Yet another newbie Woodstock Ideal Steel thread

I appreciate the respect but no need for any reverence, I am just another cog in the system that makes up this forum.

The reason I monitor my stove's behavior is twofold; the first reason is so I can determine exactly how it is working overall, but even more so so that I can determine how the combustor works, IF it is working, how long before it re- lights after a reload and so forth. The other reason is so that I can see an entire burn which usually takes place overnight or unattended during the day. My goal has always been the most even, efficient burn possible and loading and setting it at, say. 11:00 PM and then finding it basically out of fuel in the morning does not show how the actual burn went. Gathering data and charting it does.

Opening the ash pan door is one of those things that can be a very useful tool and very dangerous, all at the same time. My opinion is that it is perfectly viable to start a fire but must be watched carefully because it is quite easy to overheat first the grate and then the whole stove and chimney with a bottom draft stove. And the ash pan door is not really much of a control for bottom drafting, it is far, far too large to be able to control a stove with it open, and just cracking it even a small amount still opens a huge draft area because that small opening is all around a really large door. The stove companies simply oppose it under any and all circumstances because that is the only safe way they can go; stating that you could use 'a little' air through the grate leaves the proverbial door wide open as to what 'a little' is. So they always state not to use that stove that way under any circumstances and in any amount.

So as a direct answer to your ash box door question: it can be an acceptable practice and it can lead to bad things, all at once. It must be monitored and regulated very carefully. I once knew someone who started a fire in a cold stove in the morning, opened the ash pan door to 'get it going' while she took a shower (!!!!!). Bad idea..... actually, a horrible idea. I would never, ever suggest anyone ever crack the ash pan door without being in close attendance to the stove. I would not even go to the bathroom, for example, with an ash pan door cracked because I think it is inviting disaster.

Brian

 

Agree 100% Sconnie. I have a 4 channel logger and several other thermocouple devices primarily for the smokers and grills. They are accurate and super fast reacting and can quickly tell you what is happening while you are adjusting and experimenting. But, they require wires coming out of the stove, are hard to read at a glance from across the room, and are not pretty for the wife.

I recently added the 3-12-1 cat probe. It isn’t super fast or perfectly accurate, but it is dead simple, a clean wire free install, and it tells me all I need to know. I also have the WS stove top thermometer next to the flue outlet and a flue probe which could be used to guess what is happening, but the cat probe directly measures what I need to know and is the only one I really need to look at.

Light the fire or add logs. Wait a few minutes for things to catch and then check the cat probe. In the white? Close the cat bypass and then verify it starts to climb past 600. In the black? Wait until it is in the white. Simple and effective.

 

Interesting as I have seen the same thing. A couple of years ago, I had some white ash that was reading 17% on the moisture meter. It made the Ideal Steel rage with heat. Red Oak at 15% burns well but does not put out the the same heat nor burn as long as the white ash.

 

Since I do not own a moisture meter I can't say with certainty that our would was not too moist. The majority of the wood we burned prior to the chimmney fire was ~2 years seasoned and mostly limb wood that we bought from a (gasp) friendly wood supplier! The pieces were a lot of limb rounds (4" diameter).

My wife would burn very small fires during the day, small as in about 1/8 of the box capacity. My thought was this was more a contributing factor then moisture... I may be wrong. Couple that with a certain dummy not bothering to look at the cleanout for the full season!!! Plan on checking the cleanout and using a mirror to check the chimmney at least once a month.

Any recommendations on a decent (hopefully not too exspensive) moisture meter? I understand that often times cheap tools are not good tools but our budget is rather tight this year - although safety has no price tag...

Another note that should have been revealed: the installer of our stove and piping is a certified member of the Chimmney Saftey Institue of America (does that mean anything?). With that said our stove is located in the center of the first floor of a two story farm house (1,100 sq. Ft), the stove pipe comes off the top of the Ideal Steel runs vertical for ~ 3' then 90 degree through a wall into a closet area and then a 90 degree horizontal for ~ 2' run to the chimmney.... the 2' horizontal pipe has a slight rise running to the chimmney. The chimmney is about 18' straight up with about 3' above the peak of the roof.
Where the horizontal pipe enters the chimmney there is about 4" of pipe below the bottom of the horizontal pipe.

So essentially we have three (!) 90 degree 'turns' in the first 9' of pipe (all 6" diameter double walled). Is this as bad as it sounds?

Thanks again for the wisdom.

 

Other than being a pain to inspect and clean the lower part of the pipe, no, those 90's should not be a problem when the chimney is warm and the stove running. They will slow down the flow through the entire system, and may make it harder to get a fire going but once everything is involved and up to temp. and the stove draft reduced, there is really not much air flowing through the stove, pipe and chimney anyway.

But the horizontal run of pipe right off the stove tends to collect a lot of debris and usually could use a quick cleaning long before the chimney itself, so those long horizontal runs will tend to fill up with ash and they are going to be harder to clean than a short, straight horizontal run into the chimney.

There are two very different parts to a chimney's behavior: one is flow, as in how much total flow, and how fast the gasses move, through the system. This is important when re-loading a stove to keep the smoke and debris inside the stove and not leaking into the house. The second part is the draft or 'pull' of the chimney when it is restricted (not allowed to flow as much as it can), and this is what is important when the stove draft is reduced but the chimney needs to maintain a negative pressure, or 'pull' on the stove so air always flows into the stove and out the the chimney.

So as a kinda' lousy example, if we were to compare three identical chimneys, all the same material, all the same insulation but different in internal diameters and being a 4", 6" and 8" chimney, obviously the larger ones would flow a lot more air when all were wide open. But once the stove is shut down, any one of those three would work fine, and the smaller one would actually run warmer and draft harder (create more vacuum) once the max. flow was restricted by the damper on the stove.

Brian

 

3 90s? I would have put the stove somewhere else. It should work but man I wouldn't even want to add that to the equation.

Limb wood rounds take an extra long time to dry since they are covered in bark. That certainly didn't help. A bunch of small fires during the day probably didn't help either.

You can get a cheap moisture meter at harbor freight. When you check the wood make sure it's room temperature. Then split a piece of wood. Then use the moisture meter on the freshly exposed face of the wood. I'd do a few pieces just to be sure. Moisture meter is under 20 bucks.

 

Hey Horkn I saw you mention in another thread you were close geographically to stumplifter what are the chances you could stop by and look at this setup? Something doesn't seem right, professionally installed stove, superior stove doesn't add up to 3 90s in stove pipe and a chimney fire in first 8 months..

I know it' a big ask but if a few minutes away..

 

I'm a good 3 hrs away from stumplifter. My mom lives up near him though. I'll have to read more on this thread. I will say that there's at least 1 "professional" stove outfit around Tomahawk that I wouldn't trust to plug the blower fan into an outlet.

 

stumplifter , if you have a smartphone, or tablet, buy this....
Ryobi Phone Works Moisture Meter-ES3000 - The Home Depot

next time you get to Rhinelander or Wausau, or any Home Depot will have it.


These work very well, if you know how to follow instructions that is. There's no other moisture meter on the market that can do what this one can. I've had mine a couple of years, and I love it.


Extra 90's in the piping aside, to me it sounds like you're wood isn't dry enough. Limb wood indeed does take longer to dry than other wood as it is encased in bark. What kind of wood are you burning?

Getting a MM and getting readings will tell a lot. While I've got absolutely zero experience with cat stoves, I know that any of these EPA stoves need dry wood to work properly. If anything, cat stoves are even more picky about moisture content.

If you find the wood is not low enough in MC, you can try a few options to get wood that is burnable. Pine is fine, ( you won't believe how many people in northern Wisconsin still don't understand that pine doesn't cause chimney fires, but wet wood of any species does), then there's cutoffs from Mills, eco bricks, etc.

I bet you could find stacks of pine logs dry enough up there for cheap/ free to get you past this winter.

 

So we bought the farm property about 2.5 years ago and relocated from Milwaukee. We purchased the stove direct from Woodstock and they delivered it to a nearby city and the local stove place....

I think I may have found that one guy. Initially he seemed very cooperative and friendly but it seems that there is a city near here that if you don't have deep roots in it your are and always will be an "outsider". Seriously, it is a creepy place that reminds me of a Stephen King novel. A casual visitor to the area would think it is a quaint up north town, but the closer you get the more you see. This is NOT Tomahawk that I speak of. Tomahawk is a great touristy focused town, but with a genuine friendliness- nothing like the place about 25 miles south of there.

Horkn I will send you a PM.

I do want to acknowledge that Brian's explanation sounds logical and we can open the stove's door without any smoke 'pushing' back in, that would indicate a sufficient draft. Horizontal sections are easy to get to and disassemble.

 

I have found that the species matters when it gets cold. Ash is my go to... I also have been burning cherry and walnut, but they do not put out the heat as much as Ash, nor do they last as long. Not noticeable when it is warm outside, other than burn time, but there is a difference when it is cold.

 

Oh you didn't just go there!

 

Horkn,

Thanks for that link on the Ryobi moisture meter. I'll be looking into that bad boy since the I phone gets used for about everything else as well. I do have the cheap HF one that seems to work pretty well and have had it for years now but I doubt that it is anything like that smart phone Ryobi attachment meter. And the price seems quite reasonable. I need to get up to speed with the times and tech.

I will be getting back into wood burning but must confess I've been dumping 40 lb bags into the P68. I bought the NC 30 deal and have yet to install it. I've had two very serious back to back injuries (nasty fall then a wreck) and haven't been able to walk again until recently. I've pretty much so been laid up since August 2016 from a fall then I had an accident following that. Broken legs, ankles, heel, back, and ribs all said and done. Two surgeries.

Big fun and I was scooting around on my azz pushing with my hands. From there I went to a two wheeled granny walker and then onto crutches. TWICE! That slows the wood burning down to zilch. Looking forward to getting the cheap seats NC 30 up and going though but it may not see any action until next season.

I've been following these IS stoves awhile now and would like to get one but need to get patched up completely first. Just now walking decent again but am also limited with that. On the plus side all my wood will be good and seasoned. It's stacked up in the barn inside too.

Good Luck Stumplifter! These folks will get you squared away.

 

I think ash is my favorite wood.
I burned acres of it my first three years with great results.

Cherry probably makes the most ashes of anything I've burned. Have to shovel the pan out 3 times per week

 

Roger that, we have 1/4" rise per foot.

Thanks!

 

Yes, as a 'general rule' (of thumb) you do not want any more 90's or horizontal runs in smoke pipe than necessary but on the other side of the coin, they are not outright 'deal killers' that will prevent a stove from operating correctly, and especially they cannot cause, on their own, a stove to act improperly.

You have gotten some good advise and thoughts in this thread I think, and you can go down that list and check things out.

One thing I have found is that the I.S. is what I would call a cold- blooded stove, slow to start, slow to heat up and very slow to heat up the chimney. Far more so regarding heat up the chimney than any other stove I have ever seen; it is a real chore for me to get my stove pipe to 700F, and that is inside temp, not pipe surface temp. So I think there is a good chance a new user just may not be running the stove hard enough, with enough fuel, to get it up to a clean- burning temp.; effectively running the stove in a smoldering mode, which will make make a mess of any chimney, using any stove. Wood just cannot be allowed to smolder, at least not without a hot, "lit" catalytic combustor above it to consume all that smoke. Otherwise, that smoke will end up as creosote in the chimney.

Brian

 

Welcome stumplifter! I’m glad to see those old Ideal Steel threads are still getting traffic.

You’ve already gotten some excellent advice on this thread. TurboDiesel is my little brother and is now using my Ideal Steel as I’ve subsequently moved and am unable to use it where I currently live.

I too am really concerned that you had a flue fire during the first year. Though I suspect wet limb wood, I’d sure feel more comfortable if someone who knew what they were looking at would look over your system for you!