Someone sell me a downdraft stove.

If the price is not important, call my friend "Josh" or Rona at tri-country heat in Waldorf, MD.
They will gladly ship something out to you.

What is a downdraft stove?

-Mike

He means a crossdraft or downdraft model like VC or Dutch Non-cats, or Harman Oakwood or Lopi Leyden.

See:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/wiki/Downdraft_Stove_Operation/

I don't have one, but not I'm curious...... what's it going to be used for?

Nice to see you have started a new thread for this. I hope someone will sell you one cheep enough to meet your needs. It would be great if you could evaluate this technology. Best of luck. Where is Sweastal? I think he has one for sale. I thought he did anyway.

James

Hey the Lopi Leyden is the one baby! I burn a red one in the shop here and it does everyhting Lopi says it will do. I crammed it full of wood, closed it down and burned it for over 18 hours. She holds heat a long time too. I was impressed with it. Would deffinitely choose it over my Isle Royale if buying today. At $1895 it is terribly undervalued compared to its competition

Well, interesting.....but, I always know as a dealer my opinion was slightly influen by my markup and whether one company or the other opened another dealer close by!

But maybe that was just me! Of course, I was also heavily influenced by spiffs, goals which allowed me to get a free trip to club med (Thanks, VC) and getting into the next price break category.

Lastly, if the rep showed up and took Martha and I out to dinner, that might also sway me......

But, then again, I'm for sale relatively cheap (in a retail sense).

BM, did you burn both into the same chimney with the basic same fuel, etc??

Here I am. I have one, and it is most likely going. Like you Corie, I'm trying to figure out what the heck they did to get here, what makes it tick and etc. BUT, in the long run, I'm not going to spend so much time getting the unit to perform as advertised. With snow on the ground, it will be difficult to get a new unit in here and this one out. Its crazy. We have a unit that pretty much works when all the planets are aligned, one little planet out of sync and it does not work. This unit is a Defiant NC, $1400 takes it when I'm done.
I can tell all that when you get it to work, it burns down and it is a clean burn. I wake up to powder white interior in the AM. But, I sometimes don't get to bed very early trying to get it engaged.
We'll see what VC has to say, etc.
And, I have nothing but good things to say about the VC CAT line. I had both Encore and Defiant installed in exactly the same stack, same connector pipe, etc: they buned so clean the stack was always clean, I mean always clean. I would go up to brush it and it would not need brushing. FOR 20 YEARS.....
Last week I was at a local Harman dealer, and they told me they didn't know what Quad would do with the refractory based stoves they had acquired.
The real deal here is creating a user friendly load and go stove because we have an entire population out there that can't wait for anything. From what I am seeing there are a number of stoves that satisfy this requirement. I have the Defiant because it looks nice and fits into my "decor" (that is a wife term). Well, in any event, I do intend to get rid of this thing at some point, if that was the question.,
For the entire forum: God Bless Us, Every One... The best to all.....Steve.

Hey Corie, check this out. I just had a load that would not go into secondary. So, I futzed around with the splits and made them mostly verticle so that I had an open space at the bottom of the load. Well, I engaged the secondary and it took off like a champ. Perhaps, that is what the Everburn wants, a big air path the refractory shoe accross the bottom of the stove. Just like the other stoves have a nice path at the top of the stoves to the burn tubes. Now, we only have one thing to overcome: the force of Gravity...perhaps we can use the Everburns on the Space Shuttle, they don't have any gravity up there; or the Moon....

Remember that the EPA burn 2x4 and 4x4 have a spacer around all the ends! That probably allows for the perfect setup!

So, I think Eric and Corie can make millions by partnering on a machine which takes firewood and shapes it! OR, the machine applies spacers around the ends which burn a little slower than the wood, so air between the logs is assured.

Then we have the Video Professor who can sell the "how to operate" DVD on cable. We could also have "webinars" designed to educate a new breed of wood burners.

Man, Corie, you lucky dog...setting up a lab at home. I'm going to have to move to VA. just so I can hang there.

Corie said:

hey James, you've got one!

What has your experience with the stove been?

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Corie,

My results have been mixed. Just as many others have stated with the down draft stove. However it seems that the VC crowed has had more troubles than I. As I have posted in another thread. I think my troubles are a result of trying to rush the process along. This worsened by trying to use too little kindling and splits that are too large for the initial load. This would be when starting from a cold stove. Normally I have plenty coals left to reload and char for 10 min. or so then reengage without troubles. Then I will get long even burns that satisfy.

James

Wow I feel that my tarnished Hearth.com reputation may soon be returned to the glory it once knew. Actually, I don't know that I ever had a reputation around here. Too bad you didn't want one of these beasts this past January...I only got about 50% of the $1300 or so I paid on my large DW NC. But it was the sweetest loss of $650 ever. Even though I don't have one of these things anymore, I am still incredibly interested in your findings. Please be sure to keep us all updated Drumroll, please...

Mike, you need an avatar for REAL glory.

If you want to send me a pic or something,I'll reduce it for ya.

Corie - it's been a dream of mine (yea, I have weird dreams - haha) that someone would step up and be the first to do real world emissions testing on various stoves in a controlled environment. I'm so happy that you are even thinking about this. If I can somehow assist you at all, I'd love to be involved.

As for getting you an everburn stove to play around with. I think there may be a real possibility of getting you a free one. PM me, and I'll give you the details.

To throw my 2 cents in about operating this stove. Well I think this has all been hashed out before. But the key requirement for the stove to burn clean is simply a big coal bed, pushed against the lower rear (AKA, "the shoe"). If you want to "keep it simple", that's basically all there is to it. Of course what most people don't understand (especially before buying the stove) is how much of a pain and how long it can take, to get a big coal bed ready for a good clean burn. Yes, small splits (lots of kindling) help, excellent draft helps (the stove will work much better when its <25 degrees F outside or in high pressure system weather-wise), etc. Once you have the big coal bed, the stove works beautifully, and burns clean.

I am extremely interested in comparing real world emissions results between stove designs over the TOTAL burn cycle, as well as in different conditions such as burning continuously for several days at similar outside temps & pressure for comparison purposes between stoves.

I'm also very interested in "extended burns" and max burn times with usable heat, and most importantly, how emissions change for such burns. I'm really not at all impressed by some guy's story of getting a 17 hour burn if we are talking about serious pollution at the same time (which I bet is almost guaranteed with such a long burn). In fact, if someone is getting a 17 hour burn on a <4 cu.ft. stove its only evidence that the stove isn't working (or being used) properly.

-Gordo

Corie said:

Price would be an object, but I think I could pay full price for the small dutchwest NC stove.


What it's going to be used for - Personal research. I want to see how these things run and why everyone is having such a hard time with them. I want to see if there are some tricks or perhaps some magic waving of the hand that may help the people that are really having a hard time. This is purely a personal project, nothing work related at all. I'm also setting up a 5H emissions test booth in my workshop, so I would like to burn one of these and check real world emissions versus the EPA test output.

With everyone sounding like there getting rid of their downdraft stove, I was thinking someone might have that I could take off their hands.

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Ya gotta love it: we have snow, ice, freezing rain, etc. This morning I came down to reload the stove and opened the top, noticing the damper was closed, and there was a rumble present. So I asked my wife, "did you get the stove going?" She replies, yes, I just got it hot and closed the damper. OY... Well in any event, we aren't getting this thing out of here any time soon, since its uphill and up on the deck to get it out and the new one in. So, I'm stuck for a while. I can't even let it burn down because its so darn cold out. The house is nice and warm, I'm going through a bit more wood than the CAT stove used to, but its better than OIL... Yesterday, I was out most of the day and it burned the coals down. It took me about four hours to get the coal bed back up to the point where I could get it going well enough to get it into secondary mode. Starting from scratch is the worst. (I must say that was also a characteristic of the CAT stove as well.) BUT, its cold and we are warm and its bad weather and we are just staying inside, decorating and drinking hot chocolate, and other great beverages....Corie, you might have to wait till spring at this rate, but I still feel this thing needs too much attention for a wood stove. IN fact I was thinking of bringing up the old Army Cannon Heater (for those of you that don't know that one its the stove in Norman Rockwell's painiting with the Man/Boy and Potbelly) installing it and heating with that. Burns clean when hot and doesn't use all that much wood. Sometimes old things are good. Best to all.
Steve.

You wrote"
But the key requirement for the stove to burn clean is simply a big coal bed, pushed against the lower rear (AKA, “the shoe"). If you want to “keep it simple”, that’s basically all there is to it.

When you are mention the "shoe", is that different from the throat? By "throat", I mean the opening for exiting of the gases.

BTW, thanks for you detailed comments. I just installed a new Harmon Oakwood and am interested in operational guidelines.

Thomas

Same thing. The manual uses "throat", "shoe", and "fountain". Technically the "throat" is a hole, and not a part. The shoe and fountain are parts. The shoe is the thing in the lower back center with holes in it and a little "pool" in front that sits flat against the bottom of the firebox, it is the "tongue" for our "throat". The fountain is the delicate stuff that lines the secondary combustion chambers and isn't really visible unless you are looking down the flue collar. It is not too hard to pull the shoe out for inspection or cleaning - just remove the andirons, carefully pull the grate forward and up, and then you can carefully pull the shoe forward and out. This is for the Dutchwest, but probably similar on the other stoves of similar design.

ErieMan said:

You wrote"
But the key requirement for the stove to burn clean is simply a big coal bed, pushed against the lower rear (AKA, “the shoe"). If you want to “keep it simple”, that’s basically all there is to it.

When you are mention the "shoe", is that different from the throat? By "throat", I mean the opening for exiting of the gases.

BTW, thanks for you detailed comments. I just installed a new Harmon Oakwood and am interested in operational guidelines.

Thomas

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