Production Woodstock IS

I put a damper in my stove pipe tonight. I have a theory. Even though it has somewhat of a restriction on the draft, I believe it will keep the cat temperature higher longer. Therefore, it should keep the cat in the active zone a little longer. It could squeeze a little more btus out of the wood. Just a theory.

 

Worse case JA is that it doesn't help and just gets left open, no biggie I guess. I have mine sitting on the hearth awaiting install. But I've been running the stove continuously now for over a week I think. I'm also going to re-do the single wall from stove to tee since it's such a pain without a slip and the current setup is a bit short. I have a slip pipe now I'll put in the same time as damper. I'd switch over to the pellet stove to let the ISH cool off but I can't seem to find my silicone tape to seal the duravent (duraleak) pipes with. It'll turn up eventually. But the weather shows a warming trend the next few days, maybe I'll just let it go out during the day. I just hate lighting the stove from cold.

Another question for the guys with the thermocouple devices... what do you use for surface (stove top) probe? I did a quick search for magnetic surface mount k-type high temperature thermocouples and didn't find anything.

 

I use these from Omega: 5TC-GG-K-20-72 They are so small in diameter and medium brown that they just about disappear on and around the stove.

If you are not interested in those, you can always use the genuine Chinese types, directly from China such as these: K Type 2 Flat Pin Thermocouple Wire TemPerature Sensor TP | eBay My experience is that these are OK but not very robust nor are they very long ( your readout device will have to be quite close to the stove). That said, at $1 each, you could buy 15 and just swap them when the fail and still probably have a life- time supply. Hold the bead down on the stove with either a small magnet of some type of small, steel weight.

Brian

 

I'm using Auber's washer-mount TCs for my STT.

 

Anyone have or can point me to some stats about how different your draft settings were before a pipe damper and then after? I usually burn with damper open and draft at 3-4 small notches, or 1/4 open. I only put it there in case of a chimney fire to "help" slow down or smother the fire or if its really windy outside. So seeing this discussion, I'm toying with this idea now...

 

When I first got this stove I was getting nice charcoal bodies in the morning after an overnight load but I was getting slow starts and smoke spillage.

So I added 3ft of insulated chimney and the stove responded much better . However, it seemed to burn up the load of wood more completely. This makes shoulder burning with lesser woods more annoying as you have a more peaked and lower burn time.

Last night with the damper installed and closed I had my charcoal bodies back in the morning with plenty of heat coming off the stove.

It essentially cancels out my addition of pipe after I get the stove cruising. At 28ft of chimney (2 90's) I would say that's a good thing.

 

I fired mine up the other night & it works perfect. Been a very mild fall in missouri & that could change any time. Have a safe winter & stay warm.

 

Very windy here today. Every gust is seen in the firebox. I installed a damper and I'm glad of it. It really smooths out the burn in gusty winds. It does seem to drive the STT up a little too.

 

It's been really gusty here today for the first time. It's amazing how one gust will suck every trace of flame out of the firebox and then the next one will make it rage inside.

 

A damper will reduce (but not eliminate) the abrupt changes in your stove due to outside wind too.

Of course to actually get rid of that problem some type of wind diffusion device is needed for the top of the chimney, and those are readily available too.

Brian

 

I actually already have the fanciest (non-rotating) cap and optional baffle ICC offers for their Excel chimney up there. I hope to avoid having to pay the big bucks to replace the "luxury" cap with the "swivels with the wind" cap. I'll go the rest of this season before I change anything unless I encounter a show stopper.

 

Brrr did it get cold in a hurry! Stove had been off the last couple days so I finally got around to installing the key damper and put some new single wall pipe in to clean up the install. Besides a slight increase in stove top heat I'm really hoping the key damper will help me maintain a cat only burn on the really big loads that would still lite off the secondaries with the throttle all the way closed.
Also got my pellet stove back together and fired up today too. Usually don't need both unless below freezing but 30's is close enough and the wind really cuts through this drafty old place. Nice thing is with both going I can keep em both just about at idle at these temps.

 

With the strong winds we had here the past day or so, my catalyst temp got up to 1600 deg, and that was with the damper closed all the way! I was in a bit of a panic, but got the secondaries going to bring it down again. PHEW! That sucker was glowing orange!

 

Speaking of glowing orange, I snuck a peak at the combustor last night, with the camera, never had done that before. Loaded it just about full of 2-3yr ash, let it get hot before turning it down too much, and then snuffed out all active flames and the cat was cruising about 1200F (at least according to condar probe fwiw).


That was around 8pm I loaded, pics were about 10pm, and now its quarter past 11AM and while the CAT is below active, about 400, still a thick warm coal bed and about 250-260 peak on the stove top. I'm going to let it go another hour or two with the throttle half open. So probably will be around 16 hr burn or so, not too bad for a higher cat burn, could have probably kept it lower and longer burn if I wanted, I had another notch or two left on the throttle with the key damper closed.

 

You aughta send that picture to Woodstock and have them send you the new radiator with a stainless steel plate. That baby is warped.

 

Same here. It's been an adventure. You can watch the temps go up with every gust and drop back as the wind subsides. Stove and key damper both closed and firebox full of locust. It didn't go nuclear but could easily have. Luckily I had my high side alarms on and was alerted of the temps.

 

Just for reference- I walked into the shop with my sled plate that looked about the same and they told me it wouldn't bother performance and not to worry. I'm sure if I pushed it they would have been happy to replace but I felt comfortable continuing to run it. One consideration is that I haven't put many hours on it since. One more consideration is that my office is 5 minutes down the road so at anytime I can bring it back if it gets worse.
AWESOME picture, btw.

 

I had the original one in for two seasons. Every time I cleaned the cat I saw more metal flakes sitting on top. The radiator was only half as thick as it was originally. I now have one with the stainless shield. It is no longer an issue. The old one worked, but it was so deteriorated that I probably would have only gotten another year out of it. My issue was that it kept dropping material on the cat. That is not normal imo.

 

Oh yeah just waiting on it getting a bit worse, I know they have the new one with SS shield but I didn't think mine was that bad. The warpage is probably only like ~1/4" there is some flaking too but didn't seem to be enough to measurably take any thickness away yet. And I don't know if I should send em a pic of the stove running with the lid popped up - even if for just 2 seconds - they might frown on that but I don't know. I'll just describe it too em in email and if they want a pic I'll take one cold

My folks in northern NY tell me they just got dumped on pretty big, it's there first snow storm more than just a dusting and they got 2' overnight (and that is from record setting 73F the day before)! Broke the shear pin this morning on the tractor mounted snow blower so he's using the bucket loader instead.
Stay warm everyone, winter is finally here.

 

If you ever feel that you are or have lost control of the stove, you can put a flat piece of <something non- combustible> over the bottom draft slot- the one that does not close even when the draft lever is fully closed. And the two small front vents to the firebox are fed through a small hole just below the firebox opening but you cannot see it when the door is closed. Open the door and again, cover that hole with something to block off the air being fed into the firebox.

I am not recommending either one of these things normally be done to any IS, mostly because they are not necessary and if there is not a LOT of pull from the chimney, it is really asking for a 'back- puff' out of a hot stove. But again, these are two things that can be done, and they will be effective, to throttle a stove that is running a bit too hot with the normal draft controls and a damper in the fully closed positions.

That is why I installed a damper in the first place- my stove was running a little harder than I normally use it but it was perfect for the conditions, which was very cold and windy. The problem was that the draft was fully closed and I just was not comfortable not having any ability to slow the stove down if I had wanted to do so. The damper solved the problem for me but my chimney is about to get 3' longer (Easy Boys!) and then the damper might not be quite enough to maintain control over the stove.

Of course the damper I have could be closed down quite a bit too as the holes through are really too large IMO, and far bigger than they used to be in the olden' days. This is probably due to liability but the fact is that a 'closed' damper is not as closed as it used to be, and they were not even close to closed way back when. But I am not suggesting anyone do that either because it might turn out to be a bad idea.

Brian