Now if i can just learn how run this thing!

Yes indeed, love the soapstone, i can see why these types of stove are well liked by their owners.

 

And probably even with 'left over' wood too boot....

Meaning you are using less wood in that stove.

 

Yes i would think so once i figure out how much wood to put in, i dont need the house at 75 when I go to bed like last night.

 

All houses and even stove setups are different, and your I.S. will act differently than mine just due to the chimneys' being different. That said, I can always load my stove fully if it is in the 30's or lower temps. The stove throttles very well, at least in my setup. Above 40F though, I have to light smaller, faster burning fires to keep the house from overheating; the stove heats up and the stone lining radiates heat for a long time, evening out the heat distribution pretty well although not perfectly of course. Still, I can keep it between about 68F to 75F or so even in very mild weather. I have lit the stove even into the 60's F when it has been chilly for a bunch of hours, and a small fire will heat things up without driving us outside.

What works very well for me is to fill the stove with hardwood and let it burn down. As the inside temps. start to fall off, I wait until it is 70F or so and again load the stove fully, and shut the bypass and damp the draft down to the usual 2 to 3 small notches open. The house temps. will continue to drop as the stove basically stops putting out heat while the coals scorch the bottom of the new splits but before they are actually engaged in the fire. Maybe an hour to two hours later, the wood is smoldering and the cat. engages but the new fuel ramps up very slowly even though the cat. is engaged. It is several hours before the entire fuel load is engaged, and this provides peak stove heat output right when the house has dropped to around 68F, and will again ramp up to the mid 70's F. The highest temps. in the house actually occur after midnight on the night loading, or just before noon on the morning loading. Either way, the stove is still hot and has an excellent bed of coals for the next loading without having to either re-start a fire or even open the draft and cat. bypass to kick it in the pants. This works best with dry wood, wood with more moisture will require a period of open draft and bypass to get going in my experience.

Glad to heat the stove is working for you! It really is a great wood stove although of course there is a learning curve. But you seem to be finding good success after just a few weeks- congrats and your enjoyment will continue to climb I believe as you get acquainted with the finer points of the stove.

 

I'm learning lots in this thread! But, some questions.......

I hear people say load the stove up full and burn low. Or they say smaller, faster and hotter fires..... But, why can't you have a small low fire? If you can burn "low and slow" with a full load, why can't you do it with a small load, say 1/2 or 1/3?
Or...have I missed something major?

If I'm reading your middle paragraph correctly, you engage the cat before a load is charred? I assume since you're loading on coals, that your temps are already up high enough?

Also, later in the paragraph you say you can reload without opening the bypass or the air. I thought you "had" to open the bypass to reload. Not sure if I have misunderstood something somewhere along the way..?

 

A small load, say 1/3 of the firebox, will never get hot enough to burn cleanly or efficiently IME. It just sort of smolders yielding lots of smoke and creosote. The only way it has worked for me is to burn it hot and I do not even bother with closing the bypass- there is not enough fuel to get hot and continue to make smoke for the combustor. Small loads burned slowly just make a mess and little- to- no heat, again IME.

Yes, if the coals bed is at least 3" thick and covering the entire floor of the stove, I just open the bypass, turn on the draft inducer (to create a strong draft and keep the smoke and fly ash out of my house), load the stove, then turn off the inducer and close the bypass without ever touching the draft. The temps. as well as the heat from the coals will ignite the fresh splits pretty quickly and produce little smoke for the first half- hour or so. After that, enough splits are involved that the entire firebox temp. comes up and ignites the cat. This also have the benefit of setting the main part of the burn back by at least one and more often two hours, making the entire load of fuel last longer and put out its max. heat later- very handy for overnight burns. But it does require that large, hot bed of coals to work this way, a too- small bed of coals will make a smoldering, filthy burn that may never come up to a high enough temp. to ignite the cat.

If I said I reload w/out opening the bypass, I misspoke (miss- types?). Given that large coals bed, I open the bypass, engage the inducer, load the stove as full as I can, shut off the inducer and close the bypass without ever touching the draft and walk away. Because I record temp. data from the stove 24/7, I can and do look to see what happened overnight or days when no one is at home. This is how I have confidence in this method of burning because I have "watched" dozens and dozens of burns quickly and efficiently by reading the temp.s through many burns.

 

It is highly possible that I misunderstood..

It kinda sucks that you can't burn a small load. If you don't need a lot of heat, do you control that by the species you load? Or with an AS (and maybe the IS?) can't you just put in a small load and let it burn "normal" without ever engaging the cat?

I feel like I need to apologize because I get a bit confused sometimes keeping it straight which stoves can (or can't/shouldn't) burn certain ways. I will figure it.put when I get up and running. I hope I can get the stove in this weekend.

 

Absolutely no need to apologize, you have not done anything wrong that I have seen. There is a learning curve to cat. stoves, and for those with a lot of experience with non cat. stoves, especially the old non- EPA types, there is a certain amount of knowledge that needs to be forgotten also.

You absolutely CAN burn a small load of wood in an Ideal Steel (I would assume this goes for other cat. based, fully lined stoves as well). It just does not throttle well as there is not enough fuel to burn for long enough to enter the 'cat. phase'. These stoves require some fuel to heat the lining before they will put out any appreciable heat. With a small fire, the splits just will not get hot enough to burn slowly, they just taper off and smolder but never heating the cat. enough to have it light- off. So the better way, IME, is to give it a lot of draft and leave the bypass open and let the fire burn out. The stone or firebrick lining will pick up some heat and radiate it slowly into the room. Very different than a plain steel or cast iron firebox without any lining- those will heat up quickly.

Besides that, the only time I have ever wanted a small fire is when it is much to warm out to have a stove full of wood. In those circumstances, a small, hot fire produces just enough heat to make the inside pleasant without making me open doors and windows. And if the fire is actually too small, another couple of splits, also burned hot and fast, will always do the trick.