Does your stove start to make some expansion noises when the fire gets hot?
Mine makes little expansion noises every couple of seconds as it is warming up. The only time my fire got real hot was the first few times before I added my modifications to reduce air flow. I have yet to see a stovepipe temp over 525 and a stovetop over 600 and in all cases the temp rose slowly over at least a half hour.
I put the stovepipe damper in this morning. Piece of cake, took about 45 minutes. Taking the stovepipe off took up half the time. Mine is a wall mount and the 22 gauge makes for a very tight fit. The stove is too heavy to slide.
My first impression is that the damper makes a significant difference in the flowrate.
With a small load of 6 splits (50F outside temp) and the stovetop damper straight up (minimum flow dampening) the stove started like usual (burn rate control set to max, normal ACC operation with no rear air). After 30 minutes the stovetop only got up to 450F. That is not quite what I was hoping for which indicates that just the presence of the damper in the stovepipe produces a significant pressure drop.
When I turn the damper to a 45-60 degree angle off vertical the stovetop temp rises 50 degrees to 500 F and I can feel the heat blowing off the stove is a little more intense. Also, and maybe it is too soon to judge but I thought that the wood was not burning as fast as before. There was not as much gas burning.
I would like to be able to run the stovetop up to 600-650 F with a half load of wood and the burn rate control set to max. With the burn rate control set to minimum I would like the stovetop to run at 425-475.
So, I now need to tweek my modification to the secondary air manifold. If you recal, I blocked that 3/4 inch round hole in the secondary manifold by 50% with a piece of angle iron. I was going to run with the side heat shield off so I could tweek this but I decided not to for safety reasons. I plan to block that hole by only 25%.
The reason that I think I need to give the secondary burn tubes more air is because they do not show the kind of flame activity that indicates they are allowing enough super-heated air into the gasses. The flame view was just "ok" on max burn rate. It seems like the gasses are lighting but then they go out for a few seconds, then re-light, so I have to give those secondary tubes more air.
After watching about a half dozen youtube videos on woodstove operation, I am very happy that the 5700 comes with all these controls. I am starting to use the rear air more to get the kind of overall burn I am looking for when viewing.
It has been fun tweeking this stove over the last few weeks.
MnDave