as most of you may know i recently installed a fireview in front of my fireplace. things have been going great, i have a question about complete burns i loaded the stove up last night about midnight and woke to a pretty decent top temp about 250. that was eight hours later i have noticed though that there is a very good amount of large coals in the stove which is good for relight but was wondering if it should be burning more complete. if i turn the air up temp on top of the stove goes down some but coals are lighted red hot even with the bypass closed. too much room air maybe? also ive noticed that when i can get the cat red that i can only see the left side glowing ive never seen the right side lit up. im burning yellow birch and cherry right now and seems like the left side is doing nicely while the right is dark. its a used stove so the cat is also used dont know how old it is. stove top temps have constantly stayed between 250 and 450 can seem to get it any hotter usually leave the air at around .75-1.25. any suggestions would be great and i know BWS will be reading this soon to offer something up lol u guys have been my number one help. thanks to all. p.s. its snowing out
complete burns
- Thread starter jrendfrey
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One recommendation I got from BWS is to rake all your coals to the front of the stove and put some kindling on top of that and reload the stove. I let that burn for about 15 minutes with the cat open and the damper on about 2, I engage the cat and the stove top temps will hit 500~550° in about another 15 minutes. If I have too many coals in the firebox I will open the damper to about 3 or 3-1/2 and burn them down, they still create nice heat for the stove. Like you, I'm still learning this stove but it's looking pretty good to me so far.
I would not be concerned at all about the large coals. Sometimes we get some that are large and this morning was one of those times. Opened the draft and they started glowing right away. Just add a few splits and let them burn.
I am beginning to believe that perhaps that cat is on its last leg. What I would suggest is if you have any canned air, the type used on keyboards, remove the cat and blow it out with that. Do not use anything stronger for compressed air though. But this will clean out any fly ash that may be inside the honeycomb. If this does not allow your stove top to get higher in temperature, then you probably do need a new cat.
I think Woodstock now has both types of catalysts and right now we are burning with the steel cat. They are still into much research on the newer cats and I expect another new type may hit the market before too long. We replaced our cat with the steel and were really amazed because they lit off so quickly and really worked great. However, the first one did not seem to last a long time and they asked us (and several others) to send it back and they replaced ours. That was last spring so we have not run this cat too long. So far it is performing just like a new one and we anxiously keep track of how it is doing. Usually it lights off within a minute or less. For sure though I don't think we've burned a cord of wood through it yet. We're working on that.
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