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

Everyone likes the warmth of heating with wood, but not the work @60 it's not work but exercise , pice of solitude!!!

 

Good luck finding someone close to you buddy

 

Coldest temps of the year so far the last few days... and wind (up to 40mph)... which really sucks the heat out of this drafty old poorly insulated house! I should have turned the pellet stove up higher but when I came home yesterday morning from Sunday nightshift (about 15hr burn) the house was down to 63. Still much better than it would have been with my last stove which would have been out and cold. Reloaded and went to bed. Got up early afternoon, back up to 66. Did a smaller load and ran it hard, house was back up to 70 by the time I put the overnight load in (switching back to regular sleep schedule). Last night temp was warmer, 23F, and woke up to 71 actually. I stuffed it pretty full last night and ran it one notch higher than my usual overnight , on notch 4 (scale starting with 1). I had pretty strong secondaries on that setting last night, stovetop about 500F. When I got up this morning I still had actual flame in the firebox! And some pretty big chunks. Just burning down coals now and 72. I also took the pellet stove down from heat level 4 to 3 (of 9) this morning, just getting a bit too warm in here.

I'd be curious too if this really made any difference. I wouldn't think so, but I am new to cat stoves. Leaving it engaged probably extracts a bit more heat (not from the cat mind you, just the extra pathway the exhaust has to flow through) but if your just trying to burn coals down and don't mind loosing a relatively small amount of heat then bypass open should be fine. I haven't been in a hurry to burn down coals yet so I usually leave my bypass closed but open up the throttle to 50%.

Cooked on the stove the last two days... first time getting to cook on a stove in many years! I love having a freestanding stove with a cooktop! Just eggs, but still fun!

 

Love the plain black. And I hear ya on cold and drafty!! Wife and I just purchased some family land to build a super-insulated, air tight house this spring. Peak heating demand will be around 18,000btu/hr. Makes us very excited to not have to work so hard to heat this old farmhouse. I am anticipating a tough decision between the new Woodstock hybrid and a Blake king for the new house....

 

If I were you I would bump it up to notch 5 or 6 overnight. Don't be afraid to give it more air . It will still burn long and will help burn the coals as well.

 

Question- here is a pic of my stack after the cat has been engaged for about 30 min. I noticed it seems like there is a lot of smoke leaving compared to my other burns with the cat engaged. Burning dry wood. I just dusted off my cat about a week ago, so there should not be much in the way of debris on/in it. Stove was new in October. Is it b/c it's so cold outside? (7 degrees)


Here is a pic of the burn. Very active fire box, air set 1 notch before the 1st big one:

 

Looks more like steam.
If it kind of disappears after a few feet, that's all it is. Clean burn.

 

Good deal, Papa! Thanks, man.

30 min have passed, and I think the stove has settled in. Stack is now more like what I'm used to seeing, flue gases are now down 100 deg, Cat is hot. 79 in the stove room, 73 in the adjacent living room. Not bad for 7 deg out! (Now 11) Coldest this stove has seen.

 

Sounds like things are well under control.

 

Not sure if this was directed at me or not, but I actually had a bit of an overburn last night. Some nights I had run it that high before, just to burn down the wood to reload in the morning before work since an overnight load of around 8hrs or so really is only half of what the stove can do. Last night with negative F on the forecast I loaded her up full, filling in some spaces with ecobricks. I think my problems started on the hot coal bed... I was reloading a bit too hot and I didn't get it turned down quick enough. I had it one notch past the first big one, hoping to have some strong secondaries but less of a cat burn and a firebox up closer to the limit than I have had before. Well, I had plenty of secondaries, and primaries, well just a lot of fire! I turned it down to my normal overnight burn but in short order the cat was pushing 1600F. I remembered some said it actually burns the cat cooler when you let a bit more air in and let the secondaries take care of most of the gasses but when I tried that the temp still climbed. At 1650F I was worried so tried disengaging it for a bit, but the fire increased its voracity once in bypass. I decided I'd try to choke it out a bit and slid the air control all the way. The bottom of the sled, when viewed through the glass door was all a glow. I still had secondaries for maybe 20 minutes, but it did slowly settle down to just a tiny bit of lazy secondaries and 1400F and dropping so I bumped up between notch 2 and 3 (scale starting with 1), let it settle and went to bed. I came down to check it early in the morning, about 4-5 hours later and still had some lazy secondary action. I bumped it up to 4-5 and went back to bed. It was -3F and 70 in the stove room and 73 in the bedroom. About 10 hrs into the burn the next morning, the firebox is almost half full still, and I opened the air up to 50%. 12hrs now still 350 on the stovetop and 900 on the probe. Dang even with the crazy burn early on this thing still cranks out btu's 12 hours later. Just waiting for the coals to burn down now.

I think I just got lazy with how well mannered this stove has been. If I'm loading a full load and doing it on a bit too hot of coal bed, I get to get the thing turned down sooner.

Thanks! And very exciting about the land... I really want to get enough land to hunt and cut firewood, and large gardens and orchards, and build an efficient house (or log house). Land around here is way too expensive to get as much as I want. Thinking about moving back to near my stompin' grounds in northern NY... believe it or not land is super cheap in some areas there, plentiful in the lot size I'm looking for (25-75 acres, mostly wooded) and beautiful (on the edge of the Adirondack mountains). A big move like that likely won't happen until after my son is through school and on his own which he is only in 4th grade now so that is like 10 years away. That is a long time to sit and spin the wheels. Meanwhile I'm dealing with walls here under my computer desk where my feet are right now, about 12 feet away from the face of the pellet stove, reading in the 40's on my IR gun right now. My sons bedroom, which is on the other side of the wall behind the stove (his doorway is about 2-3' from the back of the stove, was in the low 60's and I actually used a space heater in it last night for him even with 2 stoves running .

The newer half of the house is better, but still lossy. With both stoves cranking I can keep the place comfy - but I know I am throwing a whole lot of btu's at the house... and surrounding area.

 

I have about a quarter cord of punky maple my buddy gave me last year. I put some in the stove today and gotta say that I am impressed. It seems you can really extract the btus because you can burn it with very little air. Obviously it's not going to sustain a long fire but it's been 3 hours and its still putting off heat.

I put a small layer of good maple into the stove, got that going and then put the punky stuff in. This was a reload on hot coals by the way.

 

Maple varies all over the place from merely OK to outstanding. Sugar maple is an excellent firewood while silver maple (pest maple as I call it- it makes a terrible tree, is dangerous (maples are the first ones to go over in a hurricane) and is only fair firewood) and readily available.... sugar maple is tough to come by around here. Any of the 'hard' maples are great IMO but the 'soft' types are only fair. Though I will say they are a lot easier to start a fire with then, say, oak.

Brian

 

This wasn't one of the hard maples. It was also so punky that it feels like balsa wood when you pick it up. I'll try to remember to take a pic and weigh a piece.

Matter of fact this was from hurricane Sandy which was a few years ago. It was stacked in rounds, in the shade with no airflow for at least 3 years. It got split fall of 2014 when I got it from you him. It got me thru my first year of burning with my non epa stove.

 

Anyone thinking about their custom IS tool sets they started to offer a few months back? I liked the idea when I saw the Owl ones come out. The owl ones would probably fit ok with my hodge podge of nature theme, but figured I'd see what else they came out with. Didn't like the look of the acorn ones, couldn't get the thought out of my mind the tip of the handles looked like male anatomy parts. They came out with a few more but I had to dig around to find the deer one and still haven't found a pic of January (wolf), December (holly), or November (dog) ones. If they are trying to sell them why aren't they posting up pics??

 

T-Stew, I agree completely, I want the tool and the rack as soon as I see one that goes with my stove.. dog might work but pictures would help!

 

Got my cat probe in the mail today. I'm not thrilled with the fit. Too much play in it. It comes with a little insert to push into the hole but it doesn't fit. The threaded hole is too small. I also now realize why I've seen pics of them upside down. The lid obscures the view.

Also going to try a top down fire tonight just because. Oh and also threw 2 of the eco bricks I had left over from last year into the bottom of the stove. Still a little warm so going to wait an hour or so for Temps to drop a bit.

 

I cleaned my combustor today and 1) cannot believe how much garbage there was on the bottom face of it and 2) cannot believe how much the cleaning 'woke it up'. Now when closing the bypass, the combustor takes off like the bride's pajamas and let me tell ya', that is pretty fast. Holding a steady 1,300F on the cat, flue temps. are down about 100F while the stovetop temp. is up about 75F.

I cannot remember when I last cleaned the cat. but I would have sworn it was not long ago at all but clearly it was TOO long ago. There is no excuse either 'cause the cat. is really easy to reach / remove / clean on this stove- one of the primary reasons I bought it in the first place.

Now if winter ever sets in, the stove is ready....

Brian

 

Is there more info/pictures about this anywhere? I saw they were offering some with their Steel of the Month, but I'm curious about what else they do.

 

I have been up at Woodstock 2 times in the last two weeks the sets are 60.00 and they don't have a lot made me and my uncle both got the deer tool sets I asked why they don't advertise more about the tools and I was told they are very busy with the new stove so just call and they will tell you what they have made it is very nice to have them hang right on the stove

 

This is what I feared with the smallish company that treats it's customers like family... the hybrids have seemed to be very popular to where they can't keep up with demand even and I fear they might start getting too busy for their own good lol. And no, I'm not going to buy a custom artistic toolset over the phone without even seeing it first. Ok, maybe if it just happened to come with a steel of the month I was getting, but already having a stove with a particular theme I want to see what I am buying to make sure it fits with the theme good enough. It would take someone 5 minutes to snap a pic and upload it with a short blurb on their blog at least. I think just selling 1 extra set would be worth taking the few minutes to post a pic.