2019/20 VC Owners thread

[alivegas99]

Yes, happy burning to all! 3 months of burning and no problems whatsoever with my VC. Has been a great wood stove for me thus far. A pleasurable experience.

Really chewing through wood tho! Nothing abnormal but didn’t realize my 4 to 5 cords may not make it past April. Thought I was going to have some left over haha. I’m not sure processing all this wood myself is going to be possible! Supplementing isn’t the worst thing in the world I guess...

 

[Dobish]

Enjoying a load of pine and willow tonight. I need to bring some more wood up in the next few days. So far this season I've gone through a little more than a cord. Most of it has been larger rounds that i have to fight into three stove, but i don't want to carry them back down to the splitter! I'm about ready for a cleaning if the chimney, maybe new year's day.

 

[Diabel]

Enjoying a load of pine and willow tonight. I need to bring some more wood up in the next few days. So far this season I've gone through a little more than a cord. Most of it has been larger rounds that i have to fight into three stove, but i don't want to carry them back down to the splitter! I'm about ready for a cleaning if the chimney, maybe new year's day.

Yeah, fitting irregular splits into the encore can be tricky....top or front.....
Loading the BK is almost comical. I laugh every time I load it. It almost takes anything.

 

[RandyBoBandy]

I’m just under a cord for 1400 sqft. I was out of town for thanksgiving and Christmas so that’s about 9 days saved. Plus it’s been warm so demands are low. If it’s above 30 and sunny a small load will carry me to my overnight load.

 

[RandyBoBandy]

This is after 13 hours. House is 70 degrees, outside probably mid 20’s. Loaded at 9 last night and took these pics at 10:00 this morning. Was able to keep the cat between 1400-1550 with stovetop at 400-450. Glass isn’t bad either.

 

[Diabel]

This is after 13 hours. House is 70 degrees, outside probably mid 20’s. Loaded at 9 last night and took these pics at 10:00 this morning. Was able to keep the cat between 1400-1550 with stovetop at 400-450. Glass isn’t bad either.

Impressive! Good feeling right!

 

[Woodsplitter67]

This is after 13 hours. House is 70 degrees, outside probably mid 20’s. Loaded at 9 last night and took these pics at 10:00 this morning. Was able to keep the cat between 1400-1550 with stovetop at 400-450. Glass isn’t bad either.

thats great.. love the long burns and the the large range of heat output. i see the back of your stove is different than mine.. what stove do u have

 

[RandyBoBandy]

thats great.. love the long burns and the the large range of heat output. i see the back of your stove is different than mine.. what stove do u have

It’s a 2550. The tag on the back of the stove says 2250 but it’s identical to the 2550. I have never been able to find out why it’s tagged 2250.

 

[Reckless]

It’s a 2550. The tag on the back of the stove says 2250 but it’s identical to the 2550. I have never been able to find out why it’s tagged 2250.

Looks like a 2550 to me too, probably just some good quality control.


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[Diabel]

Looks like a 2550 to me too, probably just some good quality control.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The tag was punched on a Friday afternoon.

 

[Woody Stover]

I’m just under a cord for 1400 sqft....it’s been warm so demands are low. If it’s above 30 and sunny a small load will carry me to my overnight load.

I like burning wood and all, but every day that goes by where I don't have to burn as much wood, I view as work saved. We had a couple ten-degree nights here a while back, but many more days like today where it's 46 out.
I need to find a way to determine how much wood I actually burn in a season; I have my wood separated by specie and I'm always pulling from different stacks..

 

[RandyBoBandy]

I like burning wood and all, but every day that goes by where I don't have to burn as much wood, I view as work saved. We had a couple ten-degree nights here a while back, but many more days like today where it's 46 out.
I need to find a way to determine how much wood I actually burn in a season; I have my wood separated by specie and I'm always pulling from different stacks..

Your climate is pretty close to mine so this sounds about accurate. I have stacks all over the place to but I use my garage storage as my calculator. The rack is just under a face cord and all the shorts and uglies stacked on the floor pretty much round things out to an even face cord.

 

[Woody Stover]

Your climate is pretty close to mine so this sounds about accurate. I have stacks all over the place to but I use my garage storage as my calculator. The rack is just under a face cord and all the shorts and uglies stacked on the floor pretty much round things out to an even face cord.

Yeah, I could do something like that. I have "staging stacks" near the door, I'd just have to take some measurements every time I haul wood up with the quad and trailer..

We're a good couple of ticks warmer than you are; And we've been getting away with murder down here so far..murder, I tell ya! heheh
From usclimatedata.com

 

[Kevin Weis]

Last Intrepid Flexburn update: I've tweaked the hell out of this stove without permanently changing any settings /functions. To bring everybody up to date the tweaks so far have been to close off the secondary air. This was done just by disconnecting the ball chain from the damper lever. I felt this was "diluting" the air flow going into the firebox via the air wash from the primary. The primary intake flap has a round hole the size of a nickel so you can't close the air off completely anyways. This also made the primary air control a little more responsive. The secondary combustion chamber has five 3/8" holes on the refractory for combustion prior the cat. This shares the incoming air with the air wash from the primary. Secondary air appears to have bypassed the combustion chamber itself went behind it to try to mountain a draft by suction on the combustion chamber to keep carbon monoxide going up the flue if the draft for some reason the draftjust stopped while it was still burning. This is what I was told be a local chimney sweep. The last tweak I did was to slightly reduce the amount of air going directly to the combustion chamber from the primary which would b default put more air through the air wash to the fire then back to the combustion chamber intake. VC from the factory put a stainless steel resistor plate in the combustion chamber to reduce the air flow through three of the holes and may be an attempt to balance the air flow between the combustion chamber and the air wash. The result of all of this was a more uniform and higher heat output of the stove top and a more stable longer running heat setting. Okay so because more heat is being diverted to the stove top, less heat is going to the cat cooling it down to around 650-700 generally and therefore more smoke going out the Chimney, a downside. At this setting the stovetop is around 400. It will hold this for about 3 hours depending on size/type/moisture content of wood as would be expected. Overall I give it a 'B'. As with all VC stoves this is a little draft needy but not as much as it's big brothers which essentially have a double downdraft design as compared to a single downdraft with the Intrepid.

 

[Rahm]

Haven't been on here all year but I wanted to let everyone know about the Cat probe setup that I have. I didn't want to get the Auber because I don't like the lit up color display and I didn't want something that had to be plugged into the wall. So I bought this:

Amazon product ASIN B016EILWBM
It runs on a 9v battery. This is my third season using it and I just replaced the battery a month ago for the first time. The two downsides to this are that there's no alarm so it won't warn you if the cat is too hot and it's only in centigrade. But centigrade isn't really a problem as long as you know a couple conversions (260c = 500f and 870c = 1600f) so I just try to keep it between 300 and 800.

I bought this probe for it because the one it comes with isn't rated for high enough temperatures.

1M High Temperature 0~400 Degree Thermocouple K type 100mm Probe Sensors | eBay

Feature: Fits all our temperature controllers This item has been tested in good working condition Allows forming and bending of the thermocouple without the risk of cracking Operating Temperature:-100–1250°C Probe Material:Stainless Steel Probe Diameter:5mm Threads Size:8mm Probe Length:100mm...

www.ebay.com

the whole setup costs less than $20, significantly cheaper than the Auber or the Condor.

 

[begreen]

Wow, that's a lot cheaper.

 

[Openroadguy]

Hello everyone -
three years ago we bought a Vermont Castings Defiant wood stove. While we like it we have not figured out a few different things I’m hoping to get some guidance on.

1. Without the cat engaged, we can’t really control the temperature on the fire. Even if I turn the air intake all the way down it barely does anything. Is this normal?
2.. when the cat is on, the stove puffs a lot when I turn the temperature down . At best I can turn it down 3/4 before it starts puffing. Usually at most 1/2. Is this normal? Shouldn’t I be able to turn it way down with the cat engaged?

In general, it Seems like I don’t have much control on running the stove cooler. I dont think that’s normal , but wanted to get some others perspectives.

thank you in advance for any help!

 

[Kevin Weis]

Hello everyone -
three years ago we bought a Vermont Castings Defiant wood stove. While we like it we have not figured out a few different things I’m hoping to get some guidance on.

1. Without the cat engaged, we can’t really control the temperature on the fire. Even if I turn the air intake all the way down it barely does anything. Is this normal?
2.. when the cat is on, the stove puffs a lot when I turn the temperature down . At best I can turn it down 3/4 before it starts puffing. Usually at most 1/2. Is this normal? Shouldn’t I be able to turn it way down with the cat engaged?

In general, it Seems like I don’t have much control on running the stove cooler. I dont think that’s normal , but wanted to get some others perspectives.

thank you in advance for any help!

A couple things the VC flex burns are draft needy. If your draft is weak that is probably most of your problem. They also don't like "wet" wood whatsoever. Also in play maybe the secondary air intake is not operating or adjusted properly. The more secondary air you have the less sensitive the primarair control will be. Some have disconnected the secondary air altogether and have better primary air control has the result. To me your issue sounds Iike weak draft and/or wet wood. Lots of things you may be able to do to promote better draft as per previous threads on this.

 

[Kevin Weis]

Other flexburn owners here, have you found at what temp your glass will burn off accumulated creosote/tar? The hottest I can get my glass is around the 475 mark which apparently isn't sufficient to do this well. have heard somewhere that around 600 is the temp needed to do this. Can anyone verify this? Also in a quick study of cat vs. non cat stoves on this the non cats seem to have fewer problems with this. As such I conclude that since cat stoves (VC) tend to pull the fire/heat toward the back is in fact pulling the heat from the front and the air wash for the glass is essentially cold air not heated much, this keeps the glass cooler, no? This as opposed to non cats with secondary burn tubes that pull the fire/heat it seems toward the front (glass) and able to burn the glass clean better? Thoughts anyone.

 

[Woody Stover]

Probably mostly true. The air wash air may be heated some, being drawn through ducts that are exposed to firebox heat. Non-cats have an air wash too, but yeah when the secondary is burning a lot of heat goes forward under the baffle to exit the stove.
A lot of glass cleanliness has to do with how dry the wood is, and how low you run the stove. You can't run a non-cat real low, or the burn gets dirty.

 

[Northern NH Mike]

Probably mostly true. The air wash air may be heated some, being drawn through ducts that are exposed to firebox heat. Non-cats have an air wash too, but yeah when the secondary is burning a lot of heat goes forward under the baffle to exit the stove.
A lot of glass cleanliness has to do with how dry the wood is, and how low you run the stove. You can't run a non-cat real low, or the burn gets dirty.

The hotter I run my non-cat, the cleaner the glass stays. On start up, the glass is very sensitive to any wood that has the cut end close to it. It'll blacken pretty quickly. Once things get rolling, the soot/creosote burns off quickly and completely. So long as I run efficiently I have no problem until the next start up.

 

[Kevin Weis]

Probably mostly true. The air wash air may be heated some, being drawn through ducts that are exposed to firebox heat. Non-cats have an air wash too, but yeah when the secondary is burning a lot of heat goes forward under the baffle to exit the stove.
A lot of glass cleanliness has to do with how dry the wood is, and how low you run the stove. You can't run a non-cat real low, or the burn gets dirty.

The air wash ducts in the Intrepid are really not exposed to much heat at all save for the vertical manifold next to the doors. The ducts to the manifolds are on the bottom next to the sides and mostly get buried in ash.

 

[alivegas99]

I’m always trying to maximize wood volume into the Encore before overnight burns. The firebox is about 24 inches wide but I typically can’t get much bigger than 20 inches into the top loader, less after every piece of wood I put in. This leaves me with >20% of my stove volume empty after maximum loading.

I’ve been finding that, with my cuts of wood varying between 15 and 20 inches, the shorter cuts I can place vertically in the stove, all the way to the side, and then fill the remainder of the volume of the stove, stacking splits horizontally, all the way to the top. It is like getting an entire extra piece of would into stove. I’ve noticed a slightly hotter stove and more coals making for an easier/faster restart the next day (and I assume some extra heat at night). Others may already do this or have better methods but I thought it might help some.

 

[ajayabb]

Moisture content has been a problem with my firewood this year. Decided to purchase Bio Blocks for my stove this week. Performance has been much better

 

[Kevin Weis]

TSC has them on sale now or did at least the ones near me.