I just looked up at the stove and noticed the tee and liner are glowing bright red I shot it with the heat gun and it registered at 572* so not to hot but Ive never noticed it glowing before? I had just reloaded the stove and had everything wide open so I closed the draft to half the glowing lessened but was still there. After a bit I went ahead and closed it down to 3/4 and engaged the cat the glowing went away almost immediately followed with a lot of popping pinging sounds Ive heard that before and havent thought anything of it before as I hear that all the time when I reload and engage the cat. I have no idea what happened it kind of freaked me out but all seems well now. If yall have any ideas please let me know.
Sounds like you just had a really good draft going while firing up the stove. My VC resolute used to make the pipes glow even when the bypass was closed and it was throttled down. With the Fireview, on reloads the flamepath is straight up the exhaust pipe so its easy to get it hot fast. You don't want to see pipes glow as a rule, but short bursts like that should not be a problem.
My surface temp on single wall will get to 700 in a hurry with the draft open on bypass. Flames shooting up the pipe like a rocket. Ive never seen the pipe glow, wondering if your IR is accurate? I wouldn't operate mine without a pipe thermo.
Single wall There was a really good draft I could see the flames being pulled straight up the pipe. The flames were flying up the pipe. I dont know if the IR is right or not. I was playing with it and got different readings at different distances but when I went back to the same spots the readings were different from before. Im not sure if theres a way to calibrate it. Its also reading anywhere from 50*-100* different than my stove top thermo.
I agree the most likely thing going on was the flames were being sucked straight up the pipe. When I had my Dutchwest (cat stove) and the bypass was open you had to watch it like a hawk or the flames would start up the pipe and the pipe temp would shoot through the roof. That's why with a cat stove when you are trying to heat the stove up to light off the cat it may seem counterintuitive but you need to shut the air down as you are charring the wood even with the bypass open. The stove will actually heat up faster as the fire is controlled and the heat is retained in the stove rather than the chimney. Also as if your pipe was glowing then there is no way it was in the 570 degree rang. It was probably a bit hotter than that would be my assumption. Likely closer to 1,000-1,200 degrees.
Now that is just plain weird Matt. I would be concerned. So, you had the draft full open which means flames definitely can go into the flue. Still, to reach a temperature where the thing is glowing is pretty darned hot! I guess the first thing I'd do would be to keep a very close watch on it for a while and also do some checking on the IR gun. You might heat the oven to maybe 300 degrees and check it that way but it might take a bit of time to get the sides of the oven up to that temperature. Best if you could test it on one of the racks. You can also check things in the refrigerator to see if there is some variance. In addition, I would not have waited "after a bit" like you did. If our flue temperature shoots up, the draft gets dialed down immediately and if I feel it is too high it gets dialed down to 1 or less!
I was and am still concerned about it. I just recently cleaned the chimney and checked the tee and everything looked good. This morning when I reloaded before work everything went fine and throughout the day as my wife tended the stove she said it was good. Im thinking hoping that it was just because I had the draft full open and had a very very strong draft. Im going to play around with the IR and see whats going on with it thanks for the tips Dennis.
If I look in the box and the flames are in the back, I know the flue is going to heat up faster and I need to keep an eye on it. If the flame is in the front, I'll let 'er go ahead and eat for a bit. Seems like that would be more like 900 than 500. For sure, that flue temp can climb in a hurry under the right conditions....
Matt How long have you had this stove - is it a new install? Also what type of chimney setup do you have, is it lined and how tall?
I only leave the draft fully open until I have some flames in the FB. Then I drop the draft to 2-2.5 Otherwise pipe temps spike.
This is my second year with the stove. I have a lined masonry chimney with a 6" single wall liner its about 20' tall.
That's not an overly tall chimney that I would expect to cause an overdraft condition- and the fact you are on your second year and never saw glowing before is odd. Now that you are aware of the possible condition I'm sure you will be monitoring it more closely and will get a handle on it. WS is just a phone call away and always ready to help.
