Production Woodstock IS

Sorry it took me a bit to reply, The side rack sticks out 10.5” from the side leg shield.

 

Loving the new IS so far. Temps have been 50’s and 60’s during the day and 30’s to 40’s at night since install so I haven’t been able to do much more than half loads at night to keep the chill off. Getting great cat light off and cat probe cruises at 1200-1300 on notch 2-4. Highest cat temp was 1400 briefly. The responsiveness of the air control still amazes me compared to my tube stove. I am struggling a bit with cold startups but it’s mostly due to the learning curve of using something different and having warmer than ideal temps outside. One question I have is about the best way to get the stove to burn off the black creosote build up on the door glass. I know if it was colder and I was reloading on a hot coal bed I would probably get strong enough flames on startup to burn it off before I close the bypass. With cold starts the flame never really gets going enough before I close the bypass to burn it off right now. I am still new to a cat style stove so I’m being careful with not letting the cat probe get much over 600 before I close the bypass, knowing a new cat is hyperactive and could shoot too high if it’s engaged at a high temp? Is this thinking right? Other than a few slow starts and dirty glass the stove is burning perfectly and putting out some decent heat for just half loads on mild days

 

Our glass is a bit sooty at the moment also, but with the temps being what they are, there is no need to fill the box up. Others may have dialed there's in better, but we're still on the learning curve.

It doesn't make sense to me to fill the stove and then open the windows because it's too hot in the house, but I do understand what others are saying as far as letting the stove work as it should, and I know that my chimney would be cleaner with a hotter burn.

We are trying to keep it in the proper cat range without running it too hot, but I must admit that we are using it more often in the sense of the traditional 'non-cat' stove method. (cat not engaged)

But yes, with a good hot burn, that window will be clean in no time.

Chaz

 

I was tempted to run it with the bypass open tonight to burn the glass clean since we don’t need a lot of heat, but I like playing with the new stove too much

 

Ours is chugging away with 6 splits in it.. and the heat should let me engage the cat and turn it down pretty soon so I can go to bed.

Nicest thing of all, even with so little wood in it, there'll still be coals enough to start new tomorrow for the wife. She's retired and tends the stove during the day.

Old stove could never think to compare with this.

Bonus.. talked to the lady that does our taxes yesterday and she said that they intend to extend the
Federal tax credit for qualifying woodstoves.

Not sure if it will help us or not.. depends on where we push the limit towards itemizing vs. simple tax credit. That's what she's paid to do.

Chaz

 

The black glass is tough to avoid at times. Best I can tell you is to keep the air control at least 1/2 open with a smaller fire at first. That gives a cold air wash across the glass that you lose as you dial the air back and it switches to more secondary air.

From there, you can add smaller loads on the coal bed with the air at least one notch more open than the 1/4 mark. Doing that, I need to load more often, but the glass stays clean. When I want to run overnight, I add a bigger load, dial back and plan on the glass going black. As long as the cat is working, the creosote is limited to the firebox and the chimney stays clean.

I have been thinking about cutting some glass panes to use as door glass liners. Let them go black and then remove from the stove to clean. The logistics of moving hot panes of glass in and out of the stove are the main obstacle I haven’t settled yet.

 

Learning how to run the IS took me a good couple of months. I've got the hang of it now, and it has meant less work keeping the glass clean. Running small fires that go cold means the glass will get dirty, in many cases. Here's my normal cold-start procedure, which has minimized soot on the glass:

1. Burn only dry wood, and use hot/quick burning wood to start the fire when possible (skip the oak, grab the pine or birch or poplar). Load in the harder woods after you have a bed of very hot coals.
2. Start the fire top-down. Larger splits on the bottom, smaller near the top, and keep a spot at the top for your firestarter and kindling. I usually pack a cold start right to the top, or very near it. Within 10 minutes or so, it compresses enough to give you a few inches of space for secondaries.
3. Light the kindling and leave the door ajar...handle resting on the stopper. When kindling is sufficiently lit, close the door.
4. I close the bypass when the cat probe is at 800 or higher. No need to worry about it if it goes higher than that. 600 is borderline too cool. I leave the air open fully.
5. I start to close the air as the surface and probe temps climb, making slow adjustments about 1/4 at a time. When the probe hits about 1200 and the STT is at about 450, I move the air level to 1 small notch over the first big notch. The fire will usually hum along in this position for many hours. If I'm going to bed, I'll usually knock it down to 1 notch under the first big notch. This is "overnight cruise" mode, and I'll have lots of good coals to work with in the AM...about 9-10 hours later. No soot on the glass, save for the lower left corner which tends to get a light brown haze.

Of course, your results will vary with wood, dryness, draft, and a few other factors. This is what I do, and it works predictably well for me!

 

^^^^^ That is fairly similar to what works for me when it is cold out. As the temps climb into the 20's or higher, the IS will start to put out too much heat running like that. Then my choices are put in less fuel and keep the air open the same or more, or put in a full load and dial back the air control and accept the glass getting black. This is also with very dry wood or even compressed fiber blocks which are super dry.

 

Thank you guys for all the help, I’m finally getting the hang of it!!! I’ve been letting the wood catch fully and somewhat ignoring the cat probe temp before I close the bypass. Closing it around 800-900 with a fully engulfed load is working wonders! The cat lights off better and no more black glass! Cat probe will hit 1350-1400 at the peak of the burn for about an hour but mainly stays around 1200 for most of the burn. It’s still very mild here with temps in the 30’s to 40’s so don’t need much heat but I’ve been doing 1/2 to 3/4 loads and settling it down to the first big notch and it cruises perfectly for 12-14 hours!!! Clean glass, awesome secondaries and PLENTY of heat! With my old stove I’d normally do a morning and evening fire about 3/4 full to keep the house temps up but I’m finding that is too much with the IS. House was in the 80’s all day today so I’m just going to do one fire a day unless it gets colder out.

 

After having the stairwell ripped out and a new one roughed- in, I have been running my I.S. for a couple of weeks without the thermocouple readout and so no temp. feedback from any part of the stove. It was like being a cave man! I had to run the stove like my ancestors did (and like I did up until a few years ago ) and it was terrible!

But seriously, it is amazing how fast we get used to doing things the new way and suddenly the old way is not only unpleasant, it seems intolerable and inhumane. I have been buring wood for heat for 50 years and suddenly, I am stymied as to what to do and when to do it without electronic feedback. I guess it would be like losing the remote control to the TV..... mass suicides would result from just the thought of having to get up and walk ALL THE WAY to the TV to adjust it or change channels. Shiver me timbers, that thought kinda' scared me a little. and

Finally got display / recorder back so now I can burn wood like a regular human.

Brian

 

Ok but in March with that stove colder out will probably be November. glad you figured it out.

 

OH the humanity!!!

Glad you survived the ordeal, and now back in the land of the living.

It's kinda funny, the other day a few of us were talking about such things on break, you know, having to go to the TV in order to turn channels, or volume.
Remembering the VHS vs Beta wars, Optical disc machines that took platters the size of LP's, LP's,
Walkman's, it's a wonder humanity has survived those trauma's.

There are plenty of annoying things in the 21st century, but MANY conveniences.
Probably the reason so many petty things are annoying nowadays.

 

Thanks, it was pretty close to unendurable....

But seriously, the stove is pretty easy to run, and I did not really have trouble. Just open the draft and damper, start the fire and wait until the firebox is well- engaged, then close the bypass, and once the firebox is again well engaged (it will die down a bit when closing the bypass), just set the draft and damper to "low" and move along. I am sure it was not as efficient as actually watching the various temperatures but it certainly works and is safe of course. Besides that, the I.S. has a very low stack temp. for the size of the fire, especially so with the bypass closed, so over- firing the chimney is really not very likely. In fact, when actually watching the temperatures, I always find it amazing how hard I have to run the stove to get the internal smoke pipe temps. over 750F. I 'alarm' at 750F and have never gone above 800F under any circumstances, so that keeps me on the safer side for starting a chimney fire; not immune but far less likely than stack temps. of over 1,000F as all my old stoves LOVED to reach in a matter of minutes.

OFFTOPIC: I was watching an episode of 'The Twilight Zone' a few days ago and the scene was a small neighborhood with people walking around, talking and so forth. And it really struck me how very different today's world is from that world (not all that long before my own time really): you could scratch your butt or just walk along without being recorded, actually had to interact with real, live, in- person humans to have any kind of exchange with them, and could have a certain anonymity and just sort of 'blend in' with everyone else at the mall, the airport (where you could board an airplane with a rifle and a chainsaw, as long as it was not running of course ). Now of course I was watching that digitized episode of that TV show that was being sent to me from my Internet carrier, on my digital TV w/ sound system so I really do understand that things are better today and overall, I like the way it is much more than the way it was. But there was a certain innocence that I think was lost, and it continues to get worse with each passing year I think. OK, off soapbox, back to burning wood!

Brian

 

X2 ^^^^

I never for a second thought you were having trouble managing the stove.

With the relatively inexpensive tech gadgets of today, we can not only automate and manage systems better and more efficiently, but it costs much less to do it today than it would have cost only 20 years ago.

I have read that 'way back' in the day London was often covered in soot from all the coal and woodburning. Now.. they could not have dreamed of the efficiency and clean burning woodstoves of today.

I get the fact that the Gov't over-regulates quite often, but can one honestly say that the advances in these stoves would have been made without the EPA regulations??

Why would a company go through the cost of R&D to build/create these stoves if there was no need to, and likely no market that would cover the costs of the R&D, as well as production costs??

I for one am happy with my stove.

Next..

 

I don’t need too many gadgets to run the IS. Heck, I haven’t even found my four channel digital logger in months. I did add a simple Condor cat probe this year and that gives me all the info I need and then some.

I know it isn’t super accurate, but it doesn’t need to be. I just let the temp hit “the range” and then I dial back the airflow. All I do after that is check to see the trend. If the probe temp keeps going up, all is good, check back in 6-12 hours.

 

I find the cat probe to be the go to when it comes to running the stove. I never look at surface temp or the probe in the double wall pipe

 

I agree that the stove pipe probe doesn’t tell me anything useful under normal conditions. The stove top thermometer on the other hand is a pretty good predictor of future room temps and family member complaints.

 

Yea with the way this spring is looking it will be next burning season before I get to see what this stove can really do. I’m extremely impressed with it still and it definetly puts out more heat than my IR did.

 

I’ve found the double wall flue probe and my cat probe to be my go to for temp ranges. Starting from a cold stove or reloading I can go almost completely by the flue probe until I close the bypass, then I go by the STT and cat probe to control what kind of fire I have. It’s amazing just how responses the IS is and how controllable it is too. Woodstock sure knows what they are doing

 

I haven't visited the forums in a while! Unfortunately my cat seems to be underperforming. For those of you that have had the stove a few years how is your cat doing?
Mine seemed to be really underperforming at the end of season 2 (I did try and spray it with vinegar solution earlier I season 2, that helped a little but not for long). So this winter which is my third season I delayed starting the stove until I did a boil, and it took me into December I think before I got a big enough pan and vinegar and the time to do it. That really did seem to wake it back up, but still not as good as new, but ok. Now, 3 months later it is getting really sluggish again. I'm seeing a little smoke when I shouldn't. Cat isn't holding temp, if I cut the air back much when under 900-1000º on the cat probe it just falls off and dies down. Just doesn't seem to be putting out the heat after a full load, waking up in the morning on milder days above freezing and the house is low and mid 60's lately. Guess I could try another vinegar boil if we get a mild day.