Maintaining Perfect Temps an entire day

[NextEndeavor]

Sunday was just a drizzly cold, icy/wet day here so I remained inside getting plenty of time to mess with the stove making observations along the way. Mine is an EPA non-cat with a magnetic stove top temp gauge about 6 inches in front of the flue collar. Taking several outside views of the chimney top I found that the smoke completely disappears at about 380 degrees during start up. Anything over that, you see nothing unless we are down around zero temps outside when it’s just a white steam exiting. Okay, with several very dry, somewhat smallish 18 inch long by roughly 3 inch square ends in a pile nearby, I just kept feeding them in there all day long, two or three every hour or more. This kept the temp right at 500 degrees plus or minus 50. Heat output was great, no smoke outside and the glass remained spotless. I usually get it up to about 650 with plenty of oak (half full) in there before cutting back the air to get long burns then don’t mess with it for several hours. Doing that means you go through the infamous cool startup to warm to hot to very hot, cut the air, maintain hot for a while then begin the downturn to warm on the way to nothing but coals. It’s a viscous, yet enjoyable cycle, kind of like life. Wetter wood and/or temps below 400 will tarnish up the window (and probably chimney with creosote). All in all, the stove fits my needs perfectly and it’s been a fun first 5 months. Sunday gave me some fun time to get to know the stove (and my wood) better. I’m preparing for the shoulder season and continuing to read here regarding how to improve operations.

 

[bobforsaken]

Sunday was just a drizzly cold, icy/wet day here so I remained inside getting plenty of time to mess with the stove making observations along the way. Mine is an EPA non-cat with a magnetic stove top temp gauge about 6 inches in front of the flue collar. Taking several outside views of the chimney top I found that the smoke completely disappears at about 380 degrees during start up. Anything over that, you see nothing unless we are down around zero temps outside when it’s just a white steam exiting. Okay, with several very dry, somewhat smallish 18 inch long by roughly 3 inch square ends in a pile nearby, I just kept feeding them in there all day long, two or three every hour or more. This kept the temp right at 500 degrees plus or minus 50. Heat output was great, no smoke outside and the glass remained spotless. I usually get it up to about 650 with plenty of oak (half full) in there before cutting back the air to get long burns then don’t mess with it for several hours. Doing that means you go through the infamous cool startup to warm to hot to very hot, cut the air, maintain hot for a while then begin the downturn to warm on the way to nothing but coals. It’s a viscous, yet enjoyable cycle, kind of like life. Wetter wood and/or temps below 400 will tarnish up the window (and probably chimney with creosote). All in all, the stove fits my needs perfectly and it’s been a fun first 5 months. Sunday gave me some fun time to get to know the stove (and my wood) better. I’m preparing for the shoulder season and continuing to read here regarding how to improve operations.

Nice work... I found that my Jotul12 doesn't really require a full stove to get up to temp in order to light off the cat.

Most of the season I've used poorly seasoned wood and had my thermometer placed in a poor place. This resulted in me loading up my stove and watching my flue temp rise to 500+ before flipping the CAT. The stove thermometer would barely hit 300 during this time. The cat would light off and stove temp would rise to 350 If I put less wood in, the flue temp would never rise hot enough and the stove temp would never rise to 300.

One simple change... I moved the stove thermometer to the center top of the stove. (its a top load so I avoided this previously). Now I can ignore the flue temp for the most part.... and the stove temp easily gets above 500 indicating that that its warm enough to flip the cat. Now the stove temp registers 600, 700, or 800 when the cat lights off. ...

Best of all.. now I can accomplish this with as little as 1 log when I have a good bed of coals. As you can imagine loading up the stove meant the house would spike to mid 80's then gradually cool to low 70's before reloading. now I can keep the temp mid 70's by throwing a stick or two in every hour or two.

Unfortunately... after a few loads of just a log or two, the coal bed from the overnight burn, burns away untill all that is left is just that single log's coals. It helps that my wood is much better now, but I need to figure out how to manage that coal bed while keeping the heat reasonable.

 

[NextEndeavor]

I don’t know a whole lot about cats yet but am somewhat intrigued by the thought of a little more even heat claims once they light off. I’ve been looking at some of the decorative cast models as a possible second stove for the cool basement. It would not be a 24/7 unit like my upstairs stove insert. I’ve got to decide between cast, soapstone or sheet steel and of course secondary burners or a cat. Then there is the chimney configuration to sort out too. Oh well, it won’t happen for some time which allows me to keep reading right here.
I lit mine tonight just before dark after letting is set dormant much of the day. I’m running with less wood at this time and more attention again because it was 50 degrees here today with a forecast low of 23 tonight. Much cooler tomorrow so will stoke it up more then. The chimney completely quit smoking within about 20 minutes of first light as the stove top came up past 350 this time. Again, I’m using very dry wood.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Cat stoves: We are now finishing up on our 4th winter with our soapstone cat stove. To say we like it is an understatement. Here is why: With our old steel Ashley stove we averaged burning at least 6 cord of wood per year. During this time we had to close off part of the house when the winter turned really cold (below 10). In addition to this, we made it a habit to check our chimney regularly and cleaned it a minimum of 3-4 times per year. I might add that we heat 100% with wood.

In 2007 we purchased a Woodstock Fireview and installed it, along with a new SS chimney, which runs up along side of the house, during September of that year. In our first winter we could hardly believe that fact that we were warm all of the time! We also noticed that we were not using much wood compared to what we had burned in the many years we've burned wood. The other thing is that we cleaned our chimney....only after the second year of burning. We got somewhere around a cup of soot and no creosote.

For wood, we burn mostly white ash now only because of our trees dieing. We also burn some cherry, elm, soft maple and an assortment of a few other types. We normally have a 6-7 year wood supply on hand. We cut in the winter, split in the spring and stack immediately after the splitting is done (April). We stack the wood approximately 4' high and leave it uncovered until late fall or early winter. Then we cover the top of the wood stacks with old galvanized roofing. We never cover the sides nor the ends of the stacks. The wood is a joy to work with and we stay nice and warm with no stove problems.

Would a cat stove work for you? Only you can answer that, but we have been very satisfied with ours.

 

[raybonz]

Cat stoves: We are now finishing up on our 4th winter with our soapstone cat stove. To say we like it is an understatement. Here is why: With our old steel Ashley stove we averaged burning at least 6 cord of wood per year. During this time we had to close off part of the house when the winter turned really cold (below 10). In addition to this, we made it a habit to check our chimney regularly and cleaned it a minimum of 3-4 times per year. I might add that we heat 100% with wood.

In 2007 we purchased a Woodstock Fireview and installed it, along with a new SS chimney, which runs up along side of the house, during September of that year. In our first winter we could hardly believe that fact that we were warm all of the time! We also noticed that we were not using much wood compared to what we had burned in the many years we've burned wood. The other thing is that we cleaned our chimney....only after the second year of burning. We got somewhere around a cup of soot and no creosote.

For wood, we burn mostly white ash now only because of our trees dieing. We also burn some cherry, elm, soft maple and an assortment of a few other types. We normally have a 6-7 year wood supply on hand. We cut in the winter, split in the spring and stack immediately after the splitting is done (April). We stack the wood approximately 4' high and leave it uncovered until late fall or early winter. Then we cover the top of the wood stacks with old galvanized roofing. We never cover the sides nor the ends of the stacks. The wood is a joy to work with and we stay nice and warm with no stove problems.

Would a cat stove work for you? Only you can answer that, but we have been very satisfied with ours.

+1 Cat stoves excel at long steady burns especially when you choke the air way down they burn the cleanest then.. Secondary burn stoves are cleanest burning with more air and great for faster warm ups.. I'm sure the secondary burn people (Bart) will add to this..

:bug:

Ray

 

[kettensäge]

I run my pre epa catless insert the same way, log or 2 at a time. I save the fill-ups for at night or for when no one is home for 6 hours or more.

During the shoulder season I will put a little less or wait a little longer to add wood than the dead of winter.