So, this is an honest question from a cat stove owner to all the experienced non-cat stovers out there. It's not a "cat vs. non-cat" debate, or any attempt to insult or compare one technology to the other. It's a simple, "I'd like to buy one of those pretty non-cat stoves, but don't understand how the heck one heats a house with those things," kind of question.
I've never burned a non-cat stove, but here's a list of information I've collected or deduced, correct or assumed. Please tell me where I'm right, and where I'm wrong!
1. Non-cat stoves must be burned with the firebox temp at or above 1100*F to keep the secondary burn active. If firebox temperatures fall below 1100F, the secondary burn fails. It's not clear how much creosote one is producing after the secondaries go out of ignition.
I can never remember at what temp the secondary burn manifests itself . . . all I know is when the needle on my probe thermo in the double wall pipe gets into the "green zone" I slowly turn down the air on the Oslo . . . going down a bit by bit . . . until usually somewhere at the quarter mark to fully closed I get a nice, sustained, secondary burn . . . which lasts for a decent amount of time.
2. The famous Harmon Firedome graph:
View attachment 71329
To someone who's never operated a non-cat, it sure appears your stove is going to hit 10x it's "cruising temperature" in the first 1/3 of the burn. It also appears that maybe the secondary burn lasts only half the burn cycle.
3. A non-cat stove requires the operator to adjust the air control several times during the burn cycle to minimize temperature swings, and maintain the longest possible secondary burn.
I'm basically lazy at heart. Only time I fiddle with the air control is when I've started a fire or have done a reload and if the truth be told if the fire has been burning for awhile a lot of times I can get away with just adding wood, letting the fire take off with the air open all the way and then cutting back the air to the quarter mark or all the way shut in one move (vs. shutting it down in quarter mark increments) . . . after that I don't mess around with the air control as long as the secondary is going well.
4. Due to the high temperatures produced in the first half of the burn cycle, non-cat stoves must be properly sized (not too big or too small) for an application.
I would guess that most stoves -- cat or non-cat -- should be sized properly. I think a more important factor in heat output is how much wood you put in the stove, how often you reload and what you put in the stove for wood in terms of species, size of the splits and how much cubic space the fuel takes up (in which case size may or may not be a factor.) For example, in a few months I'll be putting in partial loads of my chunks, punks and uglies and for those first few fires I will just be doing the one fire . . . or maybe a single reload . . . and then letting the stove warm up the place. Later in the Winter I will be going 24/7 with the woodstove, using my prime wood and capitalizing on the space in the stove for longer burns.
5. If one's goal is to load the stove twice a day and keep an empty house at a relatively cool 62*F for 20 hours per day, then heating to 68*F or 70*F for 4 hours each evening, a non-cat stove may not be up to the challenge.
Possibly . . . depends on the size of the stove . . . insulation in the home . . . etc. Honestly, where I live, with my house and my needs I could not get by with just two loads a day.
Again, I'm hoping that I'm wrong on nearly all of these statements, but they were gathered (or perhaps incorrectly inferred) by things said here by those more experienced than I.