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

good point Maineidealsteel, I missed that Brad38 are we seeing this right

 

mine is mounted to the body..... but it might not matter as long as there is a seal....

 

Mine is on the body as well.

 

I believe you are right same way on my stove. It looks like old glue on the up side of that gasket

 

You know what, that makes sense now. I was wondering if that was dried up glue on the gasket when I was attaching. See I was confused, because as you can see in my first picture in the original post, when I lifted the lid, the gasket was on the lid itself. I'm guessing the whole gasket came loose and then stuck to the lid when I lifted it making me think that's where the gasket was supposed to be. I'm firing it up in about an hour, so we'll see what happens! Looking around the lid, it looks like it is sitting on there nicely. Thanks for pointing this out.

 

Shut the damper down for a low, slow burn. No smoke smell from anywhere, so I guess I'm good. I do have a co2 detector in the room just in case.

 

I was going to go with that color stove too. I really thought I'd like it but couldn't get a real feel for the color. I went with the blue and it's very subtle. I should have went with my first choice. I love that color. It wouldn't go with my red brick hearth though, which is probably changing in the off season anyway. Might have to order a new door and sides. Or the paint..

 

Just remember, it's about what's inside that really counts! You could always order the spray cans and do it yourself.

Those colors do look good with that hearth though, Nice!

 

Is that brown and copper or grey and copper?

 

Metallic brown and copper.

 

That is a great lookin combo there Brad!

Do you want it to run high like that? If not perhaps you could try what I have been experimenting with and stick a magnet over part of the secondary air opening. Really calms down my fire when it's building up higher than I want but only have done it during the last Ecobrick test. Might load her up full of Ecos again today, and since it is daylight watch the stack to see if it is still burning cleanly.

 

Ok so doing Ecobrick test #4 today. Time finally for a FULL LOAD of Ecobricks. I've learned a lot from the last few tests, and got a feel for how it reacts and also some tricks to tame it (magnet covering part of the secondary air opening).

24 Ecobricks today! No cordwood other than a couple small pieces of kindling and one small ash split just to get the fire going (it was loaded on a very small amount of coals that had cooled off).

My magnet I put over the secondary air opening is too large to leave on all the time, as when the air is slid open it would hit the end and either get knocked off or slid over more of the opening than I'd like. So I placed the magnet on with the first adjustment from 100% to 33% (first big notch). It covered approximately half of the 'always open' square in the air plate. Last time I did 3/4 covered but it dipped the temps too much. We'll see today if half is the sweet spot for my setup.

I checked a few times throughout the day and didn't notice any detectable smoke. It is possible that the slight less secondary air is causing more emissions, but not enough for the eye to tell.


16 minutes in from reload, no detectable smoke. Cat was engaged at 10 minutes. Currently at 700 on the probe.


Here is part of the load. You can see the 3 layers of 5 bricks each packed tightly across the back. All the coals where raked in front, the stack of 15 is on the firebox floor. 2 placed across front on top of coals.


Another 2 stacked on the front row, then a layer of 5 stacked across the top, flush with the face of the stack. The back side of this top row is pretty close to touching the secondary air plate since it angles down, maybe 1" gap. Some kindling placed in front of the whole thing.

Goal is 48 hours, and not burning my house down with 84 lbs of super dry compressed wood in this beast! I guess if you use 8600 BTU per pound that is 722,400 BTUs of fuel on the fire! Don't try this at home folks!
Loaded at 11:13 this morning and so far so good with a fairly steady cruise. It still had a tendency to take off a couple hours in, and now its cooling outside it is picking up again a little (I guess that is like an auto thermostat right? lol). Nothing extreme so just letting it go with minimal amount of manual intervention. So far I closed the stove down in the first 30 minutes in 3 moves, then after an hour and a half in, when it started to pick up again, 2 more moves (could have just done it in one). Left alone since, shut all the way to minimum on first notch.

Since I think I got a handle on this now, and tweaked my spreadsheets and graphs to look nice, I'll post this on Hearth and maybe on it's own thread here too.

 

This is actually proving to be a perfect setup. What I am using here is the old "alarm clock" sounding cat bimetallic strip. Since Woodstock sent me the updated one, I can play with this one.

I have it covering the primary air supply with the magnet towards the front of the stove. The beauty of this is that when you open the draft up to get a load going, the air coming in cools the strip and opens it. When you close it to about 1/4" it starts to close. The hotter the stove body the more it closes (not a perfect seal).

I'm hoping as the stove cools that it will begin opening the strip and allow air in to liven up the coals. We shall see how it does tonight.

 

I am not understanding much of this post esp the cat bimetallic strip, but I'm very curious to see how this plays out. Are you attempting to make an "automatic" damper?

 

The very first of these stoves used a metal plate on a bimetallic strip to open and close the port that supplies air to the cat on a high burn. They updated the material since it would clatter like an alarm clock when it opened.

I am using that spare part to regulate primary air (within the opening determined by the draft setting).

So I will set it to 1/4 open. As the stove builds heat this flap will close most of that 1/4 open sending it into a deep cat burn. As the stove cools the flap (hopefully) will open again and provide me with my 1/4 open again to finish the burn.

This is trial and error so I may need to tweak the calibration on the bimetallic strip.

 

Cool! So in theory this would be a possible retrofit as an automatic damper if it works? If I'm understanding correctly.

 

That's a big maybe.... the thing with this is I am working within a regular burn setting. So I am taking an overnight burn setting and varying the air within that parameter.

As it is measuring temperature off the bottom of the stove, I am dependant on the coals and firebrick temperature to determine the swing.

Something based off of internal temperature would be better.

This is non intrusive so it poses no safety risk.

 

Mod# 2 secondary inlet. Obviously with the primary air set higher (yet regulated) the secondaries are opened more as well.
This is a bimetallic test strip I bought. It should cut the secondaries back from taking over and open as the stove cools.

 

Just FYI this is what I am doing for a magnet to knock down the secondary air a bit at minimum throttle...



It is just something I had stuck to the fridge. I'd like to rather use a key damper but this will do for now. I am not doing anything with the primary air since it completely closes (aside from leakage) at minimum throttle. Granted I have no method to open the air back up some if I am not around, but for now that doesn't cause much of a concern.

Note that for wide open use the size of this magnet means I have to take it off for the plate to slide fully open.

Looking forward to seeing your results JA!