Progress ( woodstock)

[Battenkiller]

I think the btu listed on their website is 80,000

I think that was their estimate before testing. If they claim that it was the 2nd highest Btu output tested in the last 20 years it should be higher.

Tom claimed it blew 75,000 BTU at the top end during the EPA test. That test doesn't try to hit a sustained high-output burn. Tom is confident that it can burn at a much higher output than that, but refuses to play the numbers game that other manufacturers play. He said he feels that just showing the real-life EPA test results says it all, with no need for manufactured numbers.

Same thing for the efficiency numbers. Claims of specific overall efficiency coming from the industry have always seemed suspect to me. Woodstock doesn't want to play that game, and I have lots of respect for them for taking that stance. We all know it will be more efficient than the 72% that the EPA arbitrarily assigns to cat stoves, beyond that you'll just have to buy one, burn good wood with your best technique and see for yourself.

There were no doubters at the get together, only talk of selling the stove they have and getting a Progress. Heck, that stove is so nice I don't even care that they called it "Progress" anymore. You should have seen now fast we scooted away from the stove after they snapped a group photo in front of it. And that was when it was it slow burn mode. I've seen my Vigilant get a lot angrier, but it used up a lot of wood doing so. This nice big stove just pushed out the heat for hours on a couple decent splits of ash. Of course, it was Sav-ash, so that may have been a factor.

 

[pen]

Of course, it was Sav-ash, so that may have been a factor.

Wish you were there to see that stove loaded to the gills earlier in the day. Not a lick of flame coming off the wood but about a 4in long flame shooting out of each and every secondary air tube. I don't believe that cat had too much unburnt stuff to take care of, but if the secondary missed anything it would just make more heat for you.

I really liked the discussion with the guys who build these stoves as well. These people weren't the sales staff, they were the designers, machinists, stone cutters, etc. They are a group who is very proud of what they make and I can't find a single reason to blame them.

They were making that stove hump yesterday in ways that no homeowner would consider under normal circumstances. And through all that the stove pipe thermometer they had about 6 inches up from the exit never went over 325. The stove just billowed heat but it wasn't "hot" like my stove gets. Different beast than I am used to. Sure wish one of the hearth guys won the stove they gave away.

Can't wait for Ciccio and Backwoods to get theirs up and running.

pen

 

[RAPhomme]

I think the btu listed on their website is 80,000

I think that was their estimate before testing. If they claim that it was the 2nd highest Btu output tested in the last 20 years it should be higher.

Tom claimed it blew 75,000 BTU at the top end during the EPA test. That test doesn't try to hit a sustained high-output burn. Tom is confident that it can burn at a much higher output than that, but refuses to play the numbers game that other manufacturers play. He said he feels that just showing the real-life EPA test results says it all, with no need for manufactured numbers.

Same thing for the efficiency numbers. Claims of specific overall efficiency coming from the industry have always seemed suspect to me. Woodstock doesn't want to play that game, and I have lots of respect for them for taking that stance. We all know it will be more efficient than the 72% that the EPA arbitrarily assigns to cat stoves, beyond that you'll just have to buy one, burn good wood with your best technique and see for yourself.

I'm of two (or three) minds when I read something like this. On the one hand, I'm entirely sympathetic to WS's wish to transcend the numbers game. A lot of those figures seem manufactured and misleading--it would be great not to have to plant your stake in those shifting sands. And who cares about or can distinguish between single points of efficiency?

But on the other hand, at least some of those numbers are authentic and representative of performance. And the aspirations for the stove have to be expressed in some performance targets or goals--e.g. the idea, perhaps only a rumor, that WS was originally aiming for 90%+ efficiency in the Progress design. That advertised efficiency can correspond pretty well to scientifically measured performance was demonstrated, as only one example, in that Shelton study for California (http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/apr/past/a3-122-32.pdf). The Blaze King efficiencies were right in line with what they claim. Do we imagine that the Progress as built is realizing the 90% dream?

And on the other other hand, how "real-world" are those EPA numbers? I agree it's useful to see them--but how do we reconcile the Equinox's 38k EPA and 120k (claimed) real-world output with the Progress's (apparent) 75k EPA and 80k real-word figures? Are we to think the Progress will heat higher than the Equinox? (And in fact I can't tell from what's reported what the Progress btus are. Was Tom claiming that 75k was the high end of the high-burn test, and that the average of that test was lower? If so, that again would change some perceptions.)

Anyway, obviously lots to admire in the stove and the people who make it. And all reports seem positive if not awe-struck. I'd be happy with just such a basically narrative account of the stove's performance, what the experience of running it is likely to be, sobered by WS's years of development, and backed up with some well-placed credible numbers. Something like expectable btu output over time over high and low settings. Nothing too fancy. But I guess those are the stories that the first users are going to be telling not too long from now!

 

[Slow1]

Anyway, obviously lots to admire in the stove and the people who make it. And all reports seem positive if not awe-struck. I'd be happy with just such a basically narrative account of the stove's performance, what the experience of running it is likely to be, sobered by WS's years of development, and backed up with some well-placed credible numbers. Something like expectable btu output over time over high and low settings. Nothing too fancy. But I guess those are the stories that the first users are going to be telling not too long from now!

And in the end, number or not - what will really matter is how well it heats real homes and how easy it is to operate. Again - as you pointed out, until real people get them installed and get a bit of time using these stoves we won't get those reviews in place. Just as so many folks advise against making the stove purchase decision based on the numbers alone, I don't think it is too wise to get hung up on the numbers here either.

But I sure am looking at the numbers to get some sense of just what to expect out of this stove. It sure seems to have great potential - and I do wonder just what the high end extreme is going to be on all fronts. When I get home from vacation to a cold house because I had the central heat (oil) set to 55 and it is 20* outside, will I actually be able to crank this stove and HEAT the house up at a rate that is noticeable? For MY home with the FV the answer is "um, not really - turn the oil up for a few hours." During the edge of shoulder season when it is nice to have a fire burning constantly but not necessary to have a lot of heat, will it be possible to pack this stove, turn it way down and burn it for 16+ hours between reloads and will this really be a benefit or perhaps I may be able to go 24hrs sometimes and get away with 1 fire a day where now I do 2 with the FV. These are the sorts of things I wonder about and only having it in the house will really answer these...

And keep in mind - any of us who are 2+ years ahead in our wood with a FV who gets this stove will not REALLY know how well we can push it for a couple years. That is until we get some 22" splits dried and into the rotation to burn. Filling this stove up with 16" wood vs filling with 22" will be a very different thing I'm sure. I know "size doesn't matter" but that extra 5" missing off the end is like 22% of the firebox unless you find chunks to fill in the space. So much for getting maximum burn times eh?

 

[RAPhomme]

What's the ONE higher BTU stove? The USSC 3000 is rated at over 120k, is that it?

Highest high-burn EPA figures I could find in a quick eyeballing of this list (http://www.epa.gov/oecaerth/resources/publications/monitoring/caa/woodstoves/certifiedwood.pdf) were:

Travis Industries, Inc. Model 44-A BI and Z.C. Btu output: 10700-75700
Vermont Castings Model EWF 36A Btu output: 11,300-75,500

So maybe, by elimination, we can deduce that the Progress' high-burn score was 75,600?!

Remember that the EPA output is entirely different from real-world output. I don't know what the supposed correlations, if any, are between the two.

But now it's clear that this is the stove to get: http://www.fireplacex.com/ProductGuide/ProductDetail.aspx?modelsku=98500113#Specs.

 

[oldspark]

Never mind an email I got confused me on the price.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Never mind an email I got confused me on the price.

Pretty sure you're looking at the Fireview pricing.

 

[Danno77]

Somebody explain EPA numbers to me. Why does the 13 put out more heat than the 30? I mean, I understand that the 30 can probably keep it up longer, but it don't make sense...

 

[oldspark]

Never mind an email I got confused me on the price.

Pretty sure you're looking at the Fireview pricing.

Yep silly me.

 

[RAPhomme]

Anyway, obviously lots to admire in the stove and the people who make it. And all reports seem positive if not awe-struck. I'd be happy with just such a basically narrative account of the stove's performance, what the experience of running it is likely to be, sobered by WS's years of development, and backed up with some well-placed credible numbers. Something like expectable btu output over time over high and low settings. Nothing too fancy. But I guess those are the stories that the first users are going to be telling not too long from now!

When I get home from vacation to a cold house because I had the central heat (oil) set to 55 and it is 20* outside, will I actually be able to crank this stove and HEAT the house up at a rate that is noticeable? For MY home with the FV the answer is "um, not really - turn the oil up for a few hours." During the edge of shoulder season when it is nice to have a fire burning constantly but not necessary to have a lot of heat, will it be possible to pack this stove, turn it way down and burn it for 16+ hours between reloads and will this really be a benefit or perhaps I may be able to go 24hrs sometimes and get away with 1 fire a day where now I do 2 with the FV. These are the sorts of things I wonder about and only having it in the house will really answer these...

Very nicely put--exactly the sort of imagistic, scenario-based wonderings I've wished could be informed by someone's knowledge or numbers. And just what, as you rightly say, we can't yet know! Although you'd think they could give some hints. But I guess that's what the sale-price is for.

 

[RAPhomme]

Somebody explain EPA numbers to me. Why does the 13 put out more heat than the 30? I mean, I understand that the 30 can probably keep it up longer, but it don't make sense...

Here's the law that specifies what wood stoves have to do: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/policies/monitoring/caa/woodstoverule.pdf.

Here's the testing method ("reference method 28") that's used to perform the actual EPA measurements: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/emc/promgate/m-28.pdf.

And here's a post that pulls out some details from the Method 28 procedure, in case you don't want to read the whole thing: post #18: https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/80412/#962955.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Never mind an email I got confused me on the price.

Pretty sure you're looking at the Fireview pricing.

Yep silly me.

Yeah, I saw the edit to your post. You must have updated the post just before I clicked reply.

 

[Slow1]

Anyway, obviously lots to admire in the stove and the people who make it. And all reports seem positive if not awe-struck. I'd be happy with just such a basically narrative account of the stove's performance, what the experience of running it is likely to be, sobered by WS's years of development, and backed up with some well-placed credible numbers. Something like expectable btu output over time over high and low settings. Nothing too fancy. But I guess those are the stories that the first users are going to be telling not too long from now!

When I get home from vacation to a cold house because I had the central heat (oil) set to 55 and it is 20* outside, will I actually be able to crank this stove and HEAT the house up at a rate that is noticeable? For MY home with the FV the answer is "um, not really - turn the oil up for a few hours." During the edge of shoulder season when it is nice to have a fire burning constantly but not necessary to have a lot of heat, will it be possible to pack this stove, turn it way down and burn it for 16+ hours between reloads and will this really be a benefit or perhaps I may be able to go 24hrs sometimes and get away with 1 fire a day where now I do 2 with the FV. These are the sorts of things I wonder about and only having it in the house will really answer these...

Very nicely put--exactly the sort of imagistic, scenario-based wonderings I've wished could be informed by someone's knowledge or numbers. And just what, as you rightly say, we can't yet know! Although you'd think they could give some hints. But I guess that's what the sale-price is for.

So once this stove is actually in the hands of a few folks here later in this season there will be another explosion of posts talking about it... then what will we have to talk about next season?

 

[BrotherBart]

The numbers won't make a damn when it is sitting in your living room. Equinox or What'sItsNameHybrid will be six hundred and fifty pounds of hot rock sitting in the house. Something will be getting warm around there. Unless you hear a loud noise and discover a large burning box in your basement. That was in the family room when you went to bed. :coolsmirk:

 

[BrowningBAR]

The numbers won't make a damn when it is sitting in your living room. Equinox or What'sItsNameHybrid will be six hundred and fifty pounds of hot rock sitting in the house. Something will be getting warm around there. Unless you hear a loud noise and discover a large burning box in your basement. That was in the family room when you went to bed. :coolsmirk:

I... uh... I don't have a basement. :-/

 

[ddddddden]

For reference, efficiencies of Woodstock's current stoves: http://gasstove.com/2011-10-tax-credit

 

[BrotherBart]

The numbers won't make a damn when it is sitting in your living room. Equinox or What'sItsNameHybrid will be six hundred and fifty pounds of hot rock sitting in the house. Something will be getting warm around there. Unless you hear a loud noise and discover a large burning box in your basement. That was in the family room when you went to bed. :coolsmirk:

I... uh... I don't have a basement. :-/

In your crawl space then. I don't think they did slab foundations in the 1600s. ;-P

 

[BrowningBAR]

The numbers won't make a damn when it is sitting in your living room. Equinox or What'sItsNameHybrid will be six hundred and fifty pounds of hot rock sitting in the house. Something will be getting warm around there. Unless you hear a loud noise and discover a large burning box in your basement. That was in the family room when you went to bed. :coolsmirk:

I... uh... I don't have a basement. :-/

In your crawl space then. I don't think they did slab foundations in the 1600s. ;-P

Not to stray to far from your actual point, but, for some odd reason, I don't have a crawl space either. Just a 6" air gap from the floor and then broken rock.

 

[BrotherBart]

Oh well heck, you would just have some more broken rock.

 

[Battenkiller]

When I get home from vacation to a cold house because I had the central heat (oil) set to 55 and it is 20* outside, will I actually be able to crank this stove and HEAT the house up at a rate that is noticeable?

Slow, I think maybe you will.

That is a big piece of glass in that stove, so the heat will come out the front pretty fast compared to the Fireview. Then, once all that stone heats up? Woodburner's nirvana. ;-) Also, they went with glass that isn't IR reflective on the inside to get more heat out rather than keep it in. Interestingly, there is no insulation above the secondary manifold, nor does the stove need pre-heated air to get the secondaries to fire. The manifold gets hot enough by using intelligent placement to put it directly in the flame path. I missed the real-life inferno, but I caught the video of the secondaries in full force. Gotta admit they are pretty impressive.

By the time we arrived they were forbidden to put any more wood on it (it was a warm day and we were dying in there despite the cavernous workroom the PH was set up in), but at the end of the day Tom put a couple small splits of Dennis-wood on so I could see the display. No major flames, though, but a nice Borealis effect going on in there. I blame in on the soggy ash that Dennis brought all the way from Michigan. Damn... if you can't get it drier than 25% MC after 9 years, time to move to a different climate. :lol:

Overall, I don't view this as an overly complicated stove at all, so I don't get the criticism in that regard. Looked pretty straightforward inside, easy to work on and access the interior and the cat, with a stainless steel mesh upstream of the cat to catch fly ash. FYI Woodstock has recently determined that it is potassium poisoning of the catalyst rather than excess water that causes premature cat failure. The potassium is in the fly ash, so the screen catches it before it hits the precious metals. The secondaries will also help you get up to seven years out of a $150 combustor because they will burn most of the smoke off during a high-output burn before it hits the cat. Unless it's set low to smolder the wood, the secondaries get most of the smoke, while the cat just catches whatever gets by the secondaries.

The stated efficiency rating on most stoves is a combustion efficiency figure, not an overall efficiency one. Combustion efficiency is only part of the story. For example, heat loss up the stack has been proven to be the biggest cause of reduced efficiency when burning unseasoned wood (wide open air intake causes lots of heat to be carried away even though the actual combustion efficiency is often higher). Same with a pellet stove, which has about a 94% combustion efficiency but only about a 70% overall efficiency due to the forced draft. You really need a bomb calorimeter room to accurately measure overall efficiency, but the industry gets pretty close using the stack-loss method.

All I can say about this type of heat loss in the Progress is that I never saw the single-wall flue temp get above 300ºF while I was there. That means there is very little heat being lost up the stack. With about a 90% combustion efficiency (determined on-site at the Woodstock lab) and very low flue temps (even at higher outputs), I'll hazard a guess that is may have one of the highest overall heating efficiencies in the industry. Which will reduce the amount of fun you have in sawing and splitting wood, but will help save the back for when you get up around my age. :-S

 

[BrotherBart]

Damn... if you can't get it drier than 25% MC after 9 years, time to move to a different climate. :lol:

I have always suspected that the moisture meter you base all of this science on was a piece of junk. Now I have scientific proof of it. Get a decent stove and moisture meter. :lol:

 

[Battenkiller]

Damn... if you can't get it drier than 25% MC after 9 years, time to move to a different climate. :lol:

I have always suspected that the moisture meter you base all of this science on was a piece of junk. Now I have scientific proof of it. Get a decent stove and moisture meter. :lol:

Ya know, I'm starting to think I need a new left hand as well. My meter reads 35% MC when tested there, which is what it's supposed to be, except I figure mine's about 15% MC because it's been seasoning for 59 1/2 years now. I need a new oven, too. Damn meter agrees with the oven-dry method, so now that I know my meter if off, my oven must be off as well. My oven-dry wood must be 20 points lower as well... about minus 20% MC. %-P


There ain't nothing wrong with those little HF meters, they're the most popular ones on Hearth.com because they're cheap and because they work. But hell, I didn't need a meter to tell that wood was still up there in MC, it was cool and dampish inside after it was split. Puzzled the Bejezzus out of me for sure. There has to be an explanation for every observation, and I think this is it:

The piece I tested was one that Tony had split. All the wood that Dennis brought was sitting in a big bin of wood by the PH. I'm pretty sure Tom said they use "kiln-dry" firewood, which as we all know is not like kiln-dry lumber at all, but is a lot higher in MC. I think Tony musta grabbed one of those splits by mistake. Just as sure as I am that the Sav-ash can never get to 5% MC even after an eternity outdoors in his area, I'm just as sure that it can't stay at 25% after 9 years. It will be at or around 16-18% MC in his area, depending on the season. End of story.



This whole distrust of science by society is pretty funny to me. We'll doubt the guy with the sensors and probes and highly accurate scales that track the consumption of wood in real-time, but we'll glom onto the words of the manufacturer, who makes outrageous claims about his products without ever a hint of the methodology behind achieving those results.



We'll continue to believe that wood gets drier and drier the longer it is stored, but we'll ignore all the research done by the Forestry Service regarding the lumber our homes our built from, because there must be something intrinsically different about wood that is cut into a board rather than split into a chunk.


And we'll laugh at the observations and conclusions of a team of experts in white lab coats who have every high-tech data gathering gadget and gizmo needed for both qualitative and quantitative anaylysis at their disposal, but we'll blindly trust the words of a grumpy old curmudgeon in bathrobe and slippers, dozing in his recliner with a Natty Light in his hand, who gets all his information about what is going up his stack by watching the window of his stove because he thinks watching football is a waste of his time. :lol:

 

[Todd]

Can this stove be turned way down to a smouldering long cat burn without the secondaries kicking in?

 

[Battenkiller]

Can this stove be turned way down to a smouldering long cat burn without the secondaries kicking in?

Yes, without a doubt. I sat in front of it and stared into a flameless box without a hint of smoke anywhere inside coming from the two fresh splits that were placed inside on a big, hot coal bed. A little more air and the Borealis came right back to life. Stove output range during the EPA test was about 10,500 BTU up to 75,000 BTU. That's a very impressive range to me, and I'm sure it could be tweaked at either end of that range when at home by using cordwood and experience with your individual setup.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Can this stove be turned way down to a smouldering long cat burn without the secondaries kicking in?

Yes, without a doubt. I sat in front of it and stared into a flameless box without a hint of smoke anywhere inside coming from the two fresh splits that were placed inside on a big, hot coal bed. A little more air and the Borealis came right back to life. Stove output range during the EPA test was about 10,500 BTU up to 75,000 BTU. That's a very impressive range to me, and I'm sure it could be tweaked at either end of that range when at home by using cordwood and experience with your individual setup.

So, if it is just down to a smolder, does that mean the burn tubes are not active and only come into play once the stove reaches a certain temperature?