It's finally go time (next Wednesday) on the Ideal Steel that's been sitting in the dining room for a month. I'm not a huge data guy, but I am when it comes to temperatures.. Must be from spending my first career in the hamburger business. I'd like to go with a digital probe for the quick temperature reaction compared to the standard Condar unit many have used with great success. Particularly, it will be good to be able to "set and forget" as quickly as possible for both myself and Mrs Papi. Data logging would be great too so I can see what happens over night or while we're away, but if it's cost prohibitive we'll skip it for now. Money is pretty tight at the moment after some unexpected and large hits to the wallet. What is everyone using nowadays for a digital recorder or monitor? I have read through the IS omnibus, but a lot of the info is dated to a few years back, so some fresh reports would be very well appreciated! Edit to add a gratuitous pre install photo of aforementioned IS.
I am using some of these [4 Channels K-type Thermocouple Thermometer SD Card Logger High / Low Alarm | eBay] (not from that particular supplier but they are all over Ebay) with great success. They display and record (on SD card) 4 channels of K-type thermocouple data. I use one above the cat., one in the top of the firebox, one in the flue just before it enters the thimble (exhaust gas temp. reading) and one on the stove top. They respond in one second and I find they help running a stove efficiently as well as cleanly. You cannot use the thermocouples that come with the unit but fiberglass insulated 'bead' thermocouples are inexpensive, and the 8mm S.S. sheathed, threaded probes are not all that expensive either. You can collect data over hours, or even days or weeks, then use something like M.S. Excel to graph the temps. It is pretty enlightening to see how long the stove burned, and how hot over the entire burn. Some folks are also using one- channel readouts with success and of course they are somewhat less expensive. Brian
How did you mount the thermocouple in the firebox? Happy to discuss in PM if you aren't comfortable talking about drilling a stove in public Also, how far from the collar is your flue probe? I'm going to go straight out the wall with 6" clearance - do you think I'll get usable data that close? Thank you for replying!
