Ideal Steel Season #2 Tips, Tricks, and Improvements.

With the primary air control fully closed, I believe there is more air coming into the cat supply then at the bottom. I think that would be pretty important for an OAK to connect to it as well.

 

The combustor does have its own air supply but the temperature of the cat. burn is controlled by how much smoke is being generated by the actual wood fire (or smoldering) below. If the cat. air supply is reduced, the cat. temp. will go down but at the expense of not burning all the smoke it is being fed, and that is just a dirty burn.

I have the OAK on my stove and it only supplies the air to the firebox, both the primary air which is basically the air wash for the glass and the main front / bottom air feed (although the air comes in from the top), and the secondary air which is introduced above the stainless steel plate at the top of the stove. The combustor air is drawn in from the back of the stove, and the small primary holes are fed from the small hole behind the loading door; neither of those are supplied in any way by the OAK.

Brian

 

The OAK is mounted to the bottom of the stove and is a long 'box' that covers both intake air plate openings. The OAK does not control the stove, it merely takes whatever air the stove is drawing, based on the user setting, and feeds it from an outside air source.

The OAK connection is a 4" fitting for stove pipe located at the back / lower / left (looking at the front of the stove) corner and facing directly away from the stove. Flexible or rigid pipe attaches to it and would be connected to wherever the outside air intake is located in your particular setup. Often they are in a fireplace so the connection would be very discreet even if it had to turn left or right from the stove; a foot of black smoke pipe would not be an eyesore. In a wall installation, the easiest thing to do would be to put something like a drier vent housing on the outside of the house directly behind the stove, then bring in a piece of flexible hose to connect to the stove.

In my own installation, as the stove is up against the chimney enclosure and no where near any other walls, about the only thing I could do would be to put a 90 degree elbow on the fitting and face it down to the floor, then make a hole in the floor and again connect some flexible tubing to it. Fortunately for me, my house pre- dates insulation and in some cases, even good sense so there are PLENTY of air leaks to feed the stove (and allow small critters easy access) already provided.... lucky, huh?

Brian

 

Oh I see, I thought the OAK was that plate on the back corner with a bolt and gasket. Yeah if it covers the two intake plates on the bottom then that makes sense of course.

 

The OAK is an cost- added option; that plate you are talking about is the place where the air throttle plates are installed in the stove at the factory. The OAK mounts to the bottom of the stove and actually uses that same screw on that plate you mentioned to retain it; the OAK slides into place in mounting lugs on the bottom of the stove. I do not have any photos of it installed but this is what it looks like:






Brian

 

Overnight load. Mix of maple, oak, and one piece of black locust. About 80% of a full box. Flue temperature is at 500 and the front of the stove is at 540. The air is at the 4th notch. This is boring. Lol



Shameless boxer dog pic. She just played with her buddy for 3 hours. She's shot.

 

Anyone load the stove and just re engage the cat and walk away? Every time I load and let the new wood get charred it scorches us for a couple hours. I don't want anymore heat. Just to extend the burn

 

Yes, in the winter when the stove is running hot, as long as there is a good bed of coals and the firebox temp. is fairly high (above 600F or so), I load the stove, close the bypass and set the draft for the long burn right away. The combustor will light immediately even if there is absolutely no flame in the stove.

But that only works when it is cold; at this time of year, trying that will just stall the cat. and result in a dirty, smoldering burn 'cause the stove is not hot enough when it is loaded in the first place.

Brian

 

First overnight burn that I was around in the morning to check out. Pretty impressed. I loaded maybe 75% full of ash last night at around 8:30 - 9 on a cold startup. Took a good while to get it going from cold and I have a habit of packing it in to quickly. Anyhow after I finally got it up and running, backed it down eventually to notch 2, black firebox, combuster cruising ~1300 on the probe. Slept in, checked stove at 9:45, stove felt barely warm, 220-250F on the top and combuster at 600. House was mostly 70-71F on that side. But I had quite a bit of chunks still in there. Opened the draft up and had flames! Got the stovetop back up to 250-300 for another hour before I threw a few splits in to idle it through the day today.


Pretty impressed after 13-14 hrs on 3/4 load of ash and only my first/second overnight burn!

Wasn't throwing off a whole lot of heat but definitly keeping the place warm in the 30's out and able to throw small/medium splits right back in after about 14 hours with no kindling.

I think I read about it attaching to the bolt in that rear plate, so just assumed that plate was simply covering the hole for the OAK. Makes sense now. No easy way for me to run one there anyhow, on a giant interior wall brick hearth.

 

OFFTOPIC: Beautiful brindle boxer! I have four or five neighbors who all have boxers; the one immediately next door was extremely timid for over a year with me.... she would get close, then lay down while wagging her tail (OK, wagging her entire butt 'cause she does not have a tail). If I moved toward her, she backed up. Finally we got to be pals and now whenever she gets out, she 'knocks' on my door for a rub an' a scratch, two Milk Bones then it is off to...er.... uhm, leave a "present" on the lawn of the neighbor on the other side. Of course they keep their lawn better than a golf green and hate the dog doing that so she gets a lot of tickets (leash law here).

Brian

 

This is my biggest/only frustration with this stove. I find it difficult to control during shoulder season. I find the cat doesn't want to take off unless wood is fully involved but then it's difficult to keep the stove temp from climbing in cat only burn mode. I tend to engage cat and shut air down prematurely and stall the cat

 

I've only stalled the cat twice so far. My probe has become important to me in this aspect. I find that even though after coaling and reloading I can get the fire box temps built back up and climbing much quicker that my magnetic single wall stove pipe thermometer can react. Hence I can engage the cat and begin to dial air down quicker, in theory before the stove starts putting out"real heat". It still builds quite a bit though.

 

I'm brand new to cat stoves, but having similar issue on my first burns. I've heard the cat will light off around 500F but mine doesn't seem too. Every time I try and engage it from around 500-600F on the probe the fire dies back and I go out and see lots of smoke out the chimney. End up opening it up again fully and re energizing the fire until its more fully involved. Then reengaging cat around 600-700 and the things takes off like a rocket. Last night I put it down to notch 3-4 pretty quick and was going to maybe fine tune it after a little bit but next time I checked it was riding the black edge on the scale at 1500F! I put it down to notch 1 and went to bed with the ceiling fan on and sweating. That load started around 5::30-6pm yesterday and still throwing a little heat now with one nearly complete-looking log still in there. 700 on the cat and 200-250 stovetop at the 14-15 hr mark. I might just have to use my pellet burner on the milder days or figure out the trick to getting this thing to idle lower.

Edited to add:

OK, this is probably no biggie for y'all seasoned IS users but consider my mind BLOWN! lol

I'm at 16 hrs and still putting out some good warmth, plenty enough for the 40 degrees out with the pellet burner on heat level 1 on the other side of the house...

Didn't stir anything up, just opened up the door and snapped a pic. That big chunk in the back still looked like a normal log at about the 12hr mark.

Just about 700F on the cat probe, 285 on stove front.


200-225 stove top and back corner.

And that is with it going way too hot the first half of cycle, pushing 1500F on the probe. I bit more than 3/4 of ash.

I'll milk this one dry, and probably just let the pellet stove run on 1 tonight since it's suppose to be a milder day and not quite as cold tonight.

 

For these mild days we are still having, you have any softer fire woods like pine or poplar? You may get less output that way...

 

I've got a big pile of spruce, but it's still in rounds. Plan on splitting and stacking soon for next year shoulder season wood. Only other thing I have besides ash is maybe a 1/3 - 1/2 cord of some old silver maple yard tree that was partly starting to rot. I do plan on burning that up, just wanted to get a couple normal days of figuring this stove out before trying to burn crappy stuff! Oh and Eco Bricks.

Still though, I was hoping to be able to run good wood and just idle lower and longer... I'm sure I could have done a bit better at preventing the big surge in the beginning it's only the first couple days of burning it.

 

yeah still burning popular 90%. find your situations different then mine. my cat engages pretty well at 300 degrees or 600. thermostat 10 inches up SW pipe. I close cat.... wait.... cut air to 1-4 goes dark 5 to 10 minutes then light show. now granted all I am burning is mostly popular and elm uglies.. is there another kind.. basically getting 20 hour burns on load still enough coal to reload usually about 3 pm. I'm seeing 20 at nite 40 in day and house is warm.

I would say my biggest complaint is it seems to takes almost as much wood to get to temperature as it does to burn 12 hours

 

You cut your air straight to 1/4?

 

well usually half check FHC then quarter that's the wait part... but i have when tired .. why? should I do it it different.. chance04

 

I've been doing 3/4 wait five or ten mins then back it down to 1/2 wait more then finally down to 1/4 takes me 20-30 mins depending in draft and wood

 

I got pretty good draft one time it seemed to go darker for longer maybe 15 minutes then a sort of flash and slight bang as it all lit up is that what happens when a stall cat catches.. if I remember right that was a time went straight to 1/4 stove never did it again.. but I am basically only running one load a day... winter will come some day