Our New Progress Hybrid

Welcome to the friendliest, most informative site on the internet. You are certainly starting out on the right foot with that stove. You probably won't get any specific help on that jewel as not too many people have them yet (very few in fact) but plenty will be stopping by shortly to tell you how important your wood supply is going to be. Pay attention to them, they speak from experience and know what they are talking about. Good wood will make that baby absolutely purr..

Welcome to the hearth . . .

Be sure to post pics . . . and report your findings . . . there are a lot of folks interested in hearing about real life experiences of the PH.

Congrats on the new Woodstock stove, it's going to be fun hearing details from all you guys with the new stove. Hope it heats well for you.

Congrats on the new stove and welcome to hearth.com. Good to hear about the slow burns, thanks for sharing your experiences.

Congrats on the new Progress Hybrid and welcome! I'll be one of the ones watching closely. As I have one on order too... Just talked to Lorin this AM. I have a left hand door and won't see mine ship for maybe another 2 to 3 weeks (Castings are on there way to the states from Belgium.).

Welcome to the forum Jwgall.

You must have ordered the stove before the Open House. Were you at the Open House in October?

If you liked the Fireview, I'm sure you will love the Progress. We have the Fireview and planned on keeping it but at the Open House, seeing the final product, I could not leave without putting a deposit on the new stove. Now we are waiting like others but in the meantime, we continue to enjoy the Fireview. Please keep in contact and voice your feelings on the stove and also please post pictures.

Welcome Jwgall,

Have you had any long slow burn fires going yet? There is another Hybrid owner who had some issues in keeping his stove controlled with a full load of wood. He said that after fully loading it up, the top of the stove went up to over 600 deg and stayed there even with the air fully shut down. Have you had similar experiences?

Welcome jwgall! Please do upload some pictures soon! Woodstock makes really great stoves!

kochis said:

Welcome Jwgall,

Have you had any long slow burn fires going yet? There is another Hybrid owner who had some issues in keeping his stove controlled with a full load of wood. He said that after fully loading it up, the top of the stove went up to over 600 deg and stayed there even with the air fully shut down. Have you had similar experiences?

Click to expand...

Jwgall, that is exactly how the stoves are intended to operate! Our Fireview is the same. We can get the temperature to shoot up over 600 and it will stay there for a long time before slowly dropping down. The setting on the Fireview is 1-4 and we usually run it at about .75. Most folks run at 1 or 1.25 but each installation can be different.

One word of caution here: don't try to run the stove with the draft setting at zero. If you do that, most of the heat will be up at that stove top and it may easily go over 700 degrees which is the highest recommended by Woodstock.

Last year I caught my wife sitting at the stove and she kept opening the bypass to cool the stove because it was at 700 degrees and if the cat was engaged, it would go over 700. So, I just told her to set the draft at 1. She almost went berserk with that idea.....but it worked really nice. When the stove top got to about 670 we then set it at our customary .75 and the temperature settled in about 650 and all was well.

Just received email that ours shipped yesterday (Friday). Expect to have it Monday or Tuesday.

Hooray!! Congratulations.

Jwgall said:

I am new to Hearth.com. I did a lot of my research on woodstoves here and found that woodstock woodstove company had a great reputation. We recently installed our first woodstove last week which is the new Progress Hybrid and love it. We are in New Hampshire and can't wait for the cold weather to get here so we can really get it going!

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Congrats enjoy the stove man and welcome to the club now you will have to pass the initiation by................
getting pics posted so we can see the beast of a stove lol....but seriously get some pics lol...

kochis said:

Welcome Jwgall,

Have you had any long slow burn fires going yet? There is another Hybrid owner who had some issues in keeping his stove controlled with a full load of wood. He said that after fully loading it up, the top of the stove went up to over 600 deg and stayed there even with the air fully shut down. Have you had similar experiences?

Click to expand...

I loaded it up again yesterday, and with the cat engaged, I couldn't get it under 550....Someone did post that this was normal.

dpgoalie said:

kochis said:

Welcome Jwgall,

Have you had any long slow burn fires going yet? There is another Hybrid owner who had some issues in keeping his stove controlled with a full load of wood. He said that after fully loading it up, the top of the stove went up to over 600 deg and stayed there even with the air fully shut down. Have you had similar experiences?

Click to expand...

I loaded it up again yesterday, and with the cat engaged, I couldn't get it under 550....Someone did post that this was normal.

Click to expand...

This happens with all Woodstock stoves. The cat is right under the top and if you turn it down to a low slow burn the stove top temps can shoot up from the cat gorging itself on smoke while the rest of the stove is relatively cooler. You will get the most heat with a good box burn with lots of flame to heat up the whole stove but the stove top temps may not get as hot as a low cat burn.

dpgoalie said:

kochis said:

Welcome Jwgall,

Have you had any long slow burn fires going yet? There is another Hybrid owner who had some issues in keeping his stove controlled with a full load of wood. He said that after fully loading it up, the top of the stove went up to over 600 deg and stayed there even with the air fully shut down. Have you had similar experiences?

Click to expand...

I loaded it up again yesterday, and with the cat engaged, I couldn't get it under 550....Someone did post that this was normal.

Click to expand...

These reports are not good news to me. Where's that spectacular heat output range we were promised? The best thing about a cat stove is being able to load it up, shut it down, and smolder your wood in a clean, controlled fashion when you don't need high heat output. Which, really, is most of the time. There are dozens of fine non-cat stoves that will burn hot with a full load, I want one that I can control the output on without having to charge the thing with a small load. The BK stoves reportedly kick ass in this regard.

Just my personal bias. If you are happy, that's all that counts. As for me, I think it will be a Keystone.

kochis said:

Just received email that ours shipped yesterday (Friday). Expect to have it Monday or Tuesday.

Click to expand...

Congrats!

pen said:

Battenkiller said:

These reports are not good news to me. Where's that spectacular heat output range we were promised? The best thing about a cat stove is being able to load it up, shut it down, and smolder your wood in a clean, controlled fashion when you don't need high heat output. Which, really, is most of the time. There are dozens of fine non-cat stoves that will burn hot with a full load, I want one that I can control the output on without having to charge the thing with a small load. The BK stoves reportedly kick ass in this regard.

Just my personal bias. If you are happy, that's all that counts. As for me, I think it will be a Keystone.

Click to expand...

It's a big stove meant to heat big spaces. Maybe under these conditions it'll only have a very hot top plate and still get a long burn time and the rest of the stove isn't pumping out heat like crazy? Maybe w/ a little more air the whole stove would get hotter and kick out much more heat? 550 is not the redline for this thing.

I'm anxious to hear the first reports back to see how long they can go and still have coals to light back off of under the conditions he described (full load, air closed right down) before I pass judgement.

pen

Click to expand...

That's exactly what it is. I've said it many times, stove top temps don't tell the whole story with Woodstock stoves. You can see a 700+ stove top temp with a low smoulder burn and it can fool you into thinking the stove is cranking out gobs of heat when it really isn't. I get higher peak stove top temps with a low cat burn but get more heat from a good flaming box burn with lower stove top temps. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see this stove hit 700 with a full load and lower air setting.

Todd said:

pen said:

Battenkiller said:

These reports are not good news to me. Where's that spectacular heat output range we were promised? The best thing about a cat stove is being able to load it up, shut it down, and smolder your wood in a clean, controlled fashion when you don't need high heat output. Which, really, is most of the time. There are dozens of fine non-cat stoves that will burn hot with a full load, I want one that I can control the output on without having to charge the thing with a small load. The BK stoves reportedly kick ass in this regard.

Just my personal bias. If you are happy, that's all that counts. As for me, I think it will be a Keystone.

Click to expand...

It's a big stove meant to heat big spaces. Maybe under these conditions it'll only have a very hot top plate and still get a long burn time and the rest of the stove isn't pumping out heat like crazy? Maybe w/ a little more air the whole stove would get hotter and kick out much more heat? 550 is not the redline for this thing.

I'm anxious to hear the first reports back to see how long they can go and still have coals to light back off of under the conditions he described (full load, air closed right down) before I pass judgement.

pen

Click to expand...

That's exactly what it is. I've said it many times, stove top temps don't tell the whole story with Woodstock stoves. You can see a 700+ stove top temp with a low smoulder burn and it can fool you into thinking the stove is cranking out gobs of heat when it really isn't. I get higher peak stove top temps with a low cat burn but get more heat from a good flaming box burn with lower stove top temps. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see this stove hit 700 with a full load and lower air setting.

Click to expand...

But, to clarify for BK, at the lower setting, the stove top is hot, but the rest of the stove is at a lower temp. When the stove is at a higher setting, the entire stove is at a higher and more uniform temp.

This happens on VC stoves to a certain degree as well (in VC's odd way). The top front and sides can be at a low temp but the back end is glowing red. Obviously, this is an issue with the VC stove and a Cat prob solves this letting you know what the cat is doing and if you need to give it more air.

You will also see the occasional Blaze King thread commenting on a low burn, but the cat is rumbling at a high temp.

BrowningBAR said:

But, to clarify for BK, at the lower setting, the stove top is hot, but the rest of the stove is at a lower temp. When the stove is at a higher setting, the entire stove is at a higher and more uniform temp.

This happens on VC stoves to a certain degree as well (in VC's odd way). The top front and sides can be at a low temp but the back end is glowing red. Obviously, this is an issue with the VC stove and a Cat prob solves this letting you know what the cat is doing and if you need to give it more air.

You will also see the occasional Blaze King thread commenting on a low burn, but the cat is rumbling at a high temp.

Click to expand...

Yes, for example last night at 9pm I loaded my Keystone up full, burned at #1 for 45 minutes then turned it down to .75 and the flame went out, cat turned beet red and the stove top went from 500 up to 625. If I would of let it burn at #1 it probably wouldn't of gotten much hotter stove top wise but you can definitely would of felt more heat with the box fire. I didn't need the heat so I turned it down to a low cat burn and don't plan on reloading til 9am this morning.

One place you will notice a difference in temps that correlate with the air settings is the pipe temps. My flue temps drop every time I lower the air no matter what the stove top says.

Todd said:

That's exactly what it is. I've said it many times, stove top temps don't tell the whole story with Woodstock stoves. You can see a 700+ stove top temp with a low smoulder burn and it can fool you into thinking the stove is cranking out gobs of heat when it really isn't. I get higher peak stove top temps with a low cat burn but get more heat from a good flaming box burn with lower stove top temps. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see this stove hit 700 with a full load and lower air setting.

Click to expand...

OK, I see what you mean.

BTW I didn't mean to sound negative about the new stove, I just was thinking about the posted low burn rates I saw at the factory this fall. I haven't followed these new reports post by post, but it was my impression from the reading I did do that folks were having a hard time getting low heat outputs. If that is not the case than it sounds like they are working as promised.

The thing about the BKs is that I thought I saw something on their website about a 40 hour burn at a very low 7000 BTUs using a decent load of doug fir. Was this BS or am I just imagining the whole thing? I can't seem to find that page now.

Battenkiller said:

The thing about the BKs is that I thought I saw something on their website about a 40 hour burn at a very low 7000 BTUs using a decent load of doug fir. Was this BS or am I just imagining the whole thing? I can't seem to find that page now.

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From the reports that I have read here, it is close to being accurate. I don't know about 40, specifically, but 30 is common during shoulder season burning based on the BK owners here. Remember, the Blaze King system isn't the same as the Woodstock, and you have a 4.4 cu ft firebox.