Did I kill my cat

Seems doubtful that you would ruin a cat that quickly. If I recall correctly, you can access the cat pretty easily on the keystone. Check it out and see if it shows any sign of damage or if it is clogged with ash.

Do you have a cat probe?

The cat does not have to be glowing to be active. Real test is to go outside and look at whats coming out of the chimney. If you little to no smoke you are fine.

Try bigger loads and more air to see if its makes a difference what stove-top temps you can achieve. One of our resident woodstock experts will be along with more specific suggestions.

IF you are getting good heat and no smoke then most likely you are doing fine. The cat does NOT have to glow to be active (I do believe that is even written in the manual, heh).

A dead cat (or badly injured one) will stall easily - meaning you will not get the heat out of it and you will see considerably more smoke.

You mention cruising at 400 - how is your burn time compared to your expected given your wood load etc?

i seem to be having the same issue my cat will glow for maybe 45 mins go dark and cant seem to get much anything above 450 and itll stay there for maybe 45 minutes to an hour. i think my cat is dead though. although i seem to have excellent draft i can open the door with the cat engaged and get no smoke i havent had any smoke spill into the room so im thinking maybe too much draft and dead cat for me. i havent used a cat stove before this so i dont know. i have a firebox full of coals that dont like to burn down much and my stove top temp seems to drop even with a very nice coal bed. im thinking it might be going up the stack.

The new SS cats are "Hyperactive" for a while after you first use them, then settle down and need higher light off temps. I could engage at 200F with mine at first, and later I was engaging above 250F to get lightoff.

You say you engage at 300F, that should be plenty high enough. I notice I tend to get higher stovetop temps when it gets colder, because the draft improves. Were you engaging with higher outdoor temps when you had problems?

jrendfrey said:

i seem to be having the same issue my cat will glow for maybe 45 mins go dark and cant seem to get much anything above 450 and itll stay there for maybe 45 minutes to an hour. i think my cat is dead though. although i seem to have excellent draft i can open the door with the cat engaged and get no smoke i havent had any smoke spill into the room so im thinking maybe too much draft and dead cat for me. i havent used a cat stove before this so i dont know. i have a firebox full of coals that dont like to burn down much and my stove top temp seems to drop even with a very nice coal bed. im thinking it might be going up the stack.

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I don't know what opening the door with the cat engaged is supposed to prove... Can you explain?

Coals don't make much smoke to feed the cat. If you have a large bed of coals to burn down the stovetop temp will fall as the cat doesn't have a lot to do, but if you give those coals some air they will heat up and the bottom of the stove will get hot. Now the question is why do you have a firebox full of coals? Generally this comes from reloading very frequently which could be a sign of either a stove that is being pushed or (more common) wood that is not really as dry as it should be.

Hard to believe you could kill a cat in a couple weeks no matter how abusive (unless it got contaminated by burning something like painted wood).

The only other thing I can think of is split size. Smaller splits outgas more, and will tend to feed the cat with more smoke all at once than larger splits will.

I know when my cat gasket went bad after 2 years I had similar probs.

HotCoals said:

I know when my cat gasket went bad after 2 years I had similar probs.

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Seems doubtful on a new stove, unless they gasket was put on incorrectly. The Keystone has some gasket materials around the cat or the housing, right?

BrowningBAR said:

Seems doubtful on a new stove, unless they gasket was put on incorrectly. The Keystone has some gasket materials around the cat or the housing, right?

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I have no idea..but I would think so.
Just a thought ,probably not the prob.
Just saying on mine the diff with a new gasket was huge.

BrowningBAR said:

Seems doubtful on a new stove, unless they gasket was put on incorrectly. The Keystone has some gasket materials around the cat or the housing, right?

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Interam gasket around the cat, rope gasket that the cat housing sits on.

I doubt your cat is dead. If you filled the box full with 3-4 splits they are too large, try smaller splits so you can fill it full with 4-6 splits, this will get the stove much hotter and it won't effect your burn times. Also no need to wait til 300 to engage, you may have just wasted fuel waiting that long. According to my cat probe a 200 stove top has the cat well into the light off range, the stone lags way behind actual cat temps. Try engaging a little sooner at about 1.5 air setting and let it burn there for 15 minutes before turning it down for a lower burn.

jrendfrey said:

i seem to be having the same issue my cat will glow for maybe 45 mins go dark and cant seem to get much anything above 450 and itll stay there for maybe 45 minutes to an hour. i think my cat is dead though. although i seem to have excellent draft i can open the door with the cat engaged and get no smoke i havent had any smoke spill into the room so im thinking maybe too much draft and dead cat for me. i havent used a cat stove before this so i dont know. i have a firebox full of coals that dont like to burn down much and my stove top temp seems to drop even with a very nice coal bed. im thinking it might be going up the stack.

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If your having excessive coaling issues I doubt your draft is too strong. Lots of coals will also keep you from filling the fire box to capacity. This stove has a small box and the coals need to be burnt down in order to fill it up full and maintain those higher stove temps. Try burning hotter with smaller splits.

How old is your cat? Is it the newer steel or ceramic?

bad69bird said:

No cat prob just stove top one that Woodstock supplies. They rec 250 I've been trying to wait till 300 to engage

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There is no good reason to wait until 300 to engage the cat. You are just wasting wood with heat going straight up the chimney. And I agree, I doubt you would ruin a cat that fast. They do not have to show red as they will still be working even if not glowing. The stove top temperature can tell you that.

Not sure how you are handling the draft but on reloads, set the bypass and set the draft at full open. Depending upon the fire (that is because that depends upon your fuel), it might take 10-15 minutes to get the wood charred, then engage the cat and turn the draft down. You might at first try turning it down to 1.5 or even 2. If after a few minutes the fire is still raging, then turn it down to 1 or 1.25 and then watch the flame. If the flame wants to disappear, give it some more air.

As for checking the smoke out of the chimney, do that during the daylight hours. Naturally on reloads you will get smoke until you engage the cat. Then you might get a little white for a short distance out of the chimney but that would be just condensation. If you get smoke and it lingers a long time, then that for sure is smoke.

So let's ask the obvious question: What is your wood like? By that, I am not asking about that 19% you quoted. When was that wood split and how and where was it stacked?

jrendfrey said:

i seem to be having the same issue my cat will glow for maybe 45 mins go dark and cant seem to get much anything above 450 and itll stay there for maybe 45 minutes to an hour. i think my cat is dead though. although i seem to have excellent draft i can open the door with the cat engaged and get no smoke i havent had any smoke spill into the room so im thinking maybe too much draft and dead cat for me. i havent used a cat stove before this so i dont know. i have a firebox full of coals that dont like to burn down much and my stove top temp seems to drop even with a very nice coal bed. im thinking it might be going up the stack.

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Too many coals can be a sign the wood is not dry enough. However, we had the problem of too many coals when we first got our Fireview. I could not seem to find any decent answers so I experimented. I found (this is when heating full time) that just before the fire got to all coals, we would open the draft full. This would maintain the stove temperature and burn down the coals nicely. Then put in more wood and enjoy the heat. I've never found a better answer but for sure there are folks out there who have excessive coaling and that definitely can be caused by wood not dry enough. Usually those coals are large coals also.

bad69bird said:

Would was stacked and split early october 2011, not in the most ideal spot, I would say sun 50-60% of the day. Ive only been burning for three years fulltime now. i get a little further ahead every year on wood supply and I am years ahead in cut wood, but not years ahead on split stacked wood

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With 18% mc wood, I get a little hissing after the wood starts burning. Not bubbling out the ends of the split, but I think there's still enough moisture in it to slow down the burn which decreases heat output. You can heat with it but it could be better. But hey, 450 stove top isn't too shabby...

fire_man said:

The new SS cats are "Hyperactive" for a while after you first use them, then settle down and need higher light off temps. I could engage at 200F with mine at first, and later I was engaging above 250F to get lightoff.

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Yes, there's that, and there is also the fact that the stainless cat was "improved" for this fall. There were, um, issues with the first batch *cough*defective*cough*. I and several well-known Woodstock burners with years of experience and dry wood had problems last season with the new steel cats and sent them in for testing. I called Woodstock in August to see where they were on this. They told me that the structure of the cat did not allow for even flow and that a new batch was being made with a more, um, uniform(?) construction technique like used in the cat for the Progress to promote better flow.

I got an e-mail a few weeks later saying that the new cats were in, if I would like to order one. I get the new cat, and it looks exactly like the old cat, like it's made by rolling up a sheet of the stuff and then squishing it into a rectangle. So, I call, and I'm told that the new cats are constructed the same way, just with a different wash coat and different/better braising, and the appearance is identical. I have not yet fired up he stove this season, so I can't comment on the performance of the new cat.

If you got your stove before September, and it has a steel cat, it is probably NOT the "improved" cat.
[Edit: Only Fireview cats have been revised, not Keystone cats.]

It would be nice if someone from Woodstock would post a definitive position on this cat issue.

I also asked about gasket issues with the steel cats, because my gasket was disintegrating, even though I had not removed the cat from the frame since installing it. I was told that the interam gasket would probably need replacement every year and to wrap it around the cat 1.5 times.

p.s. See
WWW.hearth.com/talk/threads/calling-in-the-warranty-on-woodstock-steel-cat.83015/

If the new steel cat is identical to the old one and not layered like the PH, IMO they will have the same issues because the flow will be concentrated to the center where the larger cells are located. I'm sticking with the ceramic cat, burns hotter for longer.

its been awhile since i've been in this part of the forum....and the title really had me worried. i had visions of baked feline not a glowing catalytic .....must say i was relieved, not that i like cats, but i agree, probably not likely you killed it after only a couple of weeks. however, if you were burning a lot of green wood, you might have clogged it a bit.

cass