Do cat stove owners see "absolutely no smoke", "white whispy smoke" or something else when they clos

I see no smoke when my when the cat is engaged on my fireview.

Well I don't have a cat stove . . . but I have to say on a reload after I've got the secondaries firing off and the air closed down within the first 5-10 minutes it is rare that I see any smoke -- black, white, gray or any other color under the sun.

Once cat is engaged I only see something (white/gray? in color) out the chimney when it is very cold outside so I assume it is steam condensing. I have to go outside to check, but I did do it a bit during the start of the season, less so as my confidence in the stove grew (rather quickly). I also tend to look at it out of habit whenever I leave the house...

I see steam at the beginning of the burn cycle when it gets cold outside but mostly just see some heat waves. If it's steam it will dissipate after a few feet from the chimney, smoke will linger for miles.

Nothing at all!

Always see smoke on the reloads until switching to the cat and then it disappears. This leaves the chimney very clean!

Yup. Smoke right at reload, less once the new wood is flaming nicely, and then nothing once the cat is engaged.

On reload I have learned it really depends most on the wood (surprise!). I had quite a mixed bag in my pile this last season.

The best wood was likely in the 10-15% mc range and very clean (no dirt, solid pieces and little to no bark). When reloading with this wood even on less coals it would pretty much be in full flames within a minute of touching the coals and certainly by time the door was closed it would be burning well. Not much smoke from this wood and it would move right along as it would be hot quickly and it didn't last long either - I swear I saw secondaries on the top of my firebox at times before engaging the cat! I once was outside before cat engagement and thought the wife had engaged as there was almost no smoke at all.

Then there was the "other stuff" - the extreme being some punky birch and ??? wood that had been given to me a year or so ago that I should have taken to the dump. Some pieces were so spongy that they were wet when they thawed so I simply tossed them into the woods. Those I felt were dry enough (may not have been) I put in the stove and they would not light up well - they stunk up the smoke too and the smoke would be cool and heavy. I only put those on a hot bed of coals after I learned how poor they burned. Likely I shouldn't have even fed them to the stove but I didn't want 1/4 cord of the stuff tossed in the woods (I don't have that much woods to toss into!).

In between were some more normal pieces and they would each have their own smoke outputs - but in general good wood makes for less smoke since it catches much faster. I like flame in the box before I close the door to minimize the smoke so I got in the habit of being sure to have a really good and dry piece handy to put right on the coals to get things kicked off. Next year I have a bunch of poplar that will be serving this role all season I think.

It is just like throwing wood on the fire when you have an outdoor fire. It is going to throw some smoke then. If I am outdoors working I can always tell when the wife has just put some wood in the stove.

Backwoods Savage said:

It is just like throwing wood on the fire when you have an outdoor fire. It is going to throw some smoke then. If I am outdoors working I can always tell when the wife has just put some wood in the stove.

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Same here . . . I'll be outside puttering around and will see some smoke appear for a few minutes and then dissipate . . . sometimes I even get a whiff of it in the air . . . and I know it means she has just reloaded the stove.