Clean burn with no secondaries?

[BrotherBart]

On your exempt stove primary just comes in at the front and down the glass into the fire.

Many compliant stoves are that way, too. Your F100, for one...

Pretty much every Jotul I have seen. Why I said "most".

 

[LLigetfa]

I've attached a line drawing from the manual. 15, 16, & 18 are the secondary burn tubes and 13 is a perforated metal diffuser for the air wash. The flue exit is top left.

And where is the common plenum that feeds the pri and sec? It's not shown in the drawing.

On the right side near the top, about 11:45 O'Clock on that pic.

 

[precaud]

Ah, ok. Interesting design - the preheating occurs in the exhaust stream. I like their thinking. How does it fare in emissions testing?

 

[LLigetfa]

Don't really know. The badge only says it complies with the 1990 EPA standards so less than 7.5 grams per hour. I installed it in 1998. The newer Onyx2 is EPA certified at 4.5 grams/hour.

 

[begreen]

On your exempt stove primary just comes in at the front and down the glass into the fire.

Many compliant stoves are that way, too. Your F100, for one...

Pretty much every Jotul I have seen. Why I said "most".

IIRC, the Castine primary air fed both the airwash and a low front manifold supply at the base of the fire.

 

[firefighterjake]

First I have to say I am not burning ideally seasoned wood.. Im burning exclusively white ash. What I've found is many times I've started a burn with slightly darkened glass on my napoleon 1402 and after a few hours I have completely clean class and with light-tan fire bricks. During this time I often see NO secondary burning. Am I burning cleanly or am I building up cresote because I dont have a strong secondary burn?

When I burn the "wetter" logs (about 60% of the time), I've found I have to keep the damper nearly fully open to keep active flames going, but I still have clean glass with the light-tan fire bricks.

What do you think? Is clean glass/light firebrick always a good indicator of an efficient burn?

Partybob . . . you still out there or did the heady discussion about primary air scare you off?

To answer your question . . . I would say no . . . clean glass and light firebrick is not always a good indicator of an efficient burn . . . but it could be one of the signs. Seeing no smoke from the chimney and doing a cleaning and having little creosote are two other possible indicators. The reason I say this is because if I do not close down the air on my stove I will have a nice, clean firebox and glass . . . but the trade off is I am losing a lot of heat and sending a lot of the bad stuff (and heat) up the stack since I do not have a secondary and it is the secondary burn that burns off a lot of the "bad stuff" that produces creosote.

I guess the question I would like to know . . . and I think Backwoods alluded to . . . is how are you running your stove? Once you have the stove up to temp are you starting to close down the air? This is when the secondaries begin to manifest themselves . . . however this is also where folks may begin to have the glass soot up if the temp is not hot enough, the air is restricted too much or too soon and if the wood is not as well asesoned as it should be.