In loving memory of Kenis D. Keathley 6/4/81 - 3/27/22 Loving father, husband, brother, friend and firewood hoarder Rest in peace, Dexterday

Production Woodstock IS

Discussion in 'Modern EPA Stoves and Fireplaces' started by My IS heats my home, Jul 29, 2014.

  1. Matt Fine

    Matt Fine

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    Thanks! I remember reading about it but I wasn’t finding it with a search.
     
  2. golf66

    golf66

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    I bolted a piece of steel angle to the back of the radiator and the stove is behaving much differently.....cat temps way up, stove pipe temps down and this is with the draft lever set on the 3rd notch. Anything higher than this and the cat probe goes into the red zone. Me LIKE!
     
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  3. BDF

    BDF

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    Now that is a great idea tagging onto another idea: using a piece of 'L' stock instead of a flat and some method to mount it is a great idea! Nice work!

    Yeah, good stuff. A little more work and I think it could be even better; I would close both edges of the radiator and then open the right side, and block the flue path from the radiator to the back of the stove. This would force the flue gasses to exit the radiator on the right (looking at the stove), come forward, move across the front of the stove and then move rearward on the left side; sort of a big circle that the flue gasses have to travel before exit. Nothing but a longer gas path to exchange even more heat out of the flue gasses and into the stove top. But that would take a good deal of fabrication. Although it would also almost certainly eliminate the existing radiators tendencies to warp and sag over time 'cause the front edge would then be supported by a vertical member.

    Sorry, I cannot help myself and am always chewing on altering the design for more of some things, less of others. It is a curse I tells' ya'! OK, gotta' go and work on the office coffee pot and improve that......

    :D

    Brian

     
  4. Unhdsm

    Unhdsm

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    Here’s an honest question- at what point are you cooling chimney temps too much? Or rather- at what temp will you need a power vent?
     
  5. TurboDiesel

    TurboDiesel

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    I've heard that thermal mass heaters will put out a flue temp under 200°

    I know they aren't mainstream, but that's where we're headed here
     
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  6. BDF

    BDF

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    Well, and honest answer: never. The flue gasses could never be brought down to room temperature, and a chimney will draft quite well at even 150F provided it is insulated. An outside chimney, especially an un-insulated one (masonry) DOES need to be kept heated to draft properly but an inside chimney will draft surprising well with nothing but room temperature air available at the bottom. A crude example: if a chimney is installed in a house, nothing is attached to that chimney and the y house is heated, a great deal of air will flow continuously up and out (read: draft) from the chimney.

    Starting a fire in such a stove might be a problem because the relatively cool flue gasses, cooled even more by the cold stove with the long gas path, will not cause much vacuum to be generated. But that is easily overcome by opening the bypass and bypassing the whole labyrinth that I mentioned before.

    I have had my I.S., with a fresh combustor and dry wood, run so slowly that the exhaust gasses are under 200F. This is below the boiling temp. of water and <can> be a bad thing because now the stove is operating in what is called 'condensing mode', where all the liquid in the smoke condenses before it can exit the chimney; this means the inside of the chimney is actually wet, and that water will run down the chimney and either collect or leak out the bottom. This water is not clean of course and is fairly acidic, and can be quite hard on masonry chimneys because it gets between the tile flue liners and if it freezes later, it will crack the chimney. Not good. But in a stainless steel chimney rated for use with coal (commonly called an 'All fuel' chimney) it is actually OK because coal generates very acidic exhaust and the chimney is made to withstand it.

    Finally, if ALL the heat could be removed from the exhaust gasses, PVC could be used as a chimney material (immune to acid) and the additional efficiency of using less fuel would more than pay for a small exhaust fan to keep the gasses moving out of the burning appliance and out of the building. This is actually done every day using both propane and natural gas furnaces and boilers known as condensing boilers. They have efficiency reaching 97% and literally do use PVC as exhaust tubes, which can exit at ground level because they do not pose a burning hazard.

    If the goal is to increase efficiency, and it certainly is with heating devices generally, at what point does one stop? At 50% efficient? 75%? In my mind, the logical <desired but not reachable> point is 100%. Like electric resistance heating, I want it ALL in the house with me. But that is not attainable, so the choices between cost of the stove, difficulty in using or maintaining it, etc. must be balanced against the efficiency gained. In the example given a few posts ago, putting a 2" tall piece of steel behind the radiator increases the stove's efficiency by some very observable amount, and costs under $10. So let's just say that it increases the efficiency of the stove by 5%, which is certainly not a huge amount. But that means that year in, year out, we get to procure, split, saw, haul, stack, put in the stove 5% less wood. Also 5% less ashes and 5% less often removing those ashes. Say this goes on for 5 or 10 years..... not a bad return for $10 with absolutely no other downside whatsoever, right?

    The labyrinth idea would also increase the stove's efficiency by some noticeable amount I believe. But with that there are downsides, it would take fabrication and then the stove would not be able to use standard factory parts entirely such as the radiator. So that one is not as big of a gain vs. effort and cost IMO. But it might still be worthwhile.

    Another mod. I would love to try is a piece of ceramic 'glass' in place of the I.S. stove top and radiator. At very high temperatures, a lot of heat is radiated as infrared rather than being transferred via convection or conduction, and a great deal of that heat would project right out of the stove and onto the ceiling / walls of the house. But it would also allow the flue gasses to escape the stove much faster and more directly. So the $64,000 question is: would it be an overall gain or not? I would LOVE to try it and see but I am not quite willing to fork over the cash because I believe it has a big possibility of NOT being more efficient and may come with other downsides not obvious without testing such as the glass getting covered with fly- ash, or worse yet, the glass cracking or breaking, allowing the nice fire in the stove to become a nasty fire in the house.

    So as I said, it is just my nature to look at everything and want to tinker with it with the goal of making it better. BTW- my kitchen cabinets have internal (Easy boys!) lighting and switches on all the doors so when a cabinet door is opened, the interior is lit and one can see everything in there quite well. Cost me maybe $100 to add that when building the cabinets but it has proven extremely nice for years now so I consider that a cabinet improvement. Also, the kitchens and bathrooms of my houses have infrared sensors that turn on very low background lighting whenever a person walks in; very convenient to walk into the kitchen at night and not have to flip on any lights to get a coffee, or something simple (not enough light to cook or anything), and no one ever has to stumble around a bathroom in the dark looking for the light switch. Again, pretty cheap to do and the rewards go on for years.

    I am currently trying to train a kitten to bring in firewood splits. So far not much success but I remain hopeful. Yep, my cat loads my woodstove- it would be like sex, only good! :rofl: :lol::rofl: :lol::rofl: :lol::rofl: :lol:

    Brian

     
  7. Matt Fine

    Matt Fine

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    To add to the “never”...

    I have a Lang smoker with a 2’ cube firebox, smoke then goes across the bottom of an 84” long cook chamber under a reverse flow plate, back across the food, and then up a small chimney back at the firebox end. Top of the chimney is maybe 6’ above the fire grate.

    When cold smoking fish, cheeses, cured meats etc. I use a small amount of smoldering pellets in the huge firebox. The cook chamber runs no more than 1 degree F above the ambient temp, yet it drafts just fine. The flow rate is low, but the air required for the burn is low.

    CF304E23-D94C-48A6-9DC3-9FA2D96283B3.jpeg AE4D1C6A-628A-45DF-AAA5-8E6BC0195CF3.jpeg 3DA6A096-3D7D-4B33-AFB4-3A74E999DB50.jpeg
     
  8. BDF

    BDF

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    Yeah, not quite sure I believe you there Matt. But I would be happy to stop by and verify your statements for the forum. I will need your address and the approximate times when the next batch of meat will be ready for a thorough analysis and to be truthful in reporting.....

    :D

    Is there anything better than dead animals, smoked overnight? A friend of mine puts on pig roasts and one time, he literally cleaned out his freezer and smoked all of it and invited us over. Best damm turkey I EVER had, best venison by a mile, pieces of chicken; it was all simply outstanding!

    Brian

     
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  9. Matt Fine

    Matt Fine

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    You are going to have to wait a few months. The bacon in the pic is cold smoked, not FROZEN smoked! Outside temp needs to be between 35 and 80, and it is currently 12!
     
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  10. Matt Fine

    Matt Fine

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    BTW, did I mention it is 12 outside? Winter doesn’t even start until next week! I should sell the IS and move to Hawaii!

    On the plus side the IS is doing its thing. 77 in the stove room, coolest room is 70 and the furnace is resting.

    8F6D65AF-DE47-4196-A799-D8236FC61679.jpeg
     
  11. BDF

    BDF

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    New style radiator, modified with the rear baffle but this time, the easy way.

    So I finally let the stove cool down and removed the new radiator (well, new some months ago) to install a baffle on this one just like the last one. It works well in driving the stove top temp. up, while driving the exhaust temp. down (increasing efficiency) with no other noticable changes and no down- side that I have found. The original was a bent piece of flat steel held in place by a couple of pieces of stainless steel wire. But the thought hit me that there was an easier and better way to do this: I grabbed a piece of 1/8" thick angle stock, steel, 2" on each side, and cut it down to just fit inside the radiator at the back . Then a pair of 10/32 screws and nuts just to hold it to the radiator and done. It came out like this:

    From the inside (the bottom of the radiator, looking toward the back of the radiator):
    Rad mod with angle stock inside.JPG

    From the outside, looking at the rear of the radiator with the angle stock in place:

    Rad mod with angle stock outside.JPG

    This mod. forces more of the exhaust gasses to move foward in the stove, and then around the top plate, and in doing that they transfer more of the heat in the gasses to the top plate. As a loose observation, through actual temp. measuremet of both the stove top and the fuel gas temp. it makes about a 50 degree difference in the difference between those two temps. Before the mod, the exhaust gas temp. was running just about the same as the stove top, after, there was a 50F difference between the two measurements, with the stove top being hotter as well as the flue gasses being cooler.

    Brian
     
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  12. Matt Fine

    Matt Fine

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    Stoopid question. Does it need to be attached? Could you set the angle iron in the stove so it sits on one side and the vertical side blocks the air flow?
     
  13. BDF

    BDF

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    Well, not the way I am using it. The back end of the radiator does not sit on the sled, it rides up on those two legs on either side. So that piece of angle does not touch or even get all that close to what is under the radiator (the sled). Put another way, there is perhaps an inch or so under the bottom edge of that added angle when it is installed. The purpose is to trap exhaust gasses and stop them from spilling out the rear of the radiator as quickly as they do with a stock stove; you could just set the angle on the sled below the radiator but that would result in a one- inch gap above the angle, not what this mod. is intended to do.

    Also, as the radiator and the sled move back and forth to actuate what is really the bypass on an Ideal Steel, if it was just sitting there it would move around as time passed.

    So it really needs to be anchored, and it really needs to be anchored to the radiator instead of anything else.

    Brian

     
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  14. BDF

    BDF

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    Quoting my own post but wanted to add, the flow of exhaust gasses can actually be seen by looking at the radiator; they are shielded on both sides by the legs near the center of the radiator and the white pattern of embedded ash shows just where they do flow. Looking at the back of the radiator, it is clear that virtually all the flow is going to be interrupted by the new angle and slowed significantly. In other words, it can be seen exactly how the mod. will work by the existing pattern on the un- cleaned radiator (I just banged it a few times to knock off the major debris, I did not wipe it or vacuum it).

    Brian

     
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  15. Matt Fine

    Matt Fine

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    I thought the legs on the rear of the sled went down into a pair of slots. They do, but I now see they don’t go all the way down.
     
  16. Matt Fine

    Matt Fine

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    BTW, my cat thermometer showed up today. Took WAY too long to install, since I ended up having to drill out the darn screw!
     
  17. Unhdsm

    Unhdsm

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    I had to hit mine with a shot of liquid wrench. I nearly stripped it before I figured that out.
     
  18. Matt Fine

    Matt Fine

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    The head twisted right off of mine before I realized the threads weren’t turning.
     
  19. Babaganoosh

    Babaganoosh

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    Install it with the stove running. The bolt pops right out.
     
  20. Canadian border VT

    Canadian border VT

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    FYI talked with Penny at Woodstock and they are expecting IS cats in this week a few days to braze. End of next week they will be available mine has definitely gone past it' prime.
     
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