Production Woodstock IS

Thats something I didn't know...learning every day!

 

You need enough gaseous material (fuel) to sustain the chemical reaction in the cat. I'm positive the directions for the blaze king tell you to load it full.

You can load a smaller load in the IS and do a secondary burn without the cat. You can't do that with a bk.

 

I run mine in the afternoons with 3-4 lg splits just to cover 5 hrs. I run it hotter than normal to get house temp up before the overnight burn. I'd say it does alright for a firebox it's size

 

3 or 4 large splits could be a lot of wood depending on what you are cutting to. I've got some 21 inch pieces where 3 or 4 will take up over half the firebox.

 

I've found a few smaller splits on top of established coals without the cat engaged will bring stove temp up. And when a stove this size lined with soapstone is warm. It stays warm. And seems to work decent for me when temps outside r mild.

 

How do you do that? Isn't the cat always working?

 

Only if you engage it.

If you don't engage it or engage it and keep the air up higher it won't really be active.

 

Lets say you load her up...get her going good and then engage the cat and start shutting her down for the burn. What would you say the heat out put is on a very low end burn? 13K btu-? Heat out put or lack thereof is important to me...I know this stove can produce on the high end. I want controllable low heat output for the days that are milder with out running me out of the house..

 

Welcome Tar12 I do this all the time in early fall.. it works great.. first most of the time it gets colder at night and warms during the day so I load stove full at night ... (I call this 40s day 20s at night shoulder season) in the morning.. if it's warming up I just open the air and and depending on how much heat I need add splits or not.. this stove does have a learning curve BUT is soo easy to operate... I relate it to set it and forget it.. most of the time I can get in above Temps it's 18 hour burns for me

 

The Encore is cast iron. Is cast iron better? IMO, not really. It does radiate a bit more heat than steel, mostly because of the mottled surface from casting while steel is very flat from rolling but both types suffer from spending a long time at high temperatures; steel will warp, buckle, wrinkle and finally, crack or burn through. Cast iron usually given no warning and just cracks, which is usually a surprise and has no warning. Then again, either type, if not over- fired or outright abused, will last for decades so..... not really sure that one is better than the other. I think steel is more forgiving and can be much more readily welded though.

Brian

 

If the opening is of reasonable size, no need to attend to it or be wary of it. I am speaking of an ash pan door mod. here, NOT just cracking the ash pan door open, which certainly is risky if left alone or forgotten. But a 1/2" to 3/4" hole in the door will not cause any undue temps. anywhere in the stove, it is not hard on the grate, and overall is not even all that noticeable except that 1) the coals burn down with the fire so the stove is not left 1/3 full of black charcoal and 2) at the end of the burn, the coals are still actively burning rather than dark. It is exactly the same as the two small vents that Woodstock uses in the bottom of the stoves stock; if they were opened up a little bit and had small shields over them so they could not be blocked off, it would accomplish a very similar thing as modding the ash pan door but still without any risk of the stove going 'nuclear' or anything like that.

Like most things in life, it is a classic case of a little bit is fine, a huge amount is risky. Is driving at 3 MPH over the speed limit a death- defying act that puts the driver and everyone else in grave danger? No. Is driving 100 MPH over the speed limit overtly dangerous (on public roads)? Yep, it certainly is. So introducing a little air under the grate is not a big deal as long as the key- word 'little' is used. And if it is done with a hole or some other controlled modification, it cannot 'get away' from the user; cracking the ash pan door is far less controllable because the door area is so big that the difference between a 1/16" gap and a 3/16" gap is huge regarding airflow.

Brian

 

Those two were two of my three options, the third being a Regency F5100. I chose the I.S. for a variety of reasons but especially the grate / ash pan, which makes removing ashes FAR less of a chore, along with a relatively inexpensive catalytic combustor, which requires occasional cleaning and replacement to keep the stove running cleanly and efficiently. Also, the I.S. cat. is extremely easy to inspect and remove / replace, which was important to me- the other two stoves, not so much. Also parts are extremely reasonable in price, which makes it easy to replace things and keep the stove looking nice- a new piece of glass from Woodstock is very reasonable while a piece of Blaze King glass (both really ceramic) is quite a bit more. I think Woodstock in the nicest / best company to do business with after the sale; not saying the other two are 'bad', just that Woodstock is unusually friendly and goes beyond expectations to keep customers happy: very pleasant to do business with, even if that business is a warranty call, which they handle superbly IME.

The BK has the advantage of a temperature control to help regulate the burn, which I think is a plus. They also have, at least the King version, a tendency to crack at the corners of the firebox where the door is.

The Regency is too new to have lots of stoves with lots of hours so no long term knowledge there. The brand is well respected though and their other stoves have a very happy user base it seems.

I think all three are excellent stoves though that will serve very well for years, decades, of long winter use.

As to your specific questions: no, the I.S. is not hard to use or run but there is a learning curve, as there will be with the BK as well. No large, insulated wood stove does well with small loads of wood and all perform best when loaded and hot. That said, any stove can be made to work extremely well with small splits and a lot of draft to burn the fire rapidly. I think most of us tend to treat the stoves the same was as if it were 10F outside even when it is 50F and just use less wood; that is not going to work in any large stove 'cause the [far too big] splits just sit there and smolder. The key to small fires is small wood, even kindling and cardboard, burned hot and then let the stove radiate the stored heat long after the fire has died out.

Best of luck with whichever one you choose.

Brian

 

To support this argument, think of the thousands of stoves out there over the years and currently that are not upkeep with leaky gaskets around the ash door. Probably as great or greater surface area than the 1/2 hole you are experimenting with. Easy enough to replace the door or weld it shut if its not to your liking.

 

Well my long burn went well. Like always with a really long unnatended burn I was left with a stove that had cooled down with fuel still in it. Need to try the ash pan mod one of these days, but it was no big deal. House was warm, I stirred it up and got it back going again and burned for another couple hours before reloading, total burn time around 26 1/2 hrs. When I first got home the cat probe was at a smidgen under 300 and the Woodstock magnet mount on the stove top about 220F. Here is what it looked like...



The pile in the back of the ecobricks was about the same height as they were after loading, but much of thier mass was gone. I knocked the pile down and stirred it a bit...



Hard to tell in the pic but some of the bricks along the outside edge still had completely unburnt parts that were still tan colored, you can see a bit of that to the right of the flame above. After I stocked it a bit I had active flames and a bright glow and the stove actually warmed up a bit. In about 30 minutes had 600 on the cat and 375 on the stove top. I bet I could have got 2-4 more hours out of those easy, but it was almost midnight I had to go to bed so reloaded.


Same shot with (below) and without flash (above) at about 25.5 hrs.

You can see the mass of the coals better with the flash, but it wipes out all the little blue flames (there were more than the pic even showed anyhow) and the intense glow.

I've got around 1/4 ton of ecobricks left from 2 years ago, probably will just use that up this winter to supplement my ash wood and when I need long burns and maybe get more next winter.

I've got no reliable way to guess at BTU but Woodstocks specs say 13,017-60,530/hr (per EPA tests) I assume that's where you got the 13k number from so you probably know that. That is probably an average, so figure a bit more for the first few hours then drifting down below that number. With the large mass of the Ideal it will stay warm for several hours, I find this to be pretty good in the shoulder season if you time things right. You lite the stove off in the evening when it's starting to cool and get the most heat overnight, then just let it coast and burn out as the day warms up. Trouble is you have to re-lite the stove daily, but many don't mind this just for those warmer days in the shoulder season. Once it get a bit cooler I run 24x7 and the stove still idles way lower than my old Jotul did. The problem some folks have in the shoulder season is draft, if you don't have a great chimney setup then the warmer temperatures exacerbate this problem. And trying to run the stove low does too. So if you have a good draft, and a fairly good load of dry wood with a good coal bed, you can throttle the stove down very low.

 

With my marginal quality firewood. I'm seeing around a solid 8 hrs of burn time. With a few more hours of many large red coals which I do my best to burn down. And they do keep the stove pretty warm. Introducing air into the firebox via the ash pan is very interesting if it works nicely to burn down the coals without having to stir up coals.

 

8 hours with the disgusting -30 below not including windchill Sunday Morning? My fireview struggled to pull 6 hours of meaningful heat with a full load of red oak.

 

30 below? No thanks. It's 15 here in NJ right now and I'm not a fan.

Just filed up the stove. I'll see if it starts bringing the house temperature up. My den is warm though. I hibernate there.

 

The IS is munching on some red oak this afternoon. I came home from work early (noon) to find the first floor at 72 deg with an outside temp of 28.
4 splits of oak will take me to 7pm then the night time reload. It's going to be in the middle 30's tomorrow

 

Several months late, but I finally took some half-assed pictures today:

 

Pretty stove williaty hope is keeping you warm!