We are on our first winter with our IS. Learning a little everyday. Today I loaded some 8 year old red oak. I had great heat. Cat was at 1200 and stt was at 550. I was waiting on secondary’s to kick In but they never did?? Is that normal? Stt was above 500 for 6 hours, I’m not complaining but I’m used to secondary’s lighting at aprox 1000 degrees cat temp. I then set my air to just under 1/4 on air settings and let it do its thing. Is it normal for secondary’s to not light in that set of wood? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I have very limited experience with the IS, having just installed ours in September. That said, I get a way better light show with pine than red oak. Heat is great though, so no complaints! Maybe different species gas off differently? Interested to see what the gurus have to say here.
I rarely get secondaries on the Ideal Steel and they mostly occur just after engaging the cat. They'll hang around for a few minutes and then the stove will go dark. I had an EPA tube stove and yes, the light show from that thing was far superior to the Ideal Steel, however, the Ideal Steel blows the tube stove away in terms of extracting maximum BTU's from the wood. A neighbor up the street has a newer tube stove and he's an experienced wood burner. No matter what, I can see blue smoke from his chimney. After the cat is engaged on the IS, I'll go outside to look at the chimney and it looks like the stove is off. He is thinking about ditching his tube stove for an Ideal Steel.
If I give the stove plenty of air after a reload I usually have at least a solid out of secondary’s burning. I enjoy watching them but the thing I like the most is the heat. They get my stt up in a hurry. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Ive noticed with my set up mainly burning red oak I will get a nice rolling flame and charred wood going close it down to 1/4 and turn the pipe damper (rather strong draft) to half or 2/3 closed it will go dark and slowly ramp up stove top temp to 450+. After awhile I may end up with secondaries firing up and sometimes it stays black the whole time. I found if you stay above the 1/4 mark it tends to stay in secondary mode better. That seems to be the fine line dancing mark.
