This is very interesting, and a wee bit embarrassing.
Last year I finally got the stove of my dreams, a perfect condition Vermont Castings "1977" Vigilant. I stole the thing at $300, particularly because it came with a small metal wood rack, fireplace tools, the trusty and much revered "NeverBreak" shovel that used to come with every VC stove when new... and 3/4 of a cord of 3 year old hardwood.
I took the stove home and got it into position under the flue pipe and vacuumed the whole thing out. After spending several minutes trying to get the removable baffle plate back into position, it seemed to just drop into place. I started my first fire in it and I was happier than a pig in poo. And so I burned it all last season... about 5 1/2 cord of wood. Temperamental stove, but nowhere the learning curve some of you have experienced with your EPA stoves, so I wasn't about to complain. I got her dialed in pretty good by season's end, and the place was in the 70s - day and night - for the first time in 20 years.
Fast forward to this season. In October I decided to give her a thorough cleaning. With two vacuums and an air compressor, I was able to get a pretty good deep cleaning of all those invisible passages behind the fireback. Then it was time to put the baffle plate back in and I had the same problem as last year. Suddenly it fell in place and I was about to put the collar back on when I noticed there was light coming into the box from the upper left corner of the stove, the corner that should have been covered by the baffle plate.
I looked closer and I could clearly see that the baffle plate was off about 2" to the right. Whew! Glad I caught that before I started to burn for the season. I reached in to slide it over, but it wouldn't budge. I pulled and pushed and lifted and pried and all of a sudden it slid over to the left where it belongs.
The stove is now acting significantly different than it did last year. No more raging highs, longer burns, less wood consumed, higher and more stable flue temps, steadier (albeit lower) stove top temps, secondary kicks in every time. No more glowing left door, either.
Did I burn this thing wrong all last year, with the baffle plate out of position? I think maybe I did. With the plate the way it was, gases would split between two possible paths, the main one on the right of the stove getting robbed of much of the gases and the secondary flame path was shortened by about a third. Although this stove really put out the heat the way it was (assuming I had the plate in wrong), it didn't seem to burn exactly like I was told it would. Now it's better than ever. I can't get it up past 750º in downdraft mode, but it burns at 550-650º for hours now. Total heat output over the course of the day is probably the same judging by the house temps (maybe better since this has been some chilly December), but I'm using less wood and the stove is requiring less babysitting. All this on lesser quality wood than I started with last season (which was that same 3/4 cord 3 year old wood, plus 1/2 cord of dry ash left over from the season before).
Whatever it is, something changed. Either I had the baffle plate wrong (I'll never know for sure) or I'm just getting to know the stove better. My strong suspicion is the former is true. I waited until now to report this, because I wanted to get a better read on things as the weather got colder and the stove and chimney got to winter conditions. When I noticed that wood was disappearing from the wood piles at a much slower rate than last year, I figured that something must be radically different or I'm just getting really, really good at running this stove. Last year I had used a bit more than a cord by this time, but I didn't start burning in earnest until December. This year I started much earlier than I ever have, with once-a-day fires beginning in mid-October. The result of that decision is demonstrated in the scan of my power bill below. The wood piles shrank by about the same amount by Christmas in both years. And the November electric usage? About 1/3 of last year's usage, saving me the cost of the entire cord of wood, plus a 12-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Last year I finally got the stove of my dreams, a perfect condition Vermont Castings "1977" Vigilant. I stole the thing at $300, particularly because it came with a small metal wood rack, fireplace tools, the trusty and much revered "NeverBreak" shovel that used to come with every VC stove when new... and 3/4 of a cord of 3 year old hardwood.
I took the stove home and got it into position under the flue pipe and vacuumed the whole thing out. After spending several minutes trying to get the removable baffle plate back into position, it seemed to just drop into place. I started my first fire in it and I was happier than a pig in poo. And so I burned it all last season... about 5 1/2 cord of wood. Temperamental stove, but nowhere the learning curve some of you have experienced with your EPA stoves, so I wasn't about to complain. I got her dialed in pretty good by season's end, and the place was in the 70s - day and night - for the first time in 20 years.
Fast forward to this season. In October I decided to give her a thorough cleaning. With two vacuums and an air compressor, I was able to get a pretty good deep cleaning of all those invisible passages behind the fireback. Then it was time to put the baffle plate back in and I had the same problem as last year. Suddenly it fell in place and I was about to put the collar back on when I noticed there was light coming into the box from the upper left corner of the stove, the corner that should have been covered by the baffle plate.
I looked closer and I could clearly see that the baffle plate was off about 2" to the right. Whew! Glad I caught that before I started to burn for the season. I reached in to slide it over, but it wouldn't budge. I pulled and pushed and lifted and pried and all of a sudden it slid over to the left where it belongs.
The stove is now acting significantly different than it did last year. No more raging highs, longer burns, less wood consumed, higher and more stable flue temps, steadier (albeit lower) stove top temps, secondary kicks in every time. No more glowing left door, either.
Did I burn this thing wrong all last year, with the baffle plate out of position? I think maybe I did. With the plate the way it was, gases would split between two possible paths, the main one on the right of the stove getting robbed of much of the gases and the secondary flame path was shortened by about a third. Although this stove really put out the heat the way it was (assuming I had the plate in wrong), it didn't seem to burn exactly like I was told it would. Now it's better than ever. I can't get it up past 750º in downdraft mode, but it burns at 550-650º for hours now. Total heat output over the course of the day is probably the same judging by the house temps (maybe better since this has been some chilly December), but I'm using less wood and the stove is requiring less babysitting. All this on lesser quality wood than I started with last season (which was that same 3/4 cord 3 year old wood, plus 1/2 cord of dry ash left over from the season before).
Whatever it is, something changed. Either I had the baffle plate wrong (I'll never know for sure) or I'm just getting to know the stove better. My strong suspicion is the former is true. I waited until now to report this, because I wanted to get a better read on things as the weather got colder and the stove and chimney got to winter conditions. When I noticed that wood was disappearing from the wood piles at a much slower rate than last year, I figured that something must be radically different or I'm just getting really, really good at running this stove. Last year I had used a bit more than a cord by this time, but I didn't start burning in earnest until December. This year I started much earlier than I ever have, with once-a-day fires beginning in mid-October. The result of that decision is demonstrated in the scan of my power bill below. The wood piles shrank by about the same amount by Christmas in both years. And the November electric usage? About 1/3 of last year's usage, saving me the cost of the entire cord of wood, plus a 12-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
