Cat temp's

How do you know what your cat temp is? My OEM meter has no numbers.

To get my cat meter way up high I open the thermostat way up high. It also really gets hot when you have a medium fire ripping along and then suddenly chop the stat setting down low. The cat eats smoke so a low or medium stable burn doesn't make as much smoke which means not as much cat heat.

If I'm running at 450 stove top my cat is ( I think) a little hotter. I'm using the no numbered probe thermometer but generally I can expect it to be near 12 o'clock or higher at that stove top temp.

I am usually running the stove at a draft setting of 1.5 but yell, turning the thermostat setting up should produce higher cat probe temps but how much of that is related to actual cat temps vs heat from the wood?

Rich2343 said:

My princess running about 450* stove top temp. The Cat is about 800* . Is this normal .? Thermometer is set about 1.5 I hear Cat temps much higher at cruising speeds. And how do you get higher Cat temps.? More draft .?

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I'll tell you like I tell my mom when she calls and says "the cat thermostat is doing X". I always ask: Is it in the active? Is it heating the house? I then ask her what she can do to change that, I mean so the cat has been sitting at 3-o'clock for 4 hours, what can you do? If its heating the house and staying active leave it be! Honestly tho, you can MAYBE expect higher cat temps with drier wood--thats about it.

Jason

With a new load once it's charred and activated my probe which is numbered usually spikes up to about 1000-1400, then gradually settles down to 800 then 600 throughout the burn.

This can vary a great deal and is in no way identical every burn.

Plus it doesn't matter. If you need more heat, turn up the stat. That cat meter is only good for one thing, to tell you when to flop the bypass lever.

That sounds pretty normal. On the Dw the cat temp is generally double the stove top above the cat. Different stoves will run differently and stove temps don't equate either, but warmer outside temp, bigger splits, denser species or damper wood or are going to slow down the cat.

tarzan said:

If I'm running at 450 stove top my cat is ( I think) a little hotter. I'm using the no numbered probe thermometer but generally I can expect it to be near 12 o'clock or higher at that stove top temp.

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It's a Condar probe so I'd expect 12 o'clock to be about 1000.

Highbeam said:

cat meter is only good for one thing, to tell you when to flop the bypass lever.

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And to tell you if you're running the cat too hot. I wouldn't think that is often a problem unless you're trying to get too much heat out of a stove that's too small. The cat stoves really like to just idle along.

Highbeam and Woody Stover have it right.

You could drill a hole in the stove top of a non-cat, stick a cat probe thermo in it and see related temps. About double stove top temps.