VC Encore burn times

[jharkin]

Gridlock... 2300?? Holy %($*%& I once saw 2000F on the meter when I lost track of time and left it cranking. The entire upper fireback was glowing orange. Scared the crap out of me.

Browning... how are those burn times doing?

Just had the first fires this weekend and its looking good here. Im on my 3rd season now and each year gets better. This year when I was cleaning it I noticed that the cat has about a 1/4in gap, so I got some of that Condar cat gasket... and gave the cat a vinegar wash just because. I think that, plus 2 year old oak and apple is making a difference... cat temps seem more controllable, only one spike to 1700 that backed down as soon as I lowered the air. That dry oak really affects the burns times too. Last night I loaded it up at 7pm, reasonably full but not stuffed. House was at 75F so I put it all the way down on low. Ay 6:30 am the house had dropped to 69F and I still had coals and a 300F stovetop. Never would have believed that possible the first year.

I think the insulation work I did is helping me as well. Im not pushing the stove as hard which is certainly help my burn times.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Gridlock... 2300?? Holy %($*%& I once saw 2000F on the meter when I lost track of time and left it cranking. The entire upper fireback was glowing orange. Scared the crap out of me.

Browning... how are those burn times doing?

Just had the first fires this weekend and its looking good here. Im on my 3rd season now and each year gets better. This year when I was cleaning it I noticed that the cat has about a 1/4in gap, so I got some of that Condar cat gasket... and gave the cat a vinegar wash just because. I think that, plus 2 year old oak and apple is making a difference... cat temps seem more controllable, only one spike to 1700 that backed down as soon as I lowered the air. That dry oak really affects the burns times too. Last night I loaded it up at 7pm, reasonably full but not stuffed. House was at 75F so I put it all the way down on low. Ay 6:30 am the house had dropped to 69F and I still had coals and a 300F stovetop. Never would have believed that possible the first year.

I think the insulation work I did is helping me as well. Im not pushing the stove as hard which is certainly help my burn times.

I've gotten a 9-10 hour burn out of it yesterday. Right now, it is my favorite stove to run. Puts out a lot of heat, long burn times, can hold some good size splits, and extremely easy to start up.

I do not have a cat probe but I am well aware of the issue. I have been hitting the back panel with the IR thermometer checking for temp spikes. It's not as good as a cat probe, but it will detect if the back panel is getting too hot, which will give me some sort of idea as to what is going on with the cat. So far the back panel has not exceeded 480°.

The Encore is allowing me to burn less wood since the Vigilant is being used a lot less. If the temps are north of 36 degrees during the day I don't need to run the Vigilant, which is nice, and surprising. When I do run the Vigilant, I barely need to put any wood in it and that area of the house easily gets to 80°.

The season is still early. But, I'm hoping my VC experiment continues to pay.

 

[leeave96]

I've gotten a 9-10 hour burn out of it yesterday. Right now, it is my favorite stove to run. Puts out a lot of heat, long burn times, can hold some good size splits, and extremely easy to start up.

I do not have a cat probe but I am well aware of the issue. I have been hitting the back panel with the IR thermometer checking for temp spikes. It's not as good as a cat probe, but it will detect if the back panel is getting too hot, which will give me some sort of idea as to what is going on with the cat. So far the back panel has not exceeded 480°.

The Encore is allowing me to burn less wood since the Vigilant is being used a lot less. If the temps are north of 36 degrees during the day I don't need to run the Vigilant, which is nice, and surprising. When I do run the Vigilant, I barely need to put any wood in it and that area of the house easily gets to 80°.

The season is still early. But, I'm hoping my VC experiment continues to pay.

This sounds very good - very similar to my Woodstock burns. Very interested in this thread too.

Thanks,
Bill

 

[jimbom]

Interesting thread for me also. I am hoping to learn to operate a VC Encore this winter also.

 

[BrowningBAR]

I've gotten a 9-10 hour burn out of it yesterday. Right now, it is my favorite stove to run. Puts out a lot of heat, long burn times, can hold some good size splits, and extremely easy to start up.

I do not have a cat probe but I am well aware of the issue. I have been hitting the back panel with the IR thermometer checking for temp spikes. It's not as good as a cat probe, but it will detect if the back panel is getting too hot, which will give me some sort of idea as to what is going on with the cat. So far the back panel has not exceeded 480°.

The Encore is allowing me to burn less wood since the Vigilant is being used a lot less. If the temps are north of 36 degrees during the day I don't need to run the Vigilant, which is nice, and surprising. When I do run the Vigilant, I barely need to put any wood in it and that area of the house easily gets to 80°.

The season is still early. But, I'm hoping my VC experiment continues to pay.

This sounds very good - very similar to my Woodstock burns. Very interested in this thread too.

Thanks,
Bill

The difference is that I am working with a larger firebox than your Keystone. It is 2.3 cu ft and it seems like an honest spec since it is much larger than the Heritage which also has a claimed 2.3 cu ft firebox. This means the your Keystone is still more efficient since my firebox is probably a little larger than the usable space on a Fireview.

Also note that I am using an Encore 0028 Which is about 20 years old. I'm not sure how this would compare to the newer Encores, but I have heard the newer ones are suppose to be a bit more efficient.

I have not experienced any of the known issues that have been associated with VC stoves... yet. I am very aware of the potential over-firing of the Cat. I have not experienced this yet, to my knowledge, but I have been monitoring the back panel temps religiously to ensure nothing gets out of control. So far, this is an incredibly easy stove to use. Fire's catch quickly on reloads.

What I have noticed is that it is a lot more efficient than the Heritage. I am using the same wood and I am getting less ash and longer burns on the Encore. I haven't emptied that ash pan yet, meanwhile I am shoveling ash out of the Heritage every other day. The ash build up is not a big deal on the Heritage, and it wouldn't be a purchasing fact if both stoves had the same burn time and heat output. Just noting the difference of how the two are operating.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Sunday morning I wake up to the bedroom being 65-70°, which is about a 5-10° improvement from last year as the overnight temps were in the low 20s. So, I was happy. I came down stair to the Encore sitting at 400°+ degrees after about 6 hours (got to bed late but my avatar gets up early to water the plants). Problem I had was that my glass was pretty much black. I seemed to have cut the air two quickly before I went to bed, which annoyed me since that meant I was smoking all night.

On the positive side, the morning burn cleaned the glass pretty quickly. The air wash on this thing works real well.

I still have not gotten a low temp cat burn, yet. Could be my wood supply, but I won't know for sure until next winter.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Interesting thread for me also. I am hoping to learn to operate a VC Encore this winter also.

Is this your first year with the stove? If so, what was your previous stove?

 

[jimbom]

Is this your first year with the stove? Yes. If so, what was your previous stove? None for regular heat.

First year with this stove. Previous stove - Atlanta Stoveworks AC5 bought out of an old barn for backup in power outages. Turned out to be an excellent device and I still have it. The AC5 is a steel box, but it has excellent primary airwash, secondary burn and a cat. Runs like a dream and flat puts out the heat. Has a testing lab plate on the back that certifies 80% efficiency at 10,000 BTU/h down to 70% at 34,000 BTU/h. Can not understand for the life of me why Atlanta Stoveworks went out of business. Still only backup, but inspired me to try a modern stove for heat.

This will be my first year since twenty years ago heating with wood. Really had no idea how the modern wood stove had evolved until coming across this forum. Twenty years ago we had some steel box in the basement that powered the hot air system. Overseas thirty plus years ago it was a Russian wood stove and wood fired bath. In college, it was an old living room wood circulator. So basically, I have zero experience with the modern stove. The information from this site primarily constitutes what I know so far. None of my friends use wood anymore. So there is nobody to talk with about this stuff around here.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Is this your first year with the stove? Yes. If so, what was your previous stove? None for regular heat.

First year with this stove. Previous stove - Atlanta Stoveworks AC5 bought out of an old barn for backup in power outages. Turned out to be an excellent device and I still have it. The AC5 is a steel box, but it has excellent primary airwash, secondary burn and a cat. Runs like a dream and flat puts out the heat. Has a testing lab plate on the back that certifies 80% efficiency at 10,000 BTU/h down to 70% at 34,000 BTU/h. Can not understand for the life of me why Atlanta Stoveworks went out of business. Still only backup, but inspired me to try a modern stove for heat.

This will be my first year since twenty years ago heating with wood. Really had no idea how the modern wood stove had evolved until coming across this forum. Twenty years ago we had some steel box in the basement that powered the hot air system. Overseas thirty plus years ago it was a Russian wood stove and wood fired bath. In college, it was an old living room wood circulator. So basically, I have zero experience with the modern stove. The information from this site primarily constitutes what I know so far. None of my friends use wood anymore. So there is nobody to talk with about this stuff around here.

I've read, but have not verified, that the previous Encore model (and Defiant) can be upgraded to the new assemble that the 2-in-1 stoves use. I do not remember if the 2550 is the previous model.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Alright. I got my first low temp cat burn going. Stove is sitting at about 400 and I'm smokeless.

 

[Diabel]

Was your air totally shut in order to achieve this?
This year so far if I shut the air all the way down I will
loose the temp on the cat and will start to see a bit (not much)
of smoke from the stack.

 

[Jack768]

Good to hear a positive VC experience. A 2-in-1 Encore or Defiant would work best for my upcoming install project, in terms of aesthetics and clearances. Everburn horror stories make me wary, but one more season of good 2-in-1 reviews on this site, and I'm sold.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Was your air totally shut in order to achieve this?
This year so far if I shut the air all the way down I will
loose the temp on the cat and will start to see a bit (not much)
of smoke from the stack.

No. It's about three quarters shut.

I had a load that took off slow for whatever reason and I engaged and started shutting the air down sooner. Previously, to engage the cat and stay smokeless, I had to wait until I hit roughly 550°. This time I engaged the cat around 425-450°. I let the flames rumble around for a few minutes and then I started to decrease the air supply. The flame movement slowed and the center of the wood stack glowed. After about an hour I saw that the stove temps dropped to about 400° and the firebox looked 'right'. I checked the chimney it was smokeless.

The back panel was sitting in the mid-200° range.

The load was 4 good size splits. If I had known I was going to be able to lock in at low temp I would have packed the stove full to see what type of burn time I could get out of it.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Good to hear a positive VC experience. A 2-in-1 Encore or Defiant would work best for my upcoming install project, in terms of aesthetics and clearances. Everburn horror stories make me wary, but one more season of good 2-in-1 reviews on this site, and I'm sold.

Just to be clear, I am running an older model, which might make it more shocking that it is a positive review. :lol:

If I can find one, I am leaning towards buying a used catalytic Defiant by the next burning season.

 

[Diabel]

Just my opinion but I believe the 0028 is one of the best
batch of units VC had produced!

 

[BrowningBAR]

Just my opinion but I believe the 0028 is one of the best
batch of units VC had produced!

Well, right now, I can't argue with that!

 

[BrowningBAR]

Was your air totally shut in order to achieve this?
This year so far if I shut the air all the way down I will
loose the temp on the cat and will start to see a bit (not much)
of smoke from the stack.

No. It's about three quarters shut.

I had a load that took off slow for whatever reason and I engaged and started shutting the air down sooner. Previously, to engage the cat and stay smokeless, I had to wait until I hit roughly 550°. This time I engaged the cat around 425-450°. I let the flames rumble around for a few minutes and then I started to decrease the air supply. The flame movement slowed and the center of the wood stack glowed. After about an hour I saw that the stove temps dropped to about 400° and the firebox looked 'right'. I checked the chimney it was smokeless.

The back panel was sitting in the mid-200° range.

The load was 4 good size splits. If I had known I was going to be able to lock in at low temp I would have packed the stove full to see what type of burn time I could get out of it.

Just an update on this; I'm at about 7 hours on this burn and the stove top is at 300°+. Not bad with 4 splits. Being in the middle of shoulder season, I could see getting a 10+ hour burn with a full load and an engaged cat locked in at a lower temp. I've slowly opened up the air over the last hour. Other than that, the stove has been untouched.

 

[BrowningBAR]

The stove top was at about 300° with just coals. Loaded the stove up with one ugly large split and two normal sized splits. 10 minutes later the cat is engaged and the stove is at 500°.

 

[Stump_Branch]

The length of burn times or dare i say the ease at which to keep a lower temp going steady, is the reason the second stove is going to be a cat.

Now just to rip out that 1970s oil burner in order to free up the flue....

 

[leeave96]

Was your air totally shut in order to achieve this?
This year so far if I shut the air all the way down I will
loose the temp on the cat and will start to see a bit (not much)
of smoke from the stack.

No. It's about three quarters shut.

I had a load that took off slow for whatever reason and I engaged and started shutting the air down sooner. Previously, to engage the cat and stay smokeless, I had to wait until I hit roughly 550°. This time I engaged the cat around 425-450°. I let the flames rumble around for a few minutes and then I started to decrease the air supply. The flame movement slowed and the center of the wood stack glowed. After about an hour I saw that the stove temps dropped to about 400° and the firebox looked 'right'. I checked the chimney it was smokeless.

The back panel was sitting in the mid-200° range.

The load was 4 good size splits. If I had known I was going to be able to lock in at low temp I would have packed the stove full to see what type of burn time I could get out of it.

FWIW, on my Keystone, the damper is numbered 0 - 4 and I have never been able to dial down to 0, sometimes .5, usually the lowest for me is .75 with no flames and cat doing it's thing all night with 500 degree stove top for hours. I think the Encore has some air holes in it to keep the air supply from being completely shut off and the Keystone has a hole in the ash pan housing to allow the same - but more over to get some air under the coals so they will burn down too. I'll be interested in how you make out with a fully loaded fire box on a low burn.

Good luck,
Bill

 

[Diabel]

The encore has two holes, one on each side of the ash pan housing.

 

[Todd]

Sounds like your getting the hang of that VC pretty well. Howbout some pics of that good lookin VC? I remember a couple threads about those ash pan holes, probably a good idea to keep an eye on them and not let them get plugged up. Like Bill said, sounds similar to the Keystone . I've tinkered with that hole closing it off or part way but the stove just burns better with it open and I can turn it down much further without worrying about a cat stall.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Sounds like your getting the hang of that VC pretty well. Howbout some pics of that good lookin VC? I remember a couple threads about those ash pan holes, probably a good idea to keep an eye on them and not let them get plugged up. Like Bill said, sounds similar to the Keystone . I've tinkered with that hole closing it off or part way but the stove just burns better with it open and I can turn it down much further without worrying about a cat stall.

Pictures will be coming. I think I still need to post pics of the Heritage, to be honest. :red:

I'll have to check out the ash pan holes. Well be getting highs to about 60 tomorrow and Thursday, so I should have the opportunity to poke around in the ash pen case.

 

[jharkin]

Sunday morning I wake up to the bedroom being 65-70°, which is about a 5-10° improvement from last year as the overnight temps were in the low 20s. So, I was happy. I came down stair to the Encore sitting at 400°+ degrees after about 6 hours (got to bed late but my avatar gets up early to water the plants). Problem I had was that my glass was pretty much black. I seemed to have cut the air two quickly before I went to bed, which annoyed me since that meant I was smoking all night.

On the positive side, the morning burn cleaned the glass pretty quickly. The air wash on this thing works real well.

I still have not gotten a low temp cat burn, yet. Could be my wood supply, but I won't know for sure until next winter.

I wouldn't worry about black glass. Its a side effect of the VC design that has the cat in the back in that sperate insulated chamber. When you are burning VERY low, the firebox is just smouldering. All that smoke feeds the cat which is making almost all the heat on low burn. The smoky firebox will blacken up the glass but as long as the cat is working the chimney will stay clean.

For long overnight burns I pack it to an inch below the griddle and once the cat is lit I close the air to within 1/8inch of fully closed. Ive got 2 year old wood and burning like this it will sit with 350-400 griddle temps and around 1100F on the cat most of the night. (This is another area where the cat probe helps - you know not to worry about low griddle temps as long as the cat is reading over 800) Glass get black but after an entire winter of burning like that Ive never got more than a coffee can of ash from a cleaning.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Sunday morning I wake up to the bedroom being 65-70°, which is about a 5-10° improvement from last year as the overnight temps were in the low 20s. So, I was happy. I came down stair to the Encore sitting at 400°+ degrees after about 6 hours (got to bed late but my avatar gets up early to water the plants). Problem I had was that my glass was pretty much black. I seemed to have cut the air two quickly before I went to bed, which annoyed me since that meant I was smoking all night.

On the positive side, the morning burn cleaned the glass pretty quickly. The air wash on this thing works real well.

I still have not gotten a low temp cat burn, yet. Could be my wood supply, but I won't know for sure until next winter.

I wouldn't worry about black glass. Its a side effect of the VC design that has the cat in the back in that sperate insulated chamber. When you are burning VERY low, the firebox is just smouldering. All that smoke feeds the cat which is making almost all the heat on low burn. The smoky firebox will blacken up the glass but as long as the cat is working the chimney will stay clean.

For long overnight burns I pack it to an inch below the griddle and once the cat is lit I close the air to within 1/8inch of fully closed. Ive got 2 year old wood and burning like this it will sit with 350-400 griddle temps and around 1100F on the cat most of the night. (This is another area where the cat probe helps - you know not to worry about low griddle temps as long as the cat is reading over 800) Glass get black but after an entire winter of burning like that Ive never got more than a coffee can of ash from a cleaning.

Interesting. I'll pay closer attention to this. I just assumed I lost the cat burn at some point when the glass blackened. I woke up to this issue this morning as well. I'll pay a little more attention to the chimney in the morning before I disengage the cat since I still had log-shaped wood in the fire box and got another hour or so from the burn once I added more air.

In regards to the glass, no matter how dark it gets, it cleans up really well on the first hot burn.