1/4 to a 1/2 of a super cedar to light it.

 

Since we aren't into winter yet and I do cold starts I've been going with a top down start in the evening. Even though I still eventually engage the cat and decrease the air it has a nice set it and forget it feel.

 

I have been trying top down starts on my new IS, & am impressed with the results. I start the kindling fire near the back & the secondaries light off rather quickly.

 

it's 28 and snowing.. what do ya mean winter not here yet? where I live winter starts before Halloween and hopefully ends by tax returns

 

Question for you guys:

After lurking on the forum for a bit, & reading about cat engagement & stalling cats, I went ahead & installed a Condar Catalyst probe on my Ideal Steel. How quickly does your cat temp climb after you engage the lever? Mine sat at 500 for 2 minutes or so, which made me think I stalled it. If I engage it at higher temps, say 800, the steady rise is much more noticeable. I watched a video that I think JA600L uploaded of a cat burn with a cat probe, but it was a little to dark to watch the needle.

I think I'm either stalling it, or perhaps with my small shoulder fires there is not enough heat or gas in there to get much low end activity?? What are your experiences with rising cat temps?

 

Are you engaging at 500° on the cat probe? If you are that's too low of a temp. Minimum surface (near top fue exit) temp for engaging is 250-275. Actual cat probe temp with surface temp of 250ish is near 1k. Check my graph a few posts up. A 500° target temp would be for flue temp and then engage the catalyst.

 

Yes, I was engaging at about 550* at the cat. So it sounds as if that is too early. I will wait until it gets hotter tonight before closing the bypass.

 

Do you have a thermometer on the stove top? It should have come with one. They are relatively accurate. I would play with its placment to find the hottest spot, most common umongst us is to either side of the top flue plate ner the slight drop off.