Production Woodstock IS

shhhhh...

 

...that's funny...that's the same sound the stove makes when you lift the lid and hear the exhaust making it's way through the cat!.......

 

I couldn't agree more about having a wood burning stove cat-probe-ready. But I'll tell ya Darrin - I can accept this minor probe detail. After stayin' home with the IS four days this past holiday week and getting my "burn-legs" with it - I'm even more impressed than I already was. The darn thing just jumped-to-life in the early morning-"hot" burn with just a few limb pieces/splits, getting the front thermometer quickly up to 700* then oozed gentle heat from the prior overnight/early morning hot-burn when the sun was out heating the house a bit - amazing control and steady indoor temps! Bolts like a stallion and cruises like a Tennessee-walker.

Considering your suggestion for improvement: WS could easily come up with a fix and include it on the next production run. Heck - ya never know, they might even offer a retro-fix for us intrepid first-run owners!

 

Gark, I'm curious to know more about your saying "These EPA stoves are meant to burn a complete load before a reload, not to be added to in the middle of a cycle." As someone who is new to wood burning, let alone with a hybrid stove, I don't understand what those reasons might be. To me burning my IS so far, it sometimes seems very useful 2/3s of a way through a long cat burn to disengage the cat, open up the stove and add some more wood. This has been particularly important when it is really cold outside and I wake up in the middle of the night to find I'm close to out of fuel. I want the stove to be hot when I wake up in the morning, so I throw on more splits. Should I not be doing this? Would it be better to start with a larger load of fuel and just open up the air rather than adding more fuel?

 

The idea behind the IS is being able to run it foe a long time without having to tend to it. Load it up in the evening get it hot and shut it down. Shouldn't need a reload in the middle of the night. I've been running one fire per day. Just over night. Shut it down at 7:30-8:00pm and I still have around 150-200 surface temp at 9:00 am.

 

Not knowing exactly what you have for a set-up, I would think you could install a piece of single- wall exhaust pipe at least 18" long into the stove collar, with the draft inducer installed in that piece of smoke pipe, and then go to double wall for the remainder of the run. ??

Again, as I have said before, I do not blame any manufacturer for this situation; I think it is asking far too much to open a big hole in the side of a firebox (the front door(s)) and not expect to get some smoke in the house. The draft inducer is certainly not perfect and in a better world would not be needed but it certainly did work for me in the way of a 'shotgun' fix; not the most elegant or precise but it IS functional.

One of the main attractions for me regarding the P.H. over the I.S. was the much smaller door on the stove. That too has its own downsides when it comes to cleaning the glass, and perhaps loading heavy splits; again there are trade- offs with most everything.

On a very different note: another possible thing that might help would be to make a skirt to fill up the first, say, five inches of stove opening from the bottom. This would greatly reduce the square area of the opening in the stove. If you want to give it a try, a piece of 1/8" or 3/16" thick steel with four small tabs fastened to it (welded, screwed on with flat head fasteners, and similar methods) would be a reasonable way to try and reduce the smoke spillage into the room I think.

Brian

 

Of course I am not speaking for Gark but without knowing your personal situation (house size, draftiness, age, etc. as well as the outside temps.) I would think you could get an overnight burn from the I.S. easily with hard wood. By overnight I mean a full eight hours, although more like 10 hours would be expected and reasonble IMO.

Nothing wrong with loading the stove whenever you want and I would not call it right or wrong to do it that way. But I think it is a lot easier to fully load a stove a while before going to bed so that fresh load can catch and stabilize a bit, set the draft for the night and have the stove carry your house for 10 hours than it is to get out of bed to tend the stove. After all, machinery should serve us, not the other way around....

Brian

 

I add wood when needed to keep the heat up to where I want it. It certainly can burn all night with out a reload, and I personally have not added wood in the middle of the night, but I do add wood during the day to keep the cat fed.

I also cant keep myself from playing with the stove just yet so I enjoy adding wood during the day to see how the stove takes off.

 

Yeah well, which of us is not in that boat? I mean there is the raking of the coals, the cleaning of the glass, the twiddling with the draft; no 8 year old kid had more fun with his new train set than I am having with this stove.... and I am old enough to have 8 year old grand kids.... And if everyone else was honest, who does not go chasing that ethereal, magical blue flame (not the violet one but the deep blue) that appears and dances around inside the stove. I count myself lucky that Woodstock actually sells these things outright rather than charging me a rental fee every time I touched or watch the stove- I'd be broke by now.

I guess the really good news is that when the newness wears off, I think it will still be an excellent work- horse of a wood burner. Sorry, gotta' go- I think the stove is calling me....

Brian

 

I got the new Ideal Steel, stainless steel liner, built a hearth, insulated the basement where it sits, air sealed and insulated the attic, and insulated the garage ceiling under the bedrooms all in the last 4 months. Heating about 1800 Sq ft.

On a 20 degree day I could heat the whole house just by tending the coals until a reload was necessary. I easily cut my wood usage in half. I only throw a couple medium splits in overnight and wake up to 72 degrees or higher upstairs. If you don't insulate your house there's no way you can run this stove on a long slow burn. With proper insulation, heating with this stove is a piece of cake.

 

I could be wrong. My thinking is based on many posts in many places over years. The user manual for my previous stove (VC 2550 cat) said to burn a whole load until coals are down to 2-3 inches, then reload. That manual even said not to reload until the stove was down to about 250f. or less. A cat combustor takes a bit of time to come up to temp - reloading midstream makes the cat start over. Posts abound from burners getting a huge pile of coals in the stove so big there's hardly room for fresh splits - the fix is to burn down the coals more before reloading. The splits will still smoke if the door is opened before all the lignins are outgassed from the wood and that smoke can leak out the door. A bed of coals gone past flame stage is made mostly of carbon and hardly smokes at all. My habit to burn complete loads through a whole cycle until nothing but 3" of flameless coals (then reload) works here because our house retains enough heat through the relatively cool coaling phase of the burn cycle.
And I am a cheapskate, seems that not reloading wood mid-cycle will use less wood over time. Anyhoo, that's my thinking on whole cycle burning. We do time burns (shorter= less wood, longer=more wood) to our work & sleep schedule.
IS Obsessed, I don't think your "refresh" reloads are wrong at all, won't hurt anything. I can't find any references that back up my statement of "whole burn cycles".

 

I've read that's its OK to reload midstream and as long as the cat is still active there's no need to keep the stove in bypass mode, you can reengage right away. I think I read this in the Applied Ceramic cat blog.

I did this yesterday because I had a strong east wind blowing against my mostly windows side of the house. My morning load wasn't cutting it and house temps were dropping. I reloaded with a 450 stove top, engaged right away, burned hot and the house temps began to climb.

 

Thanks for all your responses. Our house is an underinsulated 1850s farm house, so when it's in the low 20s or teens outside the IS needs to be cranking out the heat. that's why I've found it necessary to sometimes add wood in the middle of a burn. Still lots of learning to be done. My glass cleared up nicely following the recommendations of those of you on this thread.

 

Well this is a new one. Stove is full with the stovetop sitting at 550F. The only flames are rolling secondaries completly BEHIND the cat! It's been going like this for over 1/2 hour now.

 

I still have yet to see that on mine. Nice glow in your pic

 

Have not seen that on my own stove but someone else mentioned it I believe. Probably happens when the firebox is well engaged, producing a lot of gas, and the draft is set very low. The only appreciable source of oxygen is the cat. supply (or the 'bell ringer' as we know it ) so the wood gas can only start to burn on its way into the cat.

Nice photo and probably interesting to watch but you're gonna' need some mirrors when company stops by 'cause not everyone can lay in the same place on the floor to watch....

Brian

 

I'm seein' an opportunity here.
Sell "floor time" to watch the ghost flames. Could maybe make 2-3 bucks a month.
Just remember me when all that money starts rollin' in.

 

I have the flames directly in front of the cat almost nightly. This was the first time they were hanging out entirely behind it. First time I ever had any appreciable smoke from my chimney too. After the picture I opened the air control an inch and the secondaries lit immediately and stayed on until I went the bed. I imagine if that sled mechanism was ever going to bind up it would have happened last night!

 

Wow, I am surprised the stove was putting out any smoke with a combustor that hot.... and it was very hot to get the shield that color.

Just curious but which flapper valve are you currently using on the stove- the original ('Old Clanger' as I call it ) or the new, padded one? The reason I ask is that it seems like the new padded one <may> not let as much air in as quickly as the original one did.

Brian

 

Yeah I didn't quite understand it since stove top temps were not very high. Stack temps were hotter than usual with the cat engaged.
I do have the new, felt valve. I must have a hyperactive cat.