A Progress Hybrid Long Burn

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Mine has not stayed tight. Good idea to bend it - I'll try to remember next time it is cool enough. I was pleased that despite what appears to be larger openings in the screen that the cat doesn't clog any faster. I noticed a marked difference in wide-open draft with the new screen (compared to a semi-clogged original one). And I saw on the Woodstock web site that they recommend alternating the flow through the cat each time (I was meticulously replacing it the same way each time).
 
Mine does seem pretty tight still. I haven't messed with it, but it looks like it's touching. Mine was pretty darn tight to get on there in the first place though. I had a bit of a time trying to get it up enough to get the pins in.
 
my new screen is very tight, much tighter than the one i had before that kept falling out. it was tight getting the pins in, but it looks like it is there to stay and cleaning will be a breeze. wonder if you couldnt just brush it from below to knock off the particles into the main box. i installed mine a couple weeks ago and have been burning the whole time, wont need to clean but maybe once a month looking like.
 
my new screen is very tight, much tighter than the one i had before that kept falling out. it was tight getting the pins in, but it looks like it is there to stay and cleaning will be a breeze. wonder if you couldnt just brush it from below to knock off the particles into the main box. i installed mine a couple weeks ago and have been burning the whole time, wont need to clean but maybe once a month looking like.

Yeah, I don't see any need to remove it to clean. Maybe at the end of the year, but otherwise brushing from the inside looks easy as pie. I haven't had to clean mine yet either.
 
My new screen is due to arrive soon. Lorin at WS said that it could be cleaned in place and that after a few burns I would likely need to take it off and bend it back into place in the back. I don't quite understand that yet (can't envision what I need to do), but I'm hoping it will be apparent when the time comes.

Just wanted to give other PH owners a heads up, I'm also getting a new cat as my old (only a few weeks old :( ) cat warped due to gasket failure. After I noticed the warpage, I looked at the top of the gasket behind the cat (have to kinda look under the hood/roof of the cat housing) and saw that it was sagging down in the area where the warpage is. The hypothesis is that the gasket failure allowed heat to funnel into one area of the cat, causing the warpage. So, check out your gasket behind the cat when next you clean the cat if you want to avoid this possibility. Trust me, you do want to avoid it :( I will be checking that gasket regularly from now on.
 
Just wanted to give other PH owners a heads up, I'm also getting a new cat as my old (only a few weeks old ) cat warped due to gasket failure. After I noticed the warpage, I looked at the top of the gasket behind the cat (have to kinda look under the hood/roof of the cat housing) and saw that it was sagging down in the area where the warpage is. The hypothesis is that the gasket failure allowed heat to funnel into one area of the cat, causing the warpage. So, check out your gasket behind the cat when next you clean the cat if you want to avoid this possibility. Trust me, you do want to avoid it I will be checking that gasket regularly from now on.

That's interesting. I had the top portion of my gasket fall down last year when I pulled the cat for the second time towards the end of the winter. I cemented it back in place and it has held fine since.

It's an interesting theory about the gasket failure, though I'm not sure I buy it. The cat doesn't exactly snug up against that gasket anyway. That's why they sent us all some rope to shove in the crack between the cat and the housing. But, I suppose if the warpage was right where the gasket sagged that might make sense.

It shouldn't be an issue to bend the screen if you need to. I think it will be apparent as to what to do. Maybe I should check my more closely...
 
Hollow:

Wow - a three week old cat is just a kitten! I agree with Waulie, hard to imagine the bad gasket caused it, but it could be. I will give mine a look. Thanks for the "heads up".
 
I have to get permission from Dennis first before I can burn wood that has not been seasoned for 3 years!:eek:

Okay. Give it a try Tony. ;lol
 
I wont tell if you don't. ::P

Beech should be ok in a year. Maybe not perfect, but certainly burnable.

Better to aim for perfect... ;)
 
My new screen is due to arrive soon. Lorin at WS said that it could be cleaned in place and that after a few burns I would likely need to take it off and bend it back into place in the back. I don't quite understand that yet (can't envision what I need to do), but I'm hoping it will be apparent when the time comes.

Just wanted to give other PH owners a heads up, I'm also getting a new cat as my old (only a few weeks old :( ) cat warped due to gasket failure. After I noticed the warpage, I looked at the top of the gasket behind the cat (have to kinda look under the hood/roof of the cat housing) and saw that it was sagging down in the area where the warpage is. The hypothesis is that the gasket failure allowed heat to funnel into one area of the cat, causing the warpage. So, check out your gasket behind the cat when next you clean the cat if you want to avoid this possibility. Trust me, you do want to avoid it :( I will be checking that gasket regularly from now on.

The new screen took a little persuasion, pressing upward to get the clips through the holes, but was very straight-forward to install. Very little accumulates on it, but I have brushed it off a couple of times. As I noted elsewhere, I'm happy to not see faster accumulation on the entrance to the cat.

My cat gasket has begun to droop, too. I haven't been concerned about repairing it, but guess I should re-evaluate. When I got my new cooktop they provided a new gasket to go under it, as well as a tube of cement, at no cost (has anyone mentioned their great customer service??). I looked at the tube, looked at the existing top gasket, and decided to try the original first. We are a couple of months into using the new top on the original gasket with no issue. I'm thinking that once I open the tube of cement I should do both the top gasket and the cat gasket. Should I re-adhere the cat gasket or put on a new one? The thinner gasket material to put around the cat once installed is becoming fragile and breaking into short sections, which makes me wonder if the rear (upstream) cat gasket should be replaced.
 
That's interesting. I had the top portion of my gasket fall down last year when I pulled the cat for the second time towards the end of the winter. I cemented it back in place and it has held fine since.

It's an interesting theory about the gasket failure, though I'm not sure I buy it. The cat doesn't exactly snug up against that gasket anyway. That's why they sent us all some rope to shove in the crack between the cat and the housing. But, I suppose if the warpage was right where the gasket sagged that might make sense.

It shouldn't be an issue to bend the screen if you need to. I think it will be apparent as to what to do. Maybe I should check my more closely...

I very rarely post here, but do read the threads regularly.

My wife and I had the same sagging gasket issue with our Progress; I found it this past Saturday when checking the cat for the first time after a month of burning. Lorin at Woodstock is sending replacement gasket and cement.

In the meantime, I replaced the entire gasket in back of the cat and the gasket that is "dry installed" around the cat (it was crumbling) with material sourced at a local hardware store. I've actually been able to get a couple of burns without the secondaries firing off since the replacements.

This stove is a beast! It heats our house with ease and we look forward to the true cold weather that taxed our Keystone beyond its design capabilites. The Fireview would have heated our space more efficiently than the Keystone but, with apologies to all the happy Fireview owners out there, it just was not to our liking style wise. After having to load the Keystone frequently to maintain comfortable temperatures, loading the Progress at 4AM and again at 7PM is a pleasure.
 
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The new screen took a little persuasion, pressing upward to get the clips through the holes, but was very straight-forward to install. Very little accumulates on it, but I have brushed it off a couple of times. As I noted elsewhere, I'm happy to not see faster accumulation on the entrance to the cat.

My cat gasket has begun to droop, too. I haven't been concerned about repairing it, but guess I should re-evaluate. When I got my new cooktop they provided a new gasket to go under it, as well as a tube of cement, at no cost (has anyone mentioned their great customer service??). I looked at the tube, looked at the existing top gasket, and decided to try the original first. We are a couple of months into using the new top on the original gasket with no issue. I'm thinking that once I open the tube of cement I should do both the top gasket and the cat gasket. Should I re-adhere the cat gasket or put on a new one? The thinner gasket material to put around the cat once installed is becoming fragile and breaking into short sections, which makes me wonder if the rear (upstream) cat gasket should be replaced.

They told me to use gasket glue on the cat gasket. My front cat gasket disintegrated into short sections, too. Boy, I've sure got religion about maintaining these gaskets. YMMV...

While my stove is down, I put in the new top gasket, the max density one. At one point they were sending out regular gaskets with the new cooktop and they have since decided that it should be max density. Since I have the bit of smoke smell coming from that area, I thought the max density was a good idea. About that tube of furnace cement, I couldn't get that to come out the tip for love nor money. My husband couldn't either. In desperation, I took off the tip and smeared it with my finger. Hope that will hold.
 
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Time to resurrect this burn time thread. I haven't fully loaded my PH yet, have been working my way up. Just tried loading 5 medium birch splits (I'd say 50-60% firebox capacity) of birch on a bed of hot coals with the stove temp reading ~ 275 on the top rear. Engaged the cat immediately, turned the air all the way down after a couple minutes (flames showing), and was back to hot coals after about 6 hrs. Stove temp peaked around 500. I'm running a horizontal exit pipe for about 4 ft, then a 21 ft insulated pipe inside an existing enclosed chimney.

Stove room is about 20 x 25 with a cathedral ceiling and glass on three sides, so no real well insulated.

I think I'm ready to load the stove up a little more. Looking forward to any recommendations or suggestions.
 
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400 is barely warm.

Interesting - I generally have mine running about 400 (measured on the cast iron to the right of the flue exit). I only go up to 500+ if I load the stove full.
 
Interesting - I generally have mine running about 400 (measured on the cast iron to the right of the flue exit). I only go up to 500+ if I load the stove full.
How long will a full load burn at that temp?
 
400 is barely warm.


The PH is a little different. It is throwing a good bit of heat with the stove top at 400 degrees. I only rarely go much beyond 450 unless it's real, real cold out.
 
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I'm still running 12 hours between loads and sizing them based on outdoor temps. For example, with temps in the twenties last night and today (and real windy), I've been loading about 75 percent full to reload at 12 hours. With warmer temps, I do about half loads. I sometimes need a couple pieces of kindling to reload after 12 hours on a half load.

Hot coals after 6 hours doesn't sound too bad. It just depends on how much heat you need. Those hot coals will probably last another couple few hours while still allowing a reload.
 
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How long will a full load burn at that temp?

I'm a bad person to use for this as apparently I get shorter burn times than anyone else with a PH. However, as I recall (don't have my notes handy) loading the stove full and allowing to to burn hot I will have to reload in 6-7 hrs to keep that up. I have loaded the stove up to 4 times in one day (two of those being partial loads, not all FULL loads, not sure I could do that).

That is throwing a LOT of heat into the house, thus I'm happy enough to have the thermometer read in the 350-400 range for the most part, that keeps us toasty unless the highs outside are below freezing, then we can justify pushing the stove more.

I often wonder if the fact that we have such a well placed stove location is affecting my readings - i.e. we get a large amount of convective heating in the house - when the stove is running streamers on the ceiling around the stove will be blowing quite strongly as the heat is carried upstairs and cold is flowing down to the stove. I have to imagine this is helping to cool the stove a fair amount and thus maybe an explanation for my temps may not appear as high for the rate that I'm burning the wood (?). I'm heating a lot of space here - perhaps 2500+sqft total over two floors and I have surprisingly even temps throughout the house.

I think three FULL loads is about all I could push through without roasting us out the vast majority of the heating season. Right now I'm doing two approx 50% loads a day max (just started this pattern, note that I loaded last night on a good bed of coals, added 7 splits and this morning let the fire go out as the house was warmer than we wanted. Peak temp from the load last night was 450 or so. I do believe that (at approx 12 hrs) I could have gotten a new load burning from those coals, but it would require kindling to get going quickly.

With the FV I would have been doing one full load a day now instead of the two - I do sometimes miss the ability to burn lower for longer that I had with the FV. However, with the FV during the coldest time I'd be loading every 4-6 hrs and at night it would fall behind and house cooled off - I don't have that issue with the PH as I can get ahead of the temp in the afternoon (warm the house up) so that at night it can coast (and there simply is more wood in a full PH load than the FV). With all that said running the PH as low as I can with a packed load I can't get the same burn times (max time from reload to being able to light from coals) as I did with the FV. YMMV - others report differently here.
 
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Slow

I read your posts with great interest because of our similar situations. We both traded our FV's for the Progress,we both heat roughly the same size house (mine is 2350 sq ft) and we both live in MA. This winter we should try to compare notes regarding exactly how much wood is loaded, what type, and what is the final stovetop temperature measured in the same exact spot after the exact same amount of time from engaging the cat.

I am not loading the Progress any more frequently than I loaded the Fireview during warmer parts of the season to prevent roasting out. I load about half full and damp it down to a zero air setting. The stove peaks at about 450 and burns down to about 200 probably 6-7 hours later, but I need to verify this. It throws enough heat so that I only need to do this once every evening during these chilly nights (30-40F) and warmer days (50-60F). My house is not that tight, they skimped on the house wrap and did a 1/2 ass job insulating. It's 2x6 construction, and a 2 story Garrison Colonial. We are happy to maintain a 63-68 degree house temp.

I also had to burn the Fireview hard when it was cold (<20F) and sometimes reloaded after 6 hours on bitter cold 0-10F nights and still it was cold in the house. The Progress does a much better job keeping up. One thing I REALLY love about the Progress is I can load it up on a really cold night around 7:00 pm with Oak and at 4:00 am I am greeted with a nice huge bed of coals so that I can fire it up in less than 15 minutes and be on my way to work. With the Fireview I had to make sure to load about 2 hours later in the evening so that I had an easy 4am reload. I get to sleep much longer on those precious weekend mornings without worrying about reloading unless it's super cold out.

The main reason I traded the Fireview for the Progress was so I did not have to race home from work on cold days, and so that I had longer overnight burns. My wife hates tending a stove, and since we got the Progress 2 years ago I think she only had to load it one time during the day in a major cold snap.
 
I'm a bad person to use for this as apparently I get shorter burn times than anyone else with a PH. However, as I recall (don't have my notes handy) loading the stove full and allowing to to burn hot I will have to reload in 6-7 hrs to keep that up. I have loaded the stove up to 4 times in one day (two of those being partial loads, not all FULL loads, not sure I could do that).

That is throwing a LOT of heat into the house, thus I'm happy enough to have the thermometer read in the 350-400 range for the most part, that keeps us toasty unless the highs outside are below freezing, then we can justify pushing the stove more.

I often wonder if the fact that we have such a well placed stove location is affecting my readings - i.e. we get a large amount of convective heating in the house - when the stove is running streamers on the ceiling around the stove will be blowing quite strongly as the heat is carried upstairs and cold is flowing down to the stove. I have to imagine this is helping to cool the stove a fair amount and thus maybe an explanation for my temps may not appear as high for the rate that I'm burning the wood (?). I'm heating a lot of space here - perhaps 2500+sqft total over two floors and I have surprisingly even temps throughout the house.

I think three FULL loads is about all I could push through without roasting us out the vast majority of the heating season. Right now I'm doing two approx 50% loads a day max (just started this pattern, note that I loaded last night on a good bed of coals, added 7 splits and this morning let the fire go out as the house was warmer than we wanted. Peak temp from the load last night was 450 or so. I do believe that (at approx 12 hrs) I could have gotten a new load burning from those coals, but it would require kindling to get going quickly.

With the FV I would have been doing one full load a day now instead of the two - I do sometimes miss the ability to burn lower for longer that I had with the FV. However, with the FV during the coldest time I'd be loading every 4-6 hrs and at night it would fall behind and house cooled off - I don't have that issue with the PH as I can get ahead of the temp in the afternoon (warm the house up) so that at night it can coast (and there simply is more wood in a full PH load than the FV). With all that said running the PH as low as I can with a packed load I can't get the same burn times (max time from reload to being able to light from coals) as I did with the FV. YMMV - others report differently here.

I get shorter burn times as well. For the first two years I had the PH, most of the time in winter we loaded it about 2.5 times a day (one full load at 7am, a half load at around 2-4pm, and a full load at around 10-11pm). At that rate I burned about six cords last year (going from October-May, burning pretty much 24/7).

We have a pretty large home (trying to heat up to 3400 square feet--although I can and do close off serveral rooms when needed). Our chimney is about 28 feet tall.

This year I replaced the cat and installed the new screen. I also had new (more energy efficient) windows installed in my house a few days ago. I am now trying to limit our burns to two loads a day. So far we have been able to do so, but it hasn't been very cold yet, either. When I fill the stove (60-80% full) the stove peaks somewhere between 400 and 550 degrees (but usually 425-450 degrees) and stays there for 4-5 hours before dropping down. Peak temperature seems to vary based on how soon I engage the cat and how full the stove is (low end for early cat engagement and half load, higher for large load and/or engaing the cat at higher temperature). After 12 hours the stove normally has enough coals for a relight, but the stove top temperature is down to 200-275 degrees.

I have noticed that I get longer burns when I have more ashes in the stove, and shorter burns when I start with a "clean" stove. Also, I seem to get a bit longer burns when I mixed in some sweet gum wood with fluffy ash (that I had last year) with my oak splits.
 
I usually don't try for super long burns, since I find 12 hour reloads to work perfect for me. However, since I was going to be home all day today, I decided to load it up and see what would happen.

I didn't take a picture of my load, but it included ash, hard maple, beech, and one ironwood split. The splits were all 16 to 17 inches. I loaded the stove full on hot coals at 7:30 last night. Since the stove can take 22 inch splits, I'd say I had it filled maybe 75% of capacity.

Here is a picture of the coals I had left at 1:00 this afternoon after 17.5 hours. This pic was just after I shoveled out some ashes so there were actually a few more coals than this. Stovetop was at 280.

View attachment 82531 View attachment 82526
View attachment 82527

I actually opened the draft quite a bit after 14 hours to get some more heat out of the coals. Low was mid twenties last night, and a high around 30 today. House was at 68 degrees when I reloaded after 17.5 hours. The new load caught within 15 seconds of shutting the door.

I bet I could easily get 20 hour burns (meaning with useable heat not just coals) with longer splits. Of course, a 20 hour burn isn't as convenient for me as a 12 hour burn. So, I'm just going to stick with that. It is nice to know I can get a pretty darn long burn, if needed.

Draft setting for the night was just the tiniest bit above completely closed. The house did get up to 73 last night.

That's amazing. I have never had that many coals after such a long burn. That is more what mine looks like after 7-10 hours.
 
I'm thoroughly confused. Maybe I'm just lucky? Today, I got home 10 hours after loading about 75 percent full. Stove top was at 300 and it was 70 degrees in the kitchen away from the stove. It was in the 20s today and very windy. There were so many coals in the stove I opened the air half way. The stove climbed to 320. I just reloaded after 12 hours with the stove back down to 300. Splits were flaming before I shut the door. We've tried to figure out why there are such different experiences so many times, I'm starting to think we'll never know.
 
Waulie

Your burn times sound much better than even mine. To be able to get the stovetop back up to 320 after a 12 hour load is phenomenally great. Are you heating a really small house or using some kind of high octane wood like locust? I don't just don't remember ever having quite that long a burn at those final temps, even with a full load of 3 year seasoned oak.

Whatever you are doing, its working.
 
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