How do you maintain the best catalyst performance?

Yea it was a combination of wet cottonwood and an old dying cat combined. Not one of my better burns that day .

 

I get 24 burn times with a full load at a lower setting. Doug fir or other lower btu wood.

A complete cycle is full it with wood and let it burn down to just coals before loading another full load. This in contrast to those folks that chuck in a new split every couple of hours.

 

I've tried throwing a couple splits in to keep the fire going, seems to build up more coals that way.. (too many)

 

I fought to get the fire going last night after burning up a bunch of cardboard, so today i pulled the cat out and cleaned it.
Not sure you can tell from this pic, but i cleaned half then took a picture.






Before

 

Looks like you cleaned the left side in the top picture.

 

Not sure which stove that CAT goes into, but the way it is made it looks like it just lifts out and drops into place. The gasket must lay in the stove and simply outline the frame of the CAT? At least it looks that way without seeing the rest of the stove. Beets trying to wrap a gasket around a CAT them finessing it back in place.

Is it typical to see the inside of a stove all glazed up using one of these? I hope not. I’d like to avoid that with at least 3 year seasoned wood and keep the inside of my stove, stove pipe, and chimney clean.

 

Isn’t that a way to help rid a stove of excess coals? I thought so. I’m talking about after the coals build up though...throw in one or two small splits to help the coals burn down.

 

That’s a Woodstock Ideal steel cat yes it sits in a hole on the “sled” and a lever pulls it overs smoke path when stove is to temp.

pulling cat 1 and putting in spare is 2 minute, no tool , job that can be done when stove is in coaling stage.

 

Yes, but I think TurboDiesel was talking about hot loading. Refilling stove quickly before bed which can lead to coal build up and probably done with a high BTU wood

burning down coals is best left too lighter BTU woods like pine and basswood

 

When run on lower outputs, where a cat stove is cleanest and most efficient and where most folks run their stoves most of the time, the firebox can “glaze up” or get dark deposits. The cat loves eating that heavy, slow moving, smoke and the roof of the stove will be brown and of course the cat is eating the smoke so chimney deposits are reduced.

 

Only if you throw in a small split and leave the intake wide open. Some folks, to keep a stove burning all day at low output, will chuck a split in every so often just to keep a small fire going.

 

Yes, yes. Yes. Yes and yes.

Don't use oak to "burn the coals down"

 

Now I know what I can do with the large basswood trees next to my house that need cut down. Two have pretty good logs in them.

 

I use to have a terrible problem with excess coals in the Fireview but the real problem was it was undersized for the house. Fast forward to the replacement stove (Progress) and now we have zero problems with coaling.

When we had the coaling problem we did exactly like Backwoods said and opened up the draft when the stove hit around 350.

 

I tried all the previously listed things with some success. Then came across a process written by Sud-Chemie (they used to make wood stove cats) for ceramic cats that happens to work stellar with our stainless cat in the IS. Trying to figure out how to attach a PDF now….
The chapter is called “ VI. Major Cleaning Procedure
For Süd-Chemie’s Catalytic Combustor”

 

I find the gasket is all crumbly when I remove the cat. I bought a roll of cat gasket material and replace as needed.

 

Posted this before but thought it was appropriate.

 

Same here. Even the IS had a little trouble with excess coals.