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

That is good to hear - I may look into the same or similar unit then. I run the Ubuntu distro of Linux currently, I forget what the spreadsheet app is but from the little I have used it is very comparable to office. Of course there is always google spreadsheets too. And modding is the nice thing about steel stoves right... much easier to mod steel than cast iron or soapstone. And in many cases you could undo the mod if need be with steel. I'm still debating your ash pan type mod, as my stove was building some serious coals, but I think as long as I have the chance to burn em down every few days I think I'll be alright. Typically I only work 3 or 4 days in a row, so I can play with the stove on my days off. Just not sure come dead of winter if 4 days in a row will build up too much coals, we'll see.

 

Alright, here's a good question for everyone.

What's the lowest notch you have set the stove to during a burn?

Also what do we call the first notch? Zero? One? Is the air closed down completely at the first notch (not counting the air port behind the door)

My lowest has been one notch under the first large notch. If we call the first notch zero then it's four, if it's zero, well then the lowest I've been is five.

 

With the lever slid all the way to the stop I call zero. Much like the first notch is zero on your speedometer of your car, well, I think, and the bottom of a chart or graph is usually zero. The first big one I call 5. The air is never fully closed, you can see if you look under the stove that when the slider is all the way against the stop the secondary air plate still is partly open. With that in mind, mine has cruised right along just fine on setting of 2 for long burns. It is set that way right now.

 

Finally, we are down to the fundamental questions.... what is the first notch called? Now if you ask and E.E., he / she would say it is called zero because all things start at zero (the seven bits in a byte are zero, one, two.... and finally, seven). But of course REAL PEOPLE do not play with electrons so dem dare sparky types must be wrong.

I call the first notch 1, and the first large notch (the sixth notch) 1/4 draft. So I would say you are running your stove at one notch below 1/4 draft. All of that said, it would really be up to Woodstock to 'name the notches' though.

No, the draft is not shut off when the draft is moved all the way to the stop. The primary draft in closed but there is a pretty sizeable draft to the secondaries (the stainless steel plate with all the holes in it at the top of the stove). Also, there is a hole in the front of the stove, just under the door sealing area, that feeds the firebox air and is not adjustable. Occasionally, with my new chimney, there is sufficient draft in my stove that I can shut the draft all the way down and not cool the combustor- that was not the case with my old chimney. My stove can and will run for over an hour with the draft shut before the firebox and cat. begin to drop off in temp. Of course, cracking the door immediately cools the cat. as well as the firebox and flue temp. because it lets in air that just races past the wood, through the combustor and up the chimney without really giving the fuel any oxygen.

My stove will run well at the second notch but only while the wood is gassing; once all the wood is outgassed (in other words, no more fuel for the cat.), the stove temps. drop way down and the stove will not produce enough heat when it is cold outside. So I have two choices: set the draft open wider for the whole burn and overheat the house a bit or get up first thing and kick the draft open in a chilly house (outside at 7F, furthest room from the stove at 66F, stove room in the low 70'sF).

What the stove needs, and I think they all do, is a bit of automation to bring woodburning into the 1980's. And I am working on that but have been side- tracked by a bit of a house problem; last year's snow caused a structural roof failure on my house and that has opened a can of worms the size of Montana. But the next logical step to monitoring the behavior of a woodstove is to add some actuators to control that behavior; would it not be great to load a woodstove, push the button marked "Fresh reload" and have the stove 'do the right thing' for the entire burn? And by that I also include a clean burn; it is easy to run a woodstove so it spews out 2/3 of its fuel in the form of debris (creosote, particulates, etc.).

Brian

 

I might add that the uneven amount of small notches between the large notches bothers my sense of order.

 

Guilty as charged. But us E.E. types could also say that while everything does start at zero, you could say that since the air is partly open by their design when the lever is all the way to the end, that zero is there - but below the first notch and not reachable.

Yeah at first I thought it strange. Much nicer to have like every fifth notch a larger one. I wondered why, but in my examining of the air controls that I am working on I think I realized maybe why they did it that way. On the more open end, the air plate doesn't move that much, but the notches are spaced larger. On the mostly closed end of the scale, the air control moves at a greater rate but with very small notches. The end result is that they balance each other out, the movement of the air plate is about as much between the first two notches as the last too. That is of little importance to us end users though, just something I wondered myself.

 

I'm 6'6", I'm not trying to look under my stove. Lol

 

only 6 1 but I hear ya lol

 

Now that right there is funny! M.E. myself although as an automation engineer, specializing in motion control, I have written a lot of code and designed more than a few circuits. Glad to see you took a good- natured ribbing in the manner in which it was offered..... thanks!.

Agreed about the un-even spacing on the draft notches. The draft is very non- linear anyway, and it is further complicated by the fact that the draft openings cut into the draft plates are not slots but rather complex shapes.... so moving the draft 1/4", say, near the closed area is very different than moving it the same 1/4" near the fully open area. And finally, there really is no 'fine tuning' past, say, 1/2 open draft anyway while there is certainly a big difference in one small notch of draft change below 1/4 open.

Brian

 

Well, you can do what I did: use a mirror. Or, drink 1/2 of a bottle of Balvenie Doublewood- a fantastic Scotch and when you wake up, you will be on the floor already.

Brian

 

For whatever this is worth: I just cleaned the glass on my I.S., it was covered with snow- white ash (not creosote) and pretty well covered. After cleaning, the heat output from the stove went up quite noticably and the stack temps. dropped more than 100F. This stove radiates a LOT of heat out the front, especially the glass, so it is more than worth keeping the glass clean IMO.

Brian

 

I always run my stove with the air shut off . it works good for me, if I run it any higher It's just to hot in the house. If it ever gets cold, maybe I can try it out. I really enjoy it thus far.

 

How much chimney do you have?

 

19 1/2' it's out in the open also & drafts real good. The only time I move my air up is to burn down coals & sometimes that will take 6-8 hrs.

 

Just noticed mine is a milky coloration like a double pane window with moisture on it. What did you clean it with Brian?

 

I am usually between the lowest notch and notch 3 when I load it up for the evening depending on outside temps and the load of wood I'm throwing in. I think with these settings I'm getting the ideal burn for my situation. A quarter open for an overnight burn is too much air for my situation.

Outside temps, chimney configuation, species of wood, MC of wood, size of splits and size of load all plays a factor.

 

Hey B, I'm confused. Does your pic represent your lowest burn?

 

--snip--

LibreOffice Calc. It will be able to accept data pasted in just fine, even with the tab as a delimiter.

 

A single edged razor blade. 4- 0 (that is 0000) steel wool also works well for the white haze but not so much for any dark stuff stuck to the window. A razor blade works on everything, just flip it over every five strokes or so (yep, some kind of a nasty joke in there I think.....) 'cause the edge of the razor will roll as you use it.

If the glass is cold. plain old Windex works very well but I do not let my stove shut down anytime during the winter so a razor blade or steel wool are the only choices- I think spraying cold Windex on hot ceramic is a bad idea.

Brian

 

Nope. Just threw the pic out for the "what do we call one on the air control question"