Production Woodstock IS

I find my stove is also happiest at notch #4-5. #5 seems to work best overall. I notice a sharp drop below them.

 

Are you still using your original cat? I'm just curious to ask a few original IS guys on how well it's performing after a couple seasons now.
Last year at the open house I picked up a second cat to have as a "just in case" scenario.
After talking to BDF Brian at this years open house we found the cats had already showed some wear that affected it's noticeable performance. So after coming home from the open house I planned on swapping the cats out, cleaning the original cat and seeing what the differences were.
The only thing I can say is that the new cat seems to light off quicker than the original and stays lit nearly the same amount of time.

The next test will be putting the original cat back in on the next stove cleaning and see how the bath did on how it performs post cleaning.

There was a short debate at the open house about steel cats vs. ceramic. Ceramic seems to handle the strenuous conditions better in the long run over the stainless steel. Brian put a nice spin on cost effectiveness and lifespan of the steel cats.

I'm hoping Brian is able to chime in on this.

 

I still have the original cat. As far as I can tell it still lights off and works like it should. I have no doubt that a new one would light off quicker, but in all reality we can't be replacing the cat every year. I think next year I will consider replacing it just as a "tune up". Burning good quality wood is probably always going to be the largest factor.

 

I agree that you can't replace a cat every year but you have to wonder how far a SS cat with precious metals will actually go with some of the temps that it reaches on the regular. If I was to spend $150 every 3 years to replace it I'd consider that reasonable.

 

I also find myself getting the best performance around the first big notch. Real cold days on the one below and on warmer days on the one above.

I'm at 13 feet of pipe though. 5 feet of double wall in the house and 8 feet of class A above.

 

I am certainly no expert but I do like to collect data, watch how things work and am a big believer in efficiency, and hey, my opinions are free.... at least my opinions about wood stoves.

My own experience is that S.S. cats. do everything that ceramic cats. do but better and faster. They are also not subject to cracking or spalling, which every single ceramic cat I have ever had certainly did do. Given the choice, I would chose S.S. over ceramic as the base material.

As to the life of a cat., that is a little more complicated: the normal failure mode is not 'they work and then one day they do not work' but one of gradual decline. To me, a catalytic combustor in a woodstove is really just a wear item, exactly like the sharpness of a chain on a chainsaw, and I clean / change mine out to maintain good or better efficiency, and always consider the cost of replacement vs. the cost of non- replacement. Yep, there is a cost in using an older cat. and that is 1) more wood consumption, which is never free even if a person cuts his / her own wood on his / her own property. As a general rule of thumb, I change my cat. when it has lost about 20 to 30 % (and this is really a W.A.G. without any way to quantify it) of its efficiency because that is somewhere around the amount of additional wood I would have to burn to compensate. Maybe not quite that much but a high efficiency cat. makes a stove much easier to use IMO and IME: they are easier to re-fill because they re- light instantly without any need for some time with the bypass open or additional air; rake the coal bed, fill the stove and shut the door and bypass and it is good for 8 to 14 hours depending on the weather. A sluggish cat. requires it be coaxed to re-light, and that requires additional time tending the stove, some additional risk of leaving the stove with the bypass open and too much draft, and all the while the stove is running dirty and making creosote in the chimney. Keeping a cat. working properly (properly to me- maybe 'over the top' for others ??) means the chimney virtually never needs cleaning because it simply stays clean and what little material that is collected is nothing more than dust and not combustible, vs. that black creosote that is what causes chimney fires.

One of the big deciding factors in a stove purchase for me is how much the combustors cost because I know I need a new one about every 1 1/2 years or so. When comparing the I.S., the Blaze King (King) and the Regency F5100 (both of the last are considerably bigger stoves and cat. only, not hybrids), the cost of the combustors was about 3X on the last two compared with the one for an I.S.. Now the price for I.S. combustors has risen considerably but they are still about 1/2 the price so that expense adds up over, say, 10 or 15 years of stove usage. I am also hoping to get a little more life out of the cat. in the I.S. because it is so easy to clean that I can do it more often, and especially because it is directly above the firebox, which is the hottest place in the stove before the combustor.

Catalytic combustors are generally said to last 12,000 hours or about 6 years of 'average' use. The warranty period covers most cats. for several years with the last years being pro- rated by life. But because I know I am warrantying a cat. perhaps earlier than the manufacturer would consider it 'not working', I try to split the difference and warranty the first one and buy the second one without using the warranty. So at $175, that gets me at least 4 1/2 years and maybe a little more (given the first one changed under warranty), so the annual cost is something less than $50, and I have an efficient, clean- burning stove that I do not have to struggle with regarding lighting the cat. or keeping it lit. It is simply an annual cost of burning wood to me, exactly the same as procuring wood itself, or maintaining a chainsaw or splitter: using an old, tired chainsaw that has not been maintained, and especially using a dull chain is far more expensive, at least in my view, of maintaining the saw and sharpening the chain.

BTW, I discovered all of this by struggling with older cats. in other stoves to the point of frustration and getting a little cranky. When I finally did swap the cat., all my problems went away and life was great again..... so I kinda' learned the lesson not to let a cat. get too slugging by fudging around with some pretty slugging cats, making a lot of creosote and generally being unhappy with a cat.- type stove. My own personal opinion is that most other people's difficulties with cat. stoves is often due to a slugging cat. (and some outright failed ones of course) as well as poor wood, etc. As a corollary, I put a lot of miles per year on a motorcycle and expect top performance from it always; some brands of tires perform so poorly by the time they are 1/2 way through the tread life that they are almost scary. I always swap those tires out long before they hit the wear bars but ride with a lot of people who use them down to the nubs.... to each his / her own but dragging a peg through a sweeper or riding through the Rocky Mtns. at 2:00 AM in the rain, I just do not want to feel the back end of the bike doing that little squirrely dance it does with less than great performing tires. Most would say they are not yet worn out but they are worn out for me.

Brian

 

Youse guize posted this while I was posting.....

Again, in my opinion, the cat. should be replaced when the owner notices a distinct drop in performance. If a cat. is working fine for someone and it happens to be three years old, I would not replace it 'just in case' it has deteriorated. Monitoring cat. temperature is the easiest way I have found to detect a failing cat.; just watch the temp. of the cat. on a reload with the bypass and draft closed for the 'long burn': if the cat. drops in temp. to around firebox temps. and then immediately starts to rise, the cat. is responding well. If the cat. drops to or below the firebox temp. and will not rise w/in, say, 5 minutes, it is getting slow and could use a cleaning or replacement. All IMO of course.

As to replacing the cat. every year, I think that would depend entirely on the use the stove sees. Where we live (Darren- My IS heats my home) live in southern New England, the winters are not too harsh so replacing the cat. each year is not needed, at least IME and I burn 12/7/ all winter. But for someone living in Frostbite Falls and using 12 cord or more of wood a year, it may well pay to change a combustor every year and maybe even sooner than that. It is usually stated that a cat. can save around "30%" of the wood used but I find it is even higher than that, and a cat. stove does not make the mess in the chimney that a non- cat. stove does, at least in my use in my house. So I find having an old, tired, sluggish cat. costs me more wood, more time frolicking with (and being annoyed with) the stove, and makes a creosote mess in the chimney, all of which is worth some dollars to get rid of, at least to me.

Brian

 

The temps. will dip tonight into mid- single digits, which is cold for this area. Will have to run the stove at new settings to maintain the house overnight. Then again, I have a new, very efficient boiler and the price of oil is WAY down so for the first time in decades, having anything to assist the woodstove is not only possible but really pretty practical. Heating with wood takes on a totally different dimension when that is the only way to get any heat; a long day away means coming home to a house that is easily down to the mid- 50's or lower and getting the stove started, really cranking to produce a lot of heat and then loaded and damped for the night is a pain in the butt when you start at 10:00 PM. :-( Central heat that can be used is really quite nice.....

Brian

 

BDF you are right, bet you like to hear that feel free to print this and show it to you wonderful wife!.... we are currently at 6 degrees here with 30 mph winds off and IS is keeping up posted pic of house couple pages back... butt going to negative 10 tonight with 30 to 40 mph winds.. so wind chill will be ridiculous... I will turn on oil boiler and set to 50 for next few days cheap insurance for basement where water lines are and level below woodstove...

 

Zero and single digits are our usual low points but it does go negative usually once or twice per winter. I live in an ancient house with a stone foundation (you can see outside through some of the rocks.... literally) and so the cellar gets pretty cold. Last winter it went to -9 F overnight, which was both a record for last year and also cold enough to actually freeze my water meter. Got up the next morning and.... no water. Traced it all the way to the corner of the cellar where the water enters the house, more than 7 ft. below grade, and sure 'nuff, the meter had ice in it- I know this because I got no water by cracking the union on the house side of the meter but lots o' water when cracking the union on the city side of the meter. Big sigh. So I pointed 1200 watts of halogen work light at the meter and hoped for the best, and after about 4 hours, water again appeared throughout the house. The water dept. did show up afterward and replace the meter though- I suspect the internals (Easy Boys!) did not care for the sudden expansion of the water.

Right at the moment, the second floor is framed and sheathed but nothing else so there is 1,000 sq. feet over my first floor ceiling that is going to get rather..... chilly tonight. I doubt I will be able to heat the entire first floor under these conditions with just the woodstove and will probably have to throw some oil at at least the north end of the house (wood stove is in the south end). The stove will probably put out sufficient heat but not all night, and I doubt I keep it reasonably warm at the other end of the house. So I guess it sounds like my zero is a LOT colder than your 10 below zero.

Brian

 

hey guys what's the highest STT you should put on IS? by magnet thermometer I am at 650 and climbing... is 750 ok? the pretty girl is really Startin to show her stuff.. wind chill supposed to be minus 30 or colder? BDF Unhdsm other guy that live in cold and need more heat?

 

Good question but I cannot answer it, at least not that very question. My opinion is that no external part of a woodstove should ever 'glow' or show any color, which is about 900 F for steel; that is overheated IMO. I might let the hottest part of a woodstove, one used in a house, to reach 750 F but would never go any higher and probably not even that high because by that time other parts, especially internal ones, will be well beyond showing color. I do not think you are really risking anything like a fire in the house but I do believe you would warp parts beyond a reasonable point, plus you would have things like the radiator so hot it would probably get soft.

Measured near the exhaust collar on the left, the hottest part of my stove top, has never seen 700 F and I doubt I would let it get that high and especially, maintain that temp.

Used outside, I have both seen and actually driven woodstoves much harder and they have not failed although some have actually sagged. At a local outdoor pistol range there is a V.C. Encore that the doors will not shut and they drive that stove hard enough to warm us up, totally outside, when it is 20 F but I would never, ever do that inside any building. I am sure the stove is glowing but have never seen it at night so have not seen any 'color'.

Hopefully others will chime and 'fess up if they have done this- I would really like to hear how these stoves do hold up to very high temps.

Brian

 

thanks Brian I got STT at 675 on left side then it settled back to 625.. 45 minutes later I am running 8 hour cycles right now and hitting the proverbial 5th gear but on mixed medium btu wood... this could be real fun with dry sugar and oak... oh my Temps right now are 3 and dropping with 40 mph wind and white out conditions yeeeee haw somebody said at Woodstock they ran 700 cause tom told them try to break it.... I don't want to break it but winter is here

 

I put the pre-production into the 700's many times- enough to burn the red color off the over fire zone on the thermometer. The shell wasn't close to orange but you could almost see through the andiron. Instructions on the production stove advise to keep sustained temps below 700f. Having it peak over 700f then drop off shouldn't be a problem.
Cold and windy tonight in VT. I'll be running it hard.

 

thanks Unhdsm that's what we're doing too 45 mph gusts -2 right now!

 

It's 17 here on the JERSEY shore tonight. Very windy too. I'm at the break even point for my stove. The thermostat in the hallway isn't rising above the set temperature. I've closed off a bedroom too. My house is leaky and the stove is in the den which was a slab garage with a cathedral ceiling and only a doorway into the kitchen. The other side of the kitchen only has a standard sized doorway as well. That opens to the rest of the house. The thermostat is 60 feet from the stove. I'd love to have this stove centrally located but that may not happen for a few years if at all. The furnace is definitely going to be kicking on tonight but nowhere near the amount if I was stove less. For now I'll take it.

 

Well, 11:00 PM here, 18 degrees F with 13 MPH of wind. The 'cold' end of the house is at 67 with the thermostat in that room set at 65 so the wood stove is carrying the whole house. Just loaded the stove for the overnight burn; stove is pretty full of hardwood, draft is set at the first large notch, the [under grate draft that we will not speak of is set to about 5/8" dia. open], and the damper is wide open. The stove will burn to morning but I do not know if it will carry the entire house or not- either way, it is comfortable in here (underwear temps. actually) and throwing a gallon of fuel oil at the place will not be an undue burden.

Keep warm fellow [modern men acting like our cave- man ancestors] woodburners and be safe!

Brian

 

Well last night I found the limit of my stove in my house with 20 ish Mc wood that was cherry white birch and ash pics of house few pages back.. the stove will keep whole house warm including basement at 5 below 40 mph winds but only for 8 hours.. the STT then drops and so does house temp!

 

That in all actuality is a pretty daunting task for any "area heater". I'm glad to hear this machine can pump out some heat! What temp was the house staying at? And how many sq ft are you heating again?

 

Sconnie Burner STT went to 700 for 25 minutes but was cruising around 600... my house is weird.. tried to explain to T-Stew hard to do so I put pic 2 pages back.. in short 2600 square feet on 5 levels the top 3 levels have 16 to 18 foot ceilings so lots of cubic feet.. the biggest challenge is getting heat to 1st floor 5 feet down 30 feet away from stove where water pipes are.. set that oil Stat to 55 degrees it kicked on at 6 am... stove room 2nd level was 70... bedrooms above were 62 to 65.... when I raked out at 630 hey I needed coffee first... STT was near 300 but just not enough at 8 below