New Progess stove performance- Other Progress owners give me some input

[kayakkeith]

So replaced my old Keystone with a new Progress this past summer. Had a few overnite fires in on some chilly nights but had a whole day burn in today and just loaded up a good amount of wood for a overnite.
Some of the things I have noticed :
It's doesn't take long for me to get the fire started up from small amount of kindling and a super ceader and it doesn't take long for me to cut off the air damper completely and have those secondary's kick in and have a nice low burn going.
I am thinking it is because I have a awesome draft since I have about a 40 ft straight up chimney .
I engage the cat pretty quickly when refilling as it doesn't take long to have it up to temp and like I said earlier very short time until I cut air down completely .
My overnite burn was just a couple big hunks of pine and in the morning(8hr) the top temp was about 250 and had some good chunks of coals . Easy start up with a couple of small pieces and off to the races again.

I think I am going to have to be very careful of not letting it burn to long with air not damped down completely .

Seems to be a awesome stove and the operation doesn't seem as complicated as I saw on some previous post on the stove

So looking for some input to see if others get same type of results or someone thinks something seems off or other input for me to watch for....
Thanks

 

[begreen]

Is there a key damper in the stove pipe to control draft? With a 40ft chimney you may need this in colder weather. That is a very tall stack.

 

[kayakkeith]

No damper on there...didn't have one with the Keystone and think it may be more like 25 ft as I remember when I clean it I use 5 sections and then the cleaning brush and each of those brush sections are 4 or 5 ft
Yea anxious to see what changes when it gets a lot colder

 

[begreen]

That's a big difference. Should be fine with 25ft.

 

[TheRambler]

An 8hr burn with pine is pretty good. Yes, shutting stove down sooner will yield a longer lower output burn. With good dry hardwood(18-19%) i could get a 16hr burn fully loaded, wood in the 23-25 neighborhood i was getting 8-10ish. I started mixing with biobricks and ended up around 12hr average i guess.

Air control makes a big difference in how long of a burn you will get

 

[JA600L]

Did the box ever go black inside or did the secondaries light the whole time?

 

[kayakkeith]

Most of time secondaries stayed burning or some small rolling flames
Never a complete black out for long as something always seemed to have a least a "lazy rolling" flame

 

[toddnic]

It sounds like you're doing well! I had my first fire of the season this morning since we got some low 40's this morning in the western NC mountains. Just remember to keep the PH clean. If you let the catalytic combustor get dirty it won't work well. Also, there is a small hole in the firebox around 1 inch from the front of the stove. Make sure you keep it cleaned out. Also, I normally wait until the PH climbs to between 300 - 350 degrees to engage the catalytic combustor. Sometimes it doesn't seem to fire when I engage it at a lower temperature. Enjoy your new PH..... It really is an incredible stove.

 

[kayakkeith]

So where is this hole at you are talking about... I have the ash pan so I am thinking it is covered up by that???