Progress Hybrid Officially Approved

[dpgoalie]

dpgoalie-Have you called the Woodstock folks and brought this to their attention?

No. I was going to wait for it to happen again and try bypassing the cat and turning the air up a bit.

 

[wood4free]

Being new to Cat stoves, sounds like I should have tried to open the air a bit to cool the secondary burn, but I'm not sure. I will try this if the problem happens again.

DP - Sounds like a call to Woodstock asking their advice in this situation might a good idea. I'm sure those of us considering the Progress would be interested in their response.

 

[leeave96]

Have you completed your break-in yet. How is your stove running?
I decided to upgrade from my Keystone mostly because of the larger firebox. The Keystone worked great except that loading up at night was like a jigsaw puzzle trying to match the wood pieces so that I could fit the max amount of wood in there. Have you been able to throttle your stove way down in order to have just low heat on the days when its not that cold outside. How does it work at the low settings. When I was at the open house, they had the stove running but at a higher temperature to show the nicer appearance of the flames and to keep the glass clean, but we all know that we don't always use our stoves like that.

II have completed the break in. The stove is running great. I have no complaints at this point. However, I loaded the stove up with large splits of dry maple this morning, and when I dampered it down the stove top temps kept rising. I shut the damper completely and in about 45 minutes, the temp went from 500 to 610 and stabilized there. I didn't know how high it was going to climb and I didn't like that the temps didn't drop when I shut the damper. And yes, I tried both burning with the cat and without and the temp wouldn't drop. I hope I don't have to add a stove pipe damper. They are ugly and it's just another thing to operate.

Si when there is a piece or 2 in there the low setting works great, but closing the damper completely didn't do much with it packed.

I don't think you got anything to worry about. There's a big difference between dampering down a cat stove and getting a hot stove top vs a flaming stove + a hot stove top. I can have a 650 stove top on my Keystone, but not drive us out of the house with a cat only burn as the sides, front and back are not radiating nearly as much heat as the stove does when it's flaming inside. Also, when you damper down for a cat only burn, you'd have to also be killing the secondary burn as that takes much higher heat to operate than the cat. So it seems to me that if you damper down, you got a cat only burn and your stove top will elevate as it chews on the smoke.

Relax, enjoy the stove and post as many pics of this stove as you can!

Bill

 

[binko]

DP thank you for all of the information that you are providing the rest of us.
your experiences are going a long way to help the rest of us.

 

[binko]

I wonder if this is what happened during their EPA testing. Apparently the stove got so hot during the testing that the bypass mechanism started to stick forcing the redesign of the handle and components.

 

[Todd]

Soapstone takes a while to react, maybe 35 minutes wasn't enough. Do you have a thermometer on your pipe? Stack temps would react much quicker and give you another tool to monitor things. Anyone know if there is a hole for a cat probe in this stove?

 

[dpgoalie]

I've got a stack gauge and a stove top gauge. There is a whole for a probe.

 

[Todd]

Did you notice if the stack temp dropped when you cut the air?

 

[dpgoalie]

Not for quite a while.

 

[Todd]

I suppose when you cut off the cat with the bypass the secondary combustion is still kickin and since the exhaust path is forward in the stove instead of the rear straight up the pipe like the other Woodstocks it will still throw the heat. Probably take a little while to fine tune this beast. I hope it doesn't turn out to be too non catish where it likes to burn hot and is less controllable than a true cat stove.

 

[pen]

I suppose when you cut off the cat with the bypass the secondary combustion is still kickin and since the exhaust path is forward in the stove instead of the rear straight up the pipe like the other Woodstocks it will still throw the heat. Probably take a little while to fine tune this beast. I hope it doesn't turn out to be too non catish where it likes to burn hot and is less controllable than a true cat stove.

I'll be surprised if that is the case. With many secondary air stoves (as you know) the secondary air is non-controllable. With this stove, the secondary air closes way down as the primary closes (kinda switching it to an almost straight cat stove the further closed you go with the air). They explained it that they left just enough air that the cat wasn't going to get overwhelmed with the volume of wood that the stove could hold.

Man I want to play with this stove in my house.

Maybe he just put more wood into the stove than was necessary?

pen

 

[binko]

One of the advantages of a large firebox is that you can load more wood in and have a longer time period between reloads. Before going with the Keystone, I had a Jotul 600 Firelight. It had a 3.5 cu ft firebox.
I thought this would run for 20 Hours. It did not. If you wanted the secondary combustion to be active, you had to run it so hot that it would roast you out of the room and you went thru all of that wood in 4 hours max.
This is why I went to the Keystone. Just as advertised, it runs at a lower temp at an even heat and long duration. The reason I am switching to the Progress is that I thought I would be getting the best of both worlds-Large capacity over a long and steady CONTROLLABLE heat output. It can be a pain to get a good load into the small firebox of mine if you have odd shaped wood. With what I am hearing about DP's observations is that this may not be the case. It appears to want to run really hot even when throttled down.

 

[pen]

Maybe it needs to have the air turned down sooner after reloading? Maybe it'd do better w/ larger splits?

pen

 

[Todd]

It's too early to tell how this stove will work out. Once Dpgoalie gets to know his stove better it may be the best thing since sliced bread. If not, there may be some warranty returns, at least you guys have that option out there. It's going to be interesting to see how this all pans out.

 

[Waulie]

I guess I'm not really seeing what the problem is. The stove top did not get too hot, and DP must have some very strong draft with his chimney setup. As Bill stated, even the Keystone stove top will stay quite hot even with a low burn because that is where the cat is. The stove did settle down after all. What did the fire look like as temperatures continued to climb? How hot was the rest of the stove compared to the top?

 

[binko]

DP
How are things going with the Progress?
Are you able to keep the temps under control with a full load of wood?

 

[dpgoalie]

DP
How are things going with the Progress?
Are you able to keep the temps under control with a full load of wood?

I haven't had to filler up again. It's been a little to warm. Maybe I'll open some windows today and filler up and see what happens....

 

[Backwoods Savage]

I wouldn't do that. Why waste wood? It is like opening up your wallet the next time you are in town and just throwing a $5.00 bill on the sidewalk. Save the wood for when you need it.

 

[BrowningBAR]

I wouldn't do that. Why waste wood? It is like opening up your wallet the next time you are in town and just throwing a $5.00 bill on the sidewalk. Save the wood for when you need it.

Not really. He's trying to learn the stove before winter kicks in. Now is the perfect time to load the stove up and work out the kinks with a new stove. He's coming from a Pre-EPA Defiant. Get the learning curve out of the way so you can run it properly when you need it.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Good point but I expect the learning curve will be only a few days. Lots of time yet before winter kicks in.

 

[Todd]

Not many people here have the patients to wait for colder weather when you have a new toy, I know I don't and I'll sacrafice a little firewood just to get the bugs out. Maybe when you get old as dirt like Dennis this wears off? ;-)

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Easy Todd. Easy big fella.

 

[pen]

pen

 

[Backwoods Savage]

That guy's not too good. He doesn't have his hat on!

 

[binko]

With the warmth we're having in the northeast, we may not need a stove!