Production Woodstock IS

This morning I hit 650F stove top temps trying to recover the house. It went to 1.5F last night and of course the oil boiler shut down at some point. Got up this AM and the living room was 70F (not bad at all!) but the bedroom in the corner of the house was down to 55F. Kinda' brisk. So I restarted the boiler and filled the stove and gave it some air. The boiler was a while taking the DHW tank up to temp. so I really had to use the I.S. for heat. Did not reach 700 F on the stove top but close- I think this is the hardest I have ever had this stove, at least sustained temps. The entire fuel load was orange and I could not look into the stove while re-loading it. Yep, I had to look at the reflection in my shield. Really just a lot of squinting and pretty quick on the reload.

And for dessert, my wife's car would not start. Kinda' a cloud of failure around here right at the moment and I would be ascairt to give anything that lives here a pregnancy test right at the moment.

Brian (I really doubt I am pregnant though)

 

Brian,

I am no doctor, but I am pretty sure it is EXTREMELY rare for a man your age to end up pregnant!

 

Yep those Adirondacks, I love it there! But yeah I know what you mean, I think. My other choice might be out west but I really don't want to move away from my family. My Ideal Steel is even Adirondack themed.

 

Exactly my point- I am avoiding taking even one of those tests. Especially after the boiler was cold again this AM!

Brian

 

Good morning, IS fans!

Our IS has been an amazing stove. I love everything about it, except for the smoke spillage on re-load (in all conditions except those where I have about 2" of red-hot coals and there really isn't smoke to spill). I'm still baffled by this. I see others can open their doors 100% for pictures, and apparently they aren't filling the house with smoke? I get excellent draft 99.9% of the time, and I now have the OAK hooked up so I know there is plenty of available air. Some days the atmosphere just isn't working in the right direction, and some pre-fire flue warming is necessary. This is very rare for my setup.

Because I have to use double-wall pipe in my setup (clearances), I can't use a pipe-attached draft inducer. Chimney-top inducers are nice, but super expensive (unless one of you knows of a relatively affordable option that would work when it's -40F?).

So, I live with it, and do my best to load as frantically as possible to minimize smoke.

Here's a question...does it make sense to shut the air completely to re-load? Since the door is open anyway, maybe it doesn't matter. Last year, I would OPEN the air completely for awhile before opening the door. It basically had no effect on smoke spillage. Now I'm thinking that closing the air once the door is open would at least mean the air entering the stove is mostly through the door opening, and not also through the primary/secondary/tertiary inlets. Early testing shows no difference.

Anyone else figure out a way to stop the smoke spill?

Thanks!
Q

 

Smoke spillage, calling BDF .. I can control mine by opening draft full waiting 5 minutes loading fast and shutting door. When I'm not here wife and daughter not so much .Summer improvement.

 

Yeah but he says he cannot use a draft inducer because he has a double- walled smoke pipe. I honestly do not know whether it would work anyway although the outer pipe would probably hold enough heat inside and heat up the inducer such that it might be damaged. ?? I would have to try it for myself to really know.

I believe a custom piece of stove pipe could be made where the second (outer) pipe is notched into and sealed against the inner pipe, thereby creating a surface for the draft inducer in a double- walled stove pipe.

But as I have said before, there is no reason in the world to expect to open a huge hole in the front of any wood stove and have all that incoming air, along with the smoke and ash from the fire, jump up into such a small airway (the flue). At a wild guess, the door is what- 170, 180 sq. in.? And a six inch flue is just under 30 sq. in. Some chimneys draft very well but to expect enough draw to drag all that air up the chimney seems a bit unreasonable to me. It may well work for some people / some flues and some wood stoves but I have never seen one in person At least not a modern, front- door loading wood stove; older type pot belly stoves will run cleanly with the loading door open but the door is not much bigger than the flue area. That is why the I.S. and other stoves have a 'smoke damper' on them, to lessen this problem but it is not sufficient in my experience.

It is unfortunate that outside draft inducers are so expensive both to purchase as well as to install. That of course is the best way to go, not 'ugly' and not intrusive in the space where the stove is. An in- line draft inducer is really a 'band- aid' that works pretty well but is an inelegant solution. That said, I will not own a wood stove without one in the future 'cause they really, really are a great addition to a wood stove and eliminate the problem of smoke and ash spilling out of the stove.

Brian

 

Vermont? New Hampshire? Switzerland? Argentina?

 

There is one and only one thing that causes smoke spillage on our stove. That is if I or the wife forget to open the flue damper before opening the door.

Otherwise, I could leave the door open as long as I want. I actually have left it wide open long enough for the glass to cool a bit and for me to then clean the glass, so I would guess 30 minutes or more. And that’s with the little flap at the top in the permanently latched up mode. Sure the door area is larger than the flue, but that just means the flow velocity is lower, it doesn’t necessarily impact direction.

The OAK will help with any pressure issues with the door closed, but if your house pressure is lower, as soon as you open the door, it will suck smoke in. Try cracking a window on the upwind side of the house before opening the stove. It is not ideal but should rule out any negative pressure issues. If that doesn’t fix it, you have a weak draft.

 

We get a little smoke spillage at times, but mostly when we're being impatient. Our typical process is to open draft and raise cat, wait about 30sec, open door to the latches position, wait another 30sec to 1m, then open door fully to rake and load. If it's a little smoky, I'll drop the smoke flap, but usually it's not necessary. Setup is rear vent double wall to 20' or so of class a outside with a 30 to clear the roof overhang.

 

That's how we run it in the negative temps here, too! Halfway between first and second big notch on a full load seems to do the trick. Aggressive secondaries and cat at full bore. Sure does recover the house fast, too.

 

Do your stove have a short chimney ?

 

Not especially. 3’ out the back of the IS, then about 23-24 feet straight up. I’m telling you the draft is good, as I never struggle to light a fire, and I can damp the air down to 1/4 open or less, regularly.

There are several sections of double wall pipe, however, and I do hear whistling at the joints once the fire is underway.

 

Yep, i thought that also...till the incident.
Ramifications of burning with door open?

 

OK! Luckily, “as long as I want” is not usually very long, and not quite long enough to kill the entire household.

 

Wow what an amazing turn around of temps! Went from running the IS hard - half full of Envirobricks, struggling to keep the house at 60 to come home from work at the house is 81 lol, and ran no heat yesterday. Maybe ought to pull the combustor and clean today or tomorrow while the weather is still mild. Mine is on its last leg I think, 4th burn season. Thought the aging combustor was the cause of most of my poor heating woes lately, but I think my wood is just too high of moisture after record rain & humidity last year and I never got my wood under cover. It was very difficult to get the cat probe close to 1,000 never really got it higher than that this year. But as soon as I mixed in a package or two of Envirobricks the probe hit 1200 easy. I ought to do a test, maybe a low and slow cat-only burn would be a good test? I haven't really attempted cat-only this year.

On a positive note I found a very cheap supplier of Envirobricks, unfortunately he's out this time around but maybe I can store a ton or two from him in the future. Half the price of TSC! I can't believe how much TSC must mark up things wow.

Well my plans are NY, so first would be the reasons why you think to look elsewhere, and if those reasons pertain to me. I do love the times I've spent in NH, I've climbed maybe half of the high peaks their. The Presidents Range was fantastic, though crowded. Vermont I'm not so thrilled about, beautiful countryside but to get some nice views hiking I'd have to travel to NY or NH. When I started contemplating my future move I did consider NH, but was talked out of it for reasons I can't clearly remember(it was a few years ago I started on this)... I think taxes and building codes (though NY isn't much different). There are towns there that apparently don't enforce codes but they are far and few between and who knows by the time I finally start building if they may enforce things. But the reality is it might just be too far away anyhow. I'm in central Ohio and can travel 'home' to NY in about 7-8 hours and be in the mountains in another couple. I spend a lot of time there, and can make the trip with my son in a day with time to spare for other activities, dinner, etc. And my future homestead would be close enough for my folks to visit and my dad to hunt with me - his health isn't so good and can't really hunt on his own anymore. But there is no way he would travel all the way to NH to go hunting. And just picking a random NH spot shows 13 hours drive time and thats sticking to I90 which means I couldn't even visit my folks without adding hours. While I can swing 7-8 hours without batting an eye, 13+ starts to get into the pain in the azz distance to drive every couple months, especially with my son. But since I really do like it there I just did a search on landandfarm using my usual search criteria, I'm looking for 30-35 acres minimum, ideally ~50 or so, and max around $60k (I'm stubborn and don't want a loan, I'm trying to do this all frugal right from the start paying cash for everything). Unfortunately I checked about 3 counties in NH and only had hits on 1-2 places per county none of which are acceptable. However I have literally dozens per each county I am considering in NY, and a few even have cheap taxes. Since this will be an attempt at being a super frugal homestead I'm wanting the raw land to be under $1k in taxes if possible, the aforementioned site full of red pine in NY is under 1 grand for county, town, and school taxes. And with mountain views, no possibility of having a neighbor within sight, a nice several acre meadow for my gardens and orchards, Its about perfect minus the pine. I've also got my eyes on another 50ish acre parcel, with nice views from atop a hill (but not mountains) full of hardwoods for cheaper yet (taxes too). Problem there is it is full of hardwoods... I mean 100% wooded, I'd have to clear everything. Which might not be so bad, except I do want a few acres fully cleared for gardens & orchards and maybe even more for future side income growing grapes or hops or something like that. Turning solid woods into tillable garden land sounds like an almost impossible feat, unless maybe you know someone with some heavy equipment like a bulldozer. I don't know how feasible gardens & orchards would be without ripping out roots and all, maybe there is an easier way. Anyhow, this is starting to get off the beaten path lol.

 

Since we're both in Ohio and burning bricks from TSC... who's your cheap supplier

 

So far any of the retailers listed on their website have been significantly cheaper than TSC. Dealer Locator | Enviro-Brick
TSC wants like over $300 last I checked. 2 years ago I got them for $220 @ ASE Feed & Supply LLC (plain city). Just last week $225 @ Elzy Milling & Trade, Ltd in Bellville. The real cheap one was Miller's Country Surplus in Fredericktown, $175 and he didn't know when he'd have any back but he was trying to get some (unfortunately no phone, so might be a long ways for you to go without knowing).

 

Wow, I feel dumb. We just bought out 2 TSC stores a week ago. 24 packs at the close store for $3.99-10% and then 23 packs way up in Delaware for $3.99. ASE Feed is at $200 for a whole dammed pallet, or about half what I paid a week ago