Ideal Steel Bimetallic Air Control

[JA600L]

So I have been experimenting with adding an automatic control to my Ideal Steel.

What you see in the picture is the primary and secondary inlets at the bottom of the stove. Both openings change when you open the main air control.
They are being regulated by two bimetallic strips being held up by magnets.

When you open up the draft, the cool air rushing in bends the strips to open. As you close the draft to 1/4 (base setting for my testing) the strips close as the stove warms up.

This sends the stove into a blackout cat burn. The cat takes over and the secondaries disappear.

Hours later when the cat starts to cool off the controls begin to slowly open allowing air into the coal bed to maintain the temperature. It never allows more air in then your base setting (1/4) so it can't run away.

Last night was my first run with this setup. It was very successful. The box was black when I went to bed and I had red coals glowing and mostly clean glass in the morning with plenty of temperature to the stove.

Usually if you close the air completely on this stove it will burn hot for a few hours then cool off fast. This way my base setting is basically for a medium burn but is automatically regulated down to a very low burn. I will continue to tweak and test it.

The first picture shows what it does at wide open throttle. The second picture shows how it reacts to 1/4 open. Also, this setup does not interfere with the main draft control operation. You can move the air control throughout its entire range and the strips are not affected.

 

[Babaganoosh]

Blaze king gonna sue yo azz

 

[rdust]

Neat and simple idea that should work reasonably well. I'd be curious to see how changing the secondary air effects the emissions testing.(obviously not something we can test) I always wondered why WS didn't completely close the secondary air on low burn in the first place. My guess is it wouldn't be as clean as they wanted it to be.

You should've just bought a BK so you wouldn't have to try to turn the IS into something it was not intended to be.(a low burning cat stove).

 

[JA600L]

Neat and simple idea that should work reasonably well. I'd be curious to see how changing the secondary air effects the emissions testing.(obviously not something we can test) I always wondered why WS didn't completely close the secondary air on low burn in the first place. My guess is it wouldn't be as clean as they wanted it to be.

You should've just bought a BK so you wouldn't have to try to turn the IS into something it was not intended to be.(a low burning cat stove).

Haha and what fun would that be?

I'm a mechanic so I have to tinker. Keep in mind that neither the primary or secondary is fully blocked by the strips. There is no reason it can't burn clean. The cat has its own automatic air feed as well. There is not a trace of smoke coming out of the chimney.

Also, the stove is still perfectly capable of burning with the secondaries. Just bump the main air control up a notch.

 

[Babaganoosh]

You can do a cat only burn when you turn the air down. You can do a secondary only by keeping the air up high. Could probably not even engage cat if you didn't want to although I'm not sure why you wouldn't. You can also get both by keeping the air between 30 and 50 % give or take depending on your setup draft etc

 

[realstihl]

Blaze king gonna sue yo azz

Here's my version. Going to test it on a 30nc.

 

[realstihl]

Another pic.

 

[Babaganoosh]

Once you get the formula right when it comes to how much to open or close the air at what temperature I bet it works well.

 

[Blazing]

Sweet gotta love enjinuity!!

 

[realstihl]

Once you get the formula right when it comes to how much to open or close the air at what temperature I bet it works well.

Just playing. I've always wanted to try one and the 30 is a good candidate because the primary is directly connected to the 3" intake. The next stage is the hooking up to the intake and making a flap or butterfly. Going to be some tig welding on that. The coil is from a 70's chevy with automatic choke. It's reversible so if I decide to sell the stove it all comes off.

 

[Dairyman]

Really cool guys.

 

[JA600L]

The biggest reason I like the setup I'm using is it does not in any way modify the stove. It simply peels right off in a second.

 

[begreen]

Where did you get the bimetallic strips?

 

[JA600L]

Ajax scientific off of Amazon for the secondary strip. The primary strip is the old auto cat supply valve that fluttered "alarm clock sound". Woodstock sent me an updated one so I kept the old one.

 

[begreen]

The underside of the stove is often the coolest location. Does it heat up quickly enough to bend the bimtetal strips in time for proper secondary burn as the wood is at peak outgassing? Our stove can be in secondary burn before the stove top has reached 250F. On the flip side, at what point (temp) does the stove bottom cool down enough to bend back and restrict the secondary inlet?

 

[JA600L]

The underside of the stove is often the coolest location. Does it heat up quickly enough to bend the bimtetal strips in time for proper secondary burn as the wood is at peak outgassing? Our stove can be in secondary burn before the stove top has reached 250F. On the flip side, at what point (temp) does the stove bottom cool down enough to bend back and restrict the secondary inlet?

When you have the air control at wide open, the incoming air path runs across and cools the strips and opens them. When you close the air to 1/4 the air path goes away and the strips immediately start to close. The stove has to significantly cool down to open the strip back up, but it was open when I woke up this morning. My end goal is to take advantage of the low end ability of the stove, but also have it automatically feed air to the coals as the cat cools down.

 

[freeburn]

I understand the secondary strip, but I can't seem to figure out what you did with the primary? Did you add a piece of metal on the end of that strip? I don't have a stove yet, so I'm going on memory from photos I've seen online. Do you have a picture of just the WS part by itself?

 

[JA600L]

I understand the secondary strip, but I can't seem to figure out what you did with the primary? Did you add a piece of metal on the end of that strip? I don't have a stove yet, so I'm going on memory from photos I've seen online. Do you have a picture of just the WS part by itself?