How Low Do You Go - Cat Question

[leeave96]

The temperatures have moderated a bit in my neck of the woods so I am playing around with my damper settings, active flame and cat glow.

With my Woodstock Keystone being a cat stove, I find that I can damper down and basically heat the top of the stove with the cat induced heat or open things up with an active flame and heat the whole stove and really throw some heat into the room.

With the warmer temps, I am figuring out how much heat I can get with a cat burn and how long that burn can go.

Right now, I've got the stove loaded to the gills for an overnight burn, the damper is on 1/2 (out of 0 thru 4 damper setting marks), the cat is glowing bright orange, no flames, there is a bit of red coals in the bottom - but not nearly as bright as the cat and my stove top is at 560 degrees and slowly climbing.

I'm getting enough heat off the top of the stove to maintain the room at 73 degrees, though the outside temperature will continue to drop making the room temp go down too.

My question is - how far do you turn your cat stove down? Anything like I describe above? When doing a smoldering burn, are you getting a clean burn - no creosote build-up? Where do your stove top temps max out at when doing a slow smoldering cat only burn?

Just courious - Thanks
Bill

 

[SolarAndWood]

As long as I am far enough into the burn cycle, I often turn it all the way down. Then, come home after work, turn it up and watch the fire spring back into action.

 

[Todd]

There have been a few times with the Fireview if I turn it down like you describe the cat will overload on smoke but not always and I've seen my stove top climb up to 750. After that I always leave a little flame and redness in the coals and still get a long overnight burn.

I've tried the same thing with the Keystone but it hasn't taken off on me yet. Tonight is a 3/4 load of Oak burning at .75, flames went out, coals darkened and beet red red cat. The stove top climbed a little over 600 then the floating flames started up again after about 30 minutes. Maybe I can go lower, still playing. I haven't seen any smoke out my chimneys during these smoulder burns.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

We regularly burn ours at .75 and sometimes go even lower. If it is super cold outdoors then we'll go up a ways but rarely over 1.25.