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

Yep, followed it and saw the response. Mine only happens when it is warm outside and I have the stove choked back.

 

It sounds like you have a severe back draft issue like the chimney changed direction. Is this a basement install?

 

It is on the main floor. I surmise I didn't let the wood get engaged enough and it smoldered.

 

I have been unimpressed with the cat's ability to light this year. I have a thermometer on the front of the stove and am having to wait until its well above 350, often times at 400 before the cat takes off. I can have active secondaries and a fully engaged firebox but still not have an active cat. I dont know if this is due to the warm weather and the lack of draft or if my cat is fading.

 

How can you tell the cat is not lighting off? By stovetop temp?




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Yes, draft makes a difference. The biggest difference in cat. performance I have seen (when the cat. is working well of course) is the moisture in the wood; the drier the wood, the faster / easier the cat. lights and the better it runs once the firebox splits are all at a stable temperature. Wetter wood makes it tough to light the cat., keep it lit and then after a while, the cat. tends to take off and run a bit too hot IMO.

Catalytic combustors do decline over time but I have not seen any fail in one year, and the I.S. is a relatively new stove so there are no old I.S. stove cats. out there really. Have you tried cleaning it by boiling it for a bit in a 50 / 50 vinegar / water mix? That does wonders to clean them up and usually they snap back surprisingly well after a cleaning.

Otherwise, I do believe the combustors in these stoves are warrantied outright for three years and longer as pro- rated so you could always give Woodstock a call. Their customer service is usually excellent.

Best of luck with it whichever way you go.

Brian

 

Since you mention the cats getting too hot in the above post, I will bring up what i am experiencing. Every time I load up a good sized load of wood in the stove and shut it down for a long "cat burn" I get stove top temps that make me nervous (700+). I would like temps somewhere like 400-500. The box will be completely black and no flame. I just can't seem to control the cat in the stove. I have experimented with different loading styles (east west/ north south/ staggered) and had no different results.This makes it so I don't dare load up the stove and leave or even go to bed.
Full disclosure my wood is only seasoned about 9 months and is sugar maple and ash. Does this have something to do with my issue? Seems like marginal wood should be lower temps, no? Any help would be great!

 

When the Fireview Cat stove went thermonuclear with a hot cat, the solution was to give it MORE air. Seems counterintuitive but it works.

 

Sometimes I get secondaries a few minutes before the probe thermometer hits 500 (cat engagement temp) which makes me wonder if the stove will run like a non cat stove if you don't engage the cat. Maybe even remove the cat. Will it run like a secondary only stove?

Wouldn't do this by the way, just thinking out loud.

 

Even a smoldering fire should exit the chimney. It really sounds like the draft changed direction. Unless you have an exhaust damper installed and had that closed.

 

I agree. There is a sweet spot in your stove's air control that will give you a nice long even burn. This will change depending on your draft and wood. Mine is notch #4. It just gives me the best overall burn on that setting.

 

Thanks for the recommendations. I will try it with a bit more air. I have been trying it with settings of closed up to 1/4 open, but maybe some somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 will be the ticket. It certainly does seem counterintuitive but I will definitely give it a shot. I am pretty new to the stove, and it being my first cat stove i am still trying to figure it all out.

 

Smoke, stagnant front temperatures, and lack of clicking. Typically the cat tells me when it lights off based upon sound of the steel adjusting to the heat.

I think the draft and not super dry wood are to blame. I tried a load of wood that I know is dryer than the uglies I have been burning and I got a much better lift off. It's as if the moisture boiling off deters the cat from igniting, even if the gases are hot enough. I can get that stove front to sit at 400 with secondaries going, close the air down further and watch the stove temp drop. Cat clearly not ignited.

This is actually a good thing. If you watch the new videos that Woodstock posted showing a cold start, their whole goal is to get the secondaries to light off, resulting in a cleaner burn.

 

The cat is a bit more hyperactive when new. It might back off a bit after several fires.

 

I understand your experiences, as I have had the same. I'm on my second year with this stove and there is a learning curve. The cat is burning hot when there a lot of fuel available. That could mean dry wood, smaller splits, a recent refilling of the stove, or softer wood or a combination of the above. I can get the cat going nuclear with a small bunch of dry bark and twigs as it will all gas off quickly creating fuel for the cat.

Mixing some denser wood and larger splits will help. Also opening the air will burn some of the gassing off with the secondary tube, leaving less off gassing to be consumed by the cat. So it may be counterintuitive, but more air causes more burning of the off gassing in the fire box leaving less fuel for the cat to burn.

If your closing off the air to the point of a black firebox (which we all do) all the fuel is being consumed by the cat versus some of the gassing being burned in the firebox. Try larger splits, put less wood in and open the air a notch or two and report back.

 

Basically, you have it exactly right- you cannot control the cat. burn in the stove. I think this is the real key to people finding cat. stoves 'finicky' or 'tricky'; you control the wood burn in the firebox, exactly like any other stove but the cat. will simply burn whatever smoke (fuel for the cat.) that the firebox produces.

So let's compare a cat. stove to a non- cat. stove in operation: you get a fire going and once it is engaged, you throttle it back to whatever you want, or can if it is an EPA stove. You may be able to starve the fire for air sufficiently that there is no longer much, if any, flame in the stove but the wood is still smoldering (called pyrolizing, exactly how a cigarette burns, without any flame). Now the stove responds about like you would expect; slow down the air and the fire slows down, the stove cools and the wood lasts longer. Fine and well but a by- product of a slow and especially, a too- slow, fire is smoke but you really do not notice this while actually operating the stove.

Now compare this to a cat. stove which burns wood in two phases; the same rules from above apply to the firebox but now there is a catalytic combustor above the firebox which almost always has its own air supply, and it feeds on the smoke produced by the firebox below. So now you throttle the fire in the firebox down and that part of the stove WILL still cool but now you are making much more smoke, which actually causes the cat. to run hotter, and usually causes the stove to produce MORE heat. So you close the draft on the firebox a bit more, and if there were any flames before they are really gone now, the firebox produces yet more smoke and the cat. gets still hotter. Basically you are throttling the stove DOWN and yet it is getting hotter (at the cat., not in the firebox) and actually producing MORE heat. Now even more odd is that if you leave the stove like this for long enough, the wood in the firebox will actually cool down below the pyrolyzing temperature and sort of 'go out' at which point the stove is making very little heat, moderate to low amounts of smoke but also, the cat. stalls which means it is no longer burning the smoke, not producing any heat on its own and the stove is burning dirty, just like a non- cat stove.

There is one more 'funny' result of all of this: if you hit a nice, low running point where the wood in the firebox will continue to combust but there is no flame, and the cat. is putting out most of the stove's total heat, then open the draft a bit, the firebox will then produce flame and more heat but less fuel for the cat., resulting in it cooling down and producing less heat. Sometimes when this happens, the stove produces slightly less heat overall even though you opened the draft some, and can clearly be seen to be more active in the firebox but puts out less heat overall- like the world works backwards.

The key to running a cat. based stove (or a hybrid at low heat outputs because hybrids actually flip over and become pure cat. stoves when used that way) is to anticipate what is going to happen in the next half- hour and later, and adjust the stove for that. So after most of the wood in the firebox is involved in the fire, is charred and actively burning, turn it down to some point, say 1/4 draft, and leave it alone for a while to see how it stabilizes. Even if the cat. gets quite hot and the stove is putting out too much heat- you have to keep enough air flowing into the firebox so the fire there keeps going (flames or not) and is hot enough to keep the cat. lit. After an hour or so, you will have a much better idea of how the stove is going to settle down and run; after that, make any adjustments fairly small if going for the lowest possible burn. Put another way, do not cut the draft from 1/4 to 1/16 open but rather to perhaps a bit more open than 1/8 and see how the stove settles in. This is just the learning curve for your stove, with your wood, on your chimney, after a few burns, you will be able to light the stove, get it involved and set it for the kind of burn you want for the entire load of wood.

If a catalytic combustor gets too hot, which at my house is 1,500F or hotter, open the draft about 1/8 to 1/4 farther than it is currently open, watch the firebox and wait for flame to appear. This will burn some of the smoke in the firebox and provide less fuel for the combustor but it will take a few minutes to change temperature noticeably. You can always open the bypass and that will slow the cat. burn WAY down on most stoves and actually kill it on an Ideal Steel but that is a bit drastic IMO. Very slightly cracking the door will also cool a cat. down very quickly because it lets in a touch of clean air directly to the cat. which will cool it but also because it allows air to flow past the wood in the firebox and the wood temps. will go down also. Again, just a crack on the door, I am not saying to open it an inch or anything like that.

There is a learning curve to a cat. stove and some of it is not really obvious. That said, I believe it is well worth the time it takes because a cat. (or hybrid) stove will burn far more efficiently and cleaner than any non- cat. when trying to run the stove at very low settings. Once it is really cold out and the wood is actually burning readily in the firebox, cat. stoves lose a lot of their advantage over non- cat. stoves IME.

Best of luck with it, and it can be an enjoyable experience if you have just a bit of patience.

Brian

 

BDF, great explanation Thank you

 

Thank you for the great explanation BDF! You clearly have a good handle on how this thing works!

Last night I loaded up the stove and let it get going good, and slowly closed it down to only one notch more open than 1/4. I had secondary flames the entire time, and the stove hummed along at around 400. As I went to bed I thought to myself "I am gonna wake up to a cold stove because it's gonna burn up the wood way to quick". I woke up this morning to a very thick bed of hot coals and a stove top of 300! Success! The thinking a little backwards and just giving it a touch more air to cool it down worked! Thank you all for the help!

 

I can tell when I've dialed it in correctly for my conditions because I get good cat temp, very lazy secondaries and a very long burn. The secondaries are just on the edge of totally disappearing and sometimes go away entirely for a bit. Then poof, a large volume of gasses ignite and they are back. Dancing to their own slow rhythm. When I check out the stove after a burn like this the glass is still pretty clear and there's not much left in the stove but ashes. No chunks, just nice fluffy ash that I rake down into the ash pan. (love the ash pan option).

If I don't dial it in properly I'll end up with a total cat burn and dirty glass with lots of coals and a fire that's not hot enough to keep the house as warm as it should. It will burn a long time but it's not ideal. (pun intended?)

Conversely if I don't dial it in correctly on the secondary side with too much air ( I tend to do this when I'm spending the evening in the den where the stove is located because let's face it, I love to see those flames.) I end up with a shorter fire, clean glass and no coals if I let it burn out. Burning this way mimics the same after effects as a solid hybrid burn but with a much shorter burn time. So it's obviously not as efficient.

I dont necessarily chase the perfect burn every time because I've got natural gas as a backup. This all could also change when winter finally does hit us. This is my first year with it.

 

Oh and I don't find the IS finicky at all. I feel that it responds very well and pretty quickly to adjustments, even small ones. The smaller ones take a little longer to show themselves but overall if you get a feel for your stove, conditions, and wood you can replicate the previous burn cycles pretty easily. I really don't see what the fuss is about when people claim that cat stoves aren't easy to run.