How much secondary air is enough or too much? What if it was adjustable?

After tinkering with my stove one day, and realizing the secondary air inlets aren't adjustable in any way, I got to thinking. What effect might controlling this air have? I did briefly block 2 of 6 holes and noticed a change in performance, less dramatic fire, but warmer, but uncovered the holes again the next day.

Has anyone put any thought into this? Obviously blocking 6 holes would turn it into a pre epa stove (I believe), but what about having control of the secondary air, with particulates not a concern?

What if there was 12 holes? Again, I'm not going to drill another 6 holes, but I'm curious about this relationship.

Are any stoves available that control the secondary air amount?

Looking forward to random thoughts here.

 

The Woodstock Ideal Steel does have control over the secondaries. Not independently because there is a single air control for the primary and secondary air (and it is not linear), but there is a big range from very little to blowing like a hurricane out of the top holes.

 

I'd like to have control over the secondaries on the 30. It would be fun/interesting to tinker.

 

I partially covered the secondary intake hole with some aluminum tape for a hot minute a while back and now I don't remember what the result of that was.
When the cold comes back, maybe I'll revisit that attempt to control the secondaries.

 

It's not the tubes themselves, although I had wondered about smaller/bigger/less/more holes in the burn tubes. The 6 holes I'm referring to are beneath the stove, to the rear, and head straight up into the secondary air chamber (I'm assuming). As mentioned, I had blocked a couple for a night, and while it took longer until the secondaries kicked in, they were slower, more relaxed, and the flames instead of being crazy jets blasting straight forward, dropped, stretched, and were somewhat lazy.

I'm not looking to shut them down, but I wonder if there's an extra 10 percent of something just waiting for me to find without the epa looking over my shoulder. My stove is quite shallow, and a ton of flames shooting between the baffles just gives mostly higher flue temps.

 

I totally agree, just a bit on the top end to keep it in check when the weather or draft makes it a bit excessive.

 

Another thought about covering or blocking the holes, would the velocity of the air pulled through increase in the other holes? It didn't seem to when I blocked 2 holes, but the weather wasn't crazy cold. I'm only looking to grab a bit more performance when it's severely cold. Performance meaning, keeping it below the baffles or just to the point of entering the baffles going up.

 

There is at least one stove out there that controls both the primary and secondary air together (non cat)...I can't remember what model it is now, I remember it coming up in a thread somewhere a while back though...I'll see if I can come up with it.

 

A sliding cover would be ideal.

 

Like we've said, I set 'em up....you knock 'em down. Anyone up for a good ole' game of T-ball?(which I NEVER played in my life).

 

Me too, if I remember right there is a stove (European?) where the draft control and temperature together vary the primary, doghouse, and secondary as needed.

 

The PE super series has a linkage that reduces secondary air as you reduce primary air with the control. The mechanism is hidden and nobody knows to what degree the secondary is reduced.

I run my nc30 hard and tried plugging off some secondary air. It slowed down the jets for sure but then I worried about melting the secondary air system due to lack of cooling air. I do not have a runaway stove problem so I decided to let the secondaries rip.

 

My primary air plate is back to where it should be after my excitement last week, so I don't have a runaway stove problem either.

 

I'm actually more wondering the other way, less holes, less air, to keep the flames to a certain sweet spot on the baffles once it hits a certain point. But on the other hand, what does excess ( I mean a lot) air do? Burn cleaner, or cool the stack?

And another thought, there's got to be compromises built into any stove, as they need to work in Alaska, Saskatchewan, or South Carolina.

 

Those secondary air tubes glow really hot red with full secondary air. They’re really expensive to replace too. Keep an eye on them during your experiments. Wouldn’t want them to sag under their own weight. Keep an eye on your emissions too.

 

At any given stove temperature and outside temperature; the chimney is drafting the same volume of air thru a modern EPA stove. IOW, the amount of air is not lessened with the air control..................all the air control does on modern stoves is adjust the "proportions" of air into the primary, secondary and tertiary/doghouse avenues. Only if you have a stovepipe damper are you lessing the draw of air thru the chimney.