Absolute Steel Owners, Please Help Me Learn How To Run This damm Thing!

And correct, no key damper. I’ve opened the air up some now.

 

So I opened the air up until the flames came back. I left it open until the stove top temp came back up to about 300. Then I closed the air to 1.5. Pipe came up to 250. STT came up to 400. Then the flames sped up so I engaged the key damper to slow them down.

 

Engaged the key damper by how much?

 

Seems like I have to engage it completely to slow it down.

 

If you don't use the key damper, but shut the draft control down to zero there is still air flow through the stove. EPA makes sure of that. But I wonder if you did do that if you might have gotten a decent steady state. I guess another experiment if you give it a try.

 

So I just tried what you suggested Oldhippie. I opened the key damper. And I shut the air completely. And the secondaries in the front of the firebox began to roll at a fast rate. In the manual, it does say troubleshooting for an overdraft is a key damper.

 

Keeping up with this thread and paying close attention fornwhenni get my AS up and running...

Is the main issue a strong draft due to the 25 feet of chimney? And trying to learn how to control the stove/fire with such a draft?

 

Yes. I think so.

 

So the final results from last night’s burn. After stalling out the CAT and then opening the air back up, when the STT was 400 and the pipe was 250, the rate of the fire seemed to pick up. The air control was I believe at 1. So, I engaged the key damper all the way, and it slowed it down. I tried Oldhippie’s suggestion. I opened the key damper and closed the air completely, but the rate of the fire seemed to increase again almost immediately. So, I re-engaged the key damper and opened the air to 1. Later I settled on 2 small ticks above completely closed air with the key damper engaged and I had a pipe temp of about 275 and a STT about 500. And the fire seemed to be burning at an okay rate. But, mostly dirty glass this morning.
Just in case anyone is wondering about this, I had a better clean out door installed this summer that supposedly is insulated. So that’s not open or anything.
Hopefully I didn’t gum up the CAT when I stalled it. Usually after I stall it, I seem to get backpuffing and need to give it a vinegar and water bath.
In a half hour I’m going to reload. This time I’m going to go by the stove top thermometer when engaging the CAT. When that reaches 300, I’ll engage the CAT. Then, I’ll give it some air for 15-20 minutes and then close the air. No key damper. And see what happens.
Maybe I’m just building an initial fire that’s too rip roaring in the beginning when I’m waiting for the pipe thermometer to get up to 300? I don’t know. I’ll try going by the STT and see what happens.

 

Question. Maybe I’m doing this wrong. When I reload, I’ve been keeping the air fully open at 4 until the pipe temp reaches just shy of 300 then engaging the cat and lowering the air. Is this wrong? Should I open at 4, get the fire going again, add the rest of the wood, wait until that wood is involved in the fire a little bit, then lower to 3 and wait for the temp to come up to engage the cat?

 

Troutbum, how long have you had the AS, and have you always had this fire control problem? In your first post you say you added an OAK (I think that's what you meant). Why did you add the OAK? Did the stove burn like this before the OAK, or only since then?

If this has been discussed already and I missed it, I apologize....

 

I’ve had the AS since shortly after they came out. I’ve had all sorts of problems, mostly due to myself probably. At first, I was burning wet wood. I also had lots of condensation in my chimney on a cold start. Part of this may have been I needed a crown repair in the chimney. I used to have a clay round flue 8 inch. I had the crown repaired, added a 6 inch preinsulated liner, and a better clean out door. I don’t seem to have the condensation anymore. I added the OAK as a result of advice from people on this forum. I have a post and beam with structural insulated panels. So it’s tight.
I think I’ve probably always had the strong draft and was just too dumb to realize. The fire always seem to result in strong rolling secondaries at the top front of the firebox. Hence it breaking twice I’m coming to realize. I just thought since the temps on the stove were not in the overburn range ever, I was okay.
I added a key damper a long time ago. I don’t remember why. I think because when I picked up the stove after repaired the first time, one of the guys at Woodstock said that that happening (breaking) sometimes happens with an overdraft. I think I experimented with it, and probably because of other issues I was having with the stove, didn’t get the results I was looking for and gave up on it.

 

As I am coming up to speed on this, there seem to be multiple problems, or should I say possibly symptoms of problem/s.

1. Dirty glass
2. CAT stalls and gets "gummed up" when engaging cat at 250 to 300'F Pipe temps. Needs to be higher.
3. Stove has a tendency to go to overfiring if the key damper isn't fully on, and draft control is turned way down.
4. Difficult to cold start and get to a steady-state burn.
(I think I've got these right?)

Trout has taken multiple steps to resolve these issues.
1. Added insulated chimney liner to a standard 8-inch clay flue.
2. Added an Outside Air Kit
3. Added a Key Damper
4. Had an insulated flue door installed.
5. Previously Troutbum had a problem with the stove and WS repaired it.

Some things we are sure of.

1. There is a very strong draft.
2. The stove does work properly (cat engages/pipe temp decreases as STT increases) But, this doesn't happen without going to a higher than suggested STT of greater than 300+ to 400'F before engaging the cat.
3. Dirty glass seems to be consistent almost always. (maybe burns off if the stove is allowed to get extremely hot/bordering on overfired)

Possibilities
1. Wood (Troutbum is quite sure wood is dry, but the ongoing issue of dirty glass and "cat getting "gummed up" makes me suspicious of the wood. Also, difficulting starting at recommended 250STT)
2. Some airflow issue within the stove that seems to enable a VERY strong draft unless both the key damper and draft are closed and the draft is almost set to zero.)
3. Combination of an insulated 6" flue liner and 25ft chimney, in combination with the OAK, is just creating a draft that is very difficult to control.

That's all I can come up with. I will say this. My process for managing my AS from a cold start is to open the door with a full open draft (no key damper) until the wood is fully engaged. This is usually on the plus side of 300, then I set the draft to somewhere between 2 and 1 depending on how cold it is out and how well the wood is burning. I stay at this draft and cruise.

I will say, I too will suffer from the dirty glass if there is any dampness at all in my wood. I've had the stove installed since the pre-production field test, and always thought I had good wood, but until I've fully gotten on the 2 to 3-year plan, this oak we have in New England requires a solid full 2 years, CSS, and covered. Even now when I cold start I'll get initial residue on the glass but it burns off after some steady-state burning for a day or two.

At this point, I think the issue I would focus on is that draft. I'm not sure if it's possible, or difficult, but I'd suggest eliminating the OAK as a starting point to get that draft to be manageable without having to shut both the key damper and the draft control completely down.

Sorry for the length of this, but there seem to be multiple issues that I think it needs to start with a back-to-basics approach. To me that is get a good burn, that is manageable and doesn't require extreme settings to give nice heat. Then maybe some of these other symptoms like dirty glass and difficult cold-starts might resolve themselves.

PS Pretty here in New England this morning with an inch coating of snow on everything.

 

I'm not familiar with OAKs except the talk on here....can you cut them off, or adjust the amount of air going into the stove in/through them?

So it ran this aggressive before the OAK was installed as well? And it sounds like you're burning better wood now.

 

Yes. I would say it ran this aggressively before I installed the OAK. In fact, it seems like the OAK has really made no difference. I installed the OAK on Halloween. So I did some burning without the OAK this year. I did crack a window. I’m not seeing a difference.
This morning, I reloaded, waited for the STT to get to 300, pipe was about 200, engaged the cat. Left the air at a few ticks below the 3 setting. This was about 8:20. It’s an hour later. I opened the air back up to 3 a bit ago. Not much going on. Pipe is 150, STT is 225.

 

Reading along with interest...just cuz I'm a wood heat junky and have an analytical mind I guess...one thing that I noticed was that adjustments to the dampers seem to be pretty drastic when they are made...I know on a tube type stove that smaller adjustments need to be made over a 15-20 period so that the fire doesn't just die from the primary air being cut back too quickly/all at once...since these are hybrid stoves, maybe the same rule applies to some degree? If this was a tube only stove I would advise the key damper (KD) to be fully open, then once the fire is where you want it, cut the intake down to 3 (for example) give it a minute(s) to stabilize, then take it to 2...rinse and repeat down to the normal "cruise" setting...I guess the trick would be knowing where in there to engage the cat...need to experiment with that I guess...then the last piece of the puzzle is to close the KD...but not necessarily the whole way, and certainly not all at once...I know it sounds like a lot of extra fooling around, but it may also allow you to learn some control tricks for your setup...then once things are figured out better, a routine can be established...my 2 ¢...

 

So if anyone is interested in this bit of info, I called Woodstock to look into a probe to directly read the CAT temp. They say I would need an 8 inch probe. The port is on the non loading door side. There’s a bolt that you would remove and you would feed the probe in thru there and there should be a hole in the deflector shield that sits over the CAT for it to feed in thru there?

 

I Jane one question about the Condar probe. They offer two different ones that are 8 inches. It says one is a 2 inch dial and the other is a 1 1/2 inch dial. Is that just the size of the thermometer part that sits on the outside of the stove? Just want to make sure I get the right thing.

 

Maybe this has already been tried but have you burned kd lumber cuts just to see how the stove/ cat responds?

 

Troutbum have you purchased/installed a Cat gauge yet to be able to really know when the cat is ready to be engaged? Does the AS have a port for one? Curious.

It would seem to me that once you had determined the pipe damper position/setting that allows you to cold start without smoke rollout and maintain stove control with its own primary air control lever, I would not touch the pipe damper again. At least for a few loads to eliminate that futzing in the overall mix. Random thoughts