castille- run with decorative door open?

[Barrett]

Seems to me that more hot air blows out with the front decorative door open. When closed, there's metal work blocking the airflow, and the door absorbs a lot of heat and gets hot.

Is there any reason I shouldn't do this, or why they designed it that way? It's too bad the door can't be removed, since it only opens to a 90 degree angle from the front of the stove.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Barret,

The stove will shut down if you leave the door open.

It has to be able to maintain a pressure difference to properly operate.

Otherwise you have a fireplace without the ability to have a decent draft.

These stoves were designed to burn cleanly in a controlled manner and actually produce some usable heat.

 

[peirhead]

The decorative cover on the Castile is as you describe "Decorative" only, but why buy the Castile of you didn't like the door...you may has well as have bought a classic Bay and saved a few bucks. No issues leaving it open as long as the glass door is closed. By the way the heat is not lost, just absorbed by the iron and released more slowly during shutdown cycles.

 

[tjnamtiw]

Barret,

The stove will shut down if you leave the door open.

It has to be able to maintain a pressure difference to properly operate.

Otherwise you have a fireplace without the ability to have a decent draft.

These stoves were designed to burn cleanly in a controlled manner and actually produce some usable heat.

No, the outer door makes NO difference. I noticed the same thing as you did and when the wife isn't around to complain about the 'looks', I open the door. It makes a big difference in airflow, IMHO. Plenty of attention to aesthetics and none to functionality. PP design that makes the heat transfer even worse than it already is.

 

[Massmudman]

I find that I get pretty good heat transfer as long as the exchanger tubes are very clean. The cleaning rods are basically useless IMO.

 

[tjnamtiw]

Yea, but we are talking about the decorative door design blocking the outlet of the tubes. Heat transfer stinks because of the single path around LARGE tubes, clean or dirty. And those tubes are smooth inside and out with no fins to add more heating surface area. you can buy tubing with internal fins and, of course, external fins. More smaller tubes would also present more surface area and if you staggered them to force the air to take a more tortuous path, the airflow would be more turbulent and more heat would be transferred.

 

[Massmudman]

I really don't find the door to be blocking the heat into the room, it's still blowing IN the room. Some of the heat is absorbed into the appliance which I find nice to get some of that radiant heat lower to the floor from the cast iron door. I would much rather look at the decorative door than my glass that seems to always be dirty.lol. Guess it's a good thing I didn't buy the log kit, btw, anyone running the log kit?

 

[tjnamtiw]

I RAN the log kit in both my stoves for the first ton but then out they came. What a royal PITA! They look pretty and will sit in there during the summer but next fall, out they come. After seeing how much easier it is to clean without them, it's a no brainer. My wife complained but I told her to do the cleaning for a week and now it's not so bad without them. A total waste of money (MY MONEY, DARN IT). I think, if you do a search, that will be the consensus of opinion of the logs.

 

[Massmudman]

Thanks. Pretty much what I thought, good looking but not very user friendly or functional. You prob just saved me $150 which I can put into my next ton/s of fuel.

 

[Meneillys]

I noticed a drop in the air temp out of the tubes when I took the door off. I had it on and then took it off and the air temp dropped 20 degrees put it back on and it went back up.

 

[tjnamtiw]

I noticed a drop in the air temp out of the tubes when I took the door off. I had it on and then took it off and the air temp dropped 20 degrees put it back on and it went back up.

Yea, if you think about it, that's what you would expect. With the door partially blocking the outlet of the tubes, there's more back pressure on the squirrel cage blower and less CFM. With the flow rate lower, there's more time to transfer heat to the air before it exits the tubes. With the door open, the CFM goes up and there's less time to transfer heat so the temp of the air stream goes down, BUT there's more air carrying the BTU's. I don't have a clue as to which scenario actually moves more BTU's. I just know that with the door open, the airstream gets across the room better and 'seems' to keep it warmer.

 

[Massmudman]

I think that the air temp might be more relevant than the actual volume coming out. I support this idea partly due to the fact that in FHA heating, the floor or wall grates openings are determined by output temp and not by fully open or fully closed. I do also realize that if all vents are fully open then the vents near the end may have little or no flow. They are definatitly 2 different beasts but both use forced hot air to do their tricks.

 

[tjnamtiw]

Well, remember the first word in FHA is FEDERAL so don't expect it to make any sense! If you all but totally restrict flow through the stove's pipes, the air will be extremely HOT but there won't be enough volume to heat your house. Thermodynamics is something I studied.............................. 45 years ago!! Heck, I don't know. It just seems right to me.

 

[Massmudman]

Sorry, I was talking about forced hot air heating systems. Hopefully the Feds have nothing to do with that, lol.

 

[tjnamtiw]

FEDERAL Housing Administration........ ??? The Feds make up the rules....??? ;-P 'Forced Hot Air'........ Now THAT is SURELY the Feds.....

 

[Nicholas440]

I have a Castile insert also, and I always run it with the decorative door open, unless I run it on Low. On my insert if I dont run with the door open I cant grab the cover to put pellets in it, the unit gets so hot that I had to use pot holders to open the hopper lid, and the inside of the hopper was so hot I thought the pellets were going to to ignite on their own. This was when I first got the insert.

Its a very piss poor design on Quadra Fires part, the openings are much too small to allow the airflow to get out, and what happens is a lot of the hot air gets deflected up under the hopper lid, and heats it up. I dont know how hot yours gets, but try putting it on High for about an hour then see if you can even touch the hopper lid, I cant. What good is a decorative door if its so poorly designed?

Poor design also inside the hopper where the feed rate rod is, it hangs the pellets up and sometimes in the early mornings the hopper is 1/2 full and its gone out because the pellets got hung up on that poorly designed feed rate rod... I think the Quad overall is a poorly designed unit, the smoke and hot air has to go up, across the heat tubes, back down to the exhaust opening then back up and out the vent, seems to me having the hot air go up, across and UP then out makes more sense to maintain a good airflow.... My 2 cents.... may be looking at a Harmon this summer...

 

[tjnamtiw]

I agree, Nicholas. My lid also gets quite hot and I have to grab it on the ends. The rod does hang up pellets in both my Quads. My biggest beef, which I voiced in other posts, is the piss poor heat exchanger design. I think the Chinese, who built it, could have even come up with a better design for more efficiency. Even making the tubes corrugated in cross section would have added immensely to the surface area. Build it cheap and sell it for double what it's worth. The damn thing DOES work, though, so it's not a total loss. I don't think anyone out there is a WHOLE lot better. When someone does come up with a more efficient unit, they'll sell the crap out of them with the price of pellets no longer competitive in 75% efficient stoves.

 

[smalltown]

I agree, Nicholas. My lid also gets quite hot and I have to grab it on the ends. The rod does hang up pellets in both my Quads. My biggest beef, which I voiced in other posts, is the piss poor heat exchanger design. I think the Chinese, who built it, could have even come up with a better design for more efficiency. Even making the tubes corrugated in cross section would have added immensely to the surface area. Build it cheap and sell it for double what it's worth. The damn thing DOES work, though, so it's not a total loss. I don't think anyone out there is a WHOLE lot better. When someone does come up with a more efficient unit, they'll sell the crap out of them with the price of pellets no longer competitive in 75% efficient stoves.

tjnamtiw not to change the subject too much. I was aware that the Santa Fe model was made in China, but it was my understanding that the Castile was not. My Castile works great, but I agree you would think they could have come up with a much more efficient heat exchanger design.

 

[tjnamtiw]

You know, I just ASSUMED that since one was made in China that the other one, being so similar in design, was also made there. I hope not because we buy too much from them already. I figured after I bought two of them, that they would immediately debut a more efficient version. That's usually my luck. As far as function goes, I really can't complain other than the occasional 'no start', which I am sure is the pellets' fault, not the stove's.