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

I couldn't agree more. I've been burning probably 65% poplar/pine since installed, and I still have 8-12 hour burn times (depending on outside temp) the cat really extracts those wood gasses, and the air control is just great. Stove is taking a break for a few days, as we have warm air from the gulf in today. Temp is going to hit 70 today!

 

We are warm here too at 48. Stove is off for now.

On a different note...anyone know what these are for? WS sent them to me, I think I got them by mistake.

 

They look like the bolts that hold the stainless steel scoop on the Fireview to me.

 

8 hours later the pine is still going. Cat is almost at the inactive zone though. Not that it matters at this point though.

 

Got the same on the Absolute Steel, plus we got a hood scoop! Do you guys have a hood scoop in the IS? Might be a good mod if it can fit in.

 

IS has a radiator shown in a few of the pics in this thread designed to disperse the heat. Is that scoop stainless?

 

Sounds good... yeah I'm hoping to get similar times with some spruce I cut. Someone was offering it free on craigslist, normally I wouldn't have been interested at all, but with this stove there is hope. Still though, thought it might help to split the pieces extra large. Of course plenty of small/medium in there too. Probably close to a cord of spruce I got, and still splitting and stacking now so won't be able to test it out until next year.

 

I believe it is.

 

So, yesterday I did a good cleaning to the stove and chimney. Here are my thoughts.

1. I took A LOT of ash out of it. There was easily 2 ash pan loads of ash inside the stove plus lots of leftover coals. This takes up space for wood and possibly blocked the small holes in the front. This was decreasing my burn times for two reasons. Less capacity for wood and more internal temperature from higher coal bed to the secondaries. Both of these issues seem easy to resolve by keeping it clean inside. I fed it way too much hardwood in the cold snap. The stove majorly tamed down after the cleaning.

2. My external chimney with an un-insulated liner had some build up at the top causing a little restriction. I need to remember to burn hot fires before cutting back the air.

3. I raised the stove up 2 more inches from its previous height. I never changed it from new and it could go up. So I did. This keeps me from having to bend over as far on reloads and a better view of the secondaries.

This is my reminder to do regular maintenance and you can avoid a lot of issues. I am pretty sure I will be modifying the grates in the bottom of the stove this summer so that more ash can escape. You really have to work to get it to fall the way it is. Nothing a little fabrication can't fix .

 

That's a cool feature to be able to adjust the stove leg heights.

 

Yeah, there is a 'hood scoop' on the I.S. but it is called a 'radiator', is larger, made of heavier stock and is carbon steel, not stainless steel. Because of the extremely high temps. the radiator is commonly held to by the high temperature of the combustor, the radiators warp, sag and scale quite a bit; I would say that Woodstock is using a smaller stainless steel cover on the Absolute Steel based on their experience with the Ideal Steel.

I also notice that while the Absolute uses what appears to be the same combustor as the Ideal Steel, they have eliminated the moving sled and gone to the much simpler 'flap valve' type of bypass. Probably just as well- the sleds on the I.S. works pretty well but there have been some incidents of warping but even without needing any further attention, it is much more complicated and no doubt more expensive than just using a conventional bypass as the Absolute Steel does.

Brian

 

Thanks for the explanation Brian, I did see the pictures a number of posts back of the "radiator".

 

Good post with a lot of pertinent thoughts, at least IMO.

1) Yep, lots o' work to get the ashes to fall through the grate. Woodstock appears to be aware of this too as they have increased the size of the slots in the new grate for the Absolute Steel, which is the same grate that the Ideal Steel uses. And you are right about blocking the bottom / front vents- it is easy to do even just raking the coals forward and re-loading the stove. Of course there IS a way to introduce a bit of air underneath the grate that I hear works pretty well....

I would also raise my I.S for the same reasons as you but I just do not have the room to shorten the stove pipe. Well, I do have the room but it is taken up with the draft inducer. Besides, I think mine is already close to max. height due to the ash pan (it is wherever Woodstock assembles them- I never altered the height).

Brian

 

Standard height allows you 2" to go up. Atleast mine was set that way.

 

Made a top down fire tonight. I'm still not sold but they are clean burning and they don't require much babysitting if at all. Maybe a small one to get the stove temperature up and some coals so I can put a full load in would be the way to utilize it. It seems to take awhile to start putting out good heat.

 

Just a picture of secondaries. People talk about how they bore holes in the wood. Some of the secondaries aren't even visibly firing here but they are making the wood glow.

 

I have some small black "dots" on the front of my stove glass. Anyone else ever experience this? I've scrubbed it with the Rutland cleaner, and it's barely coming off. Creosote? How?

 

I have only ever used wet paper towel dipped in wood Ash to clean my glass. Try it out and see if that works.

 

I have experimented with the top down cold starts and came to the same conclusions. F'rinstance, this attempt had 2 layers of medium/large splits on the bottom and lotsa small or tiny kindling on top, with a FHC fire starter on top with 2" space above. It took an hour for the combustion to finally work its way down into the splits and the cat is finally getting active. Seems that the secondary air from above makes coals and ash on top which then keeps that air from getting into the splits. It does sure start up cleaner though.

 

On the front like on the outside glass surface (not in the firebox)? Maybe paint splatter? Try a razor scraper...