My dutch west needs a new combustor ,is the steel better than the ceramic ? I'm leaning towards trying the steel , I'd like to hear what you folks think . I truly value your insight and opinions Thanks, Will
Mixed reviews on them. They tend to light off at a lower heat. They won't crumble like ceramic will. I think they are better but we don't light them off any earlier than we did with the ceramic. We treat them the same.
I have one of each, I like the ceramic a touch better. It has bigger holes & doesn't plug when I burn spruce. Like Dennis said the steel one gets active quicker. It works well Just needs cleaned more often. What kind are you replacing?
Try this place I used them before http://www.condar.com/combustor.html There is a link on this page that gets you to the combustor division.
I had a old CDW and the cats were ceramic and lasted for years. I think I had the stove 23 years and replace the CAT maybe twice. ...and it burned pretty close to 24X7 each winter.I think the built in probe wanted it to be 500 before I engaged the cat.
I got my replacements this season from API or Applied Ceramics which makes Firecat. They have steel and ceramic, but in my size there was no steel made. I went with Firecat because Stohll the new manufacturer of HV stoves uses them as OE. The condar cat will fit better in the housing and I would not need to wrap as much gasket around the cats to get them snug.
We put a steelie in my SIL's Dw 2460 three seasons ago, and it's still working well. I think her probe is shot...never replaced since she got the stove. It only reads about 500 when I can look up through the glass and the baffle, and see the cat glowing orange. I know damm well it's gotta be up around 1ooo, at least.... I've got one for my 2460 but I'm waiting until I rebuild the stove to put it in.
Our 2550 Encore got a new cat this year (after 5 years of inexperienced burning). We stayed with ceramic instead of steel because I heard issues with the sleelies in this model. Rumors of cat clogging, meltdown and refractory damage. The smoke, flame and exhaust path in these 2550's is quite different than most smoke eaters and we stayed with what we knew.
I had a steel combustor on my old Dutchwest and wasn't happy with it. it seemed to be degrading faster than the ceramic ones I had used in the past. After about 1.5 years you could see the honeycomb breaking apart in the center and the steel was very brittle to the point it would break if you were trying to brush it off.
