2022/23 VC Owner thread

[bert670]

During a recent cold spell I dipped into a 3-4 year aged oak pile I had for my fire pit. It was mostly larger pieces, but there were enough smaller splits that were donated to my Dauntless. I must say, using that wood was the easiest fires I’ve ran in the Dauntless. I maybe adjusted the secondary air 3-4 times over the course of a 8 hour period. I didn’t measure the moisture of the wood, didn’t even cross my mind. Goes to show, quality wood makes life easier. My main wood supply was mostly a mix of year dried wood, unknown species. Fires burned well, but had to do more adjustments to get the desired results.

 

[JohnDaileyNH]

Wow $500 a cord! Is that the going rate in Jersey? I understand it is kiln dried and delivered, that's worth a premium. Last I knew wood was $200 a cord in CT, but that was a few years back....

Spending quality time doing something productive with children in the great outdoors is worth a lot. There is a pretty short window of time where kids are actually helpful (or at least not a drag) and willing to work..... enjoy it. I can tell you recognize the opportunity.

Oh, and.... I agree with you there is nothing like a constant source of heat in the house. Even if the edges of the house are cooler it is really nice to have a warm spot you can go to. I love having a central heat source that I can fuel myself at minimal cost plus my own labor. I have been burning full time for 10+ years now and I really appreciate and enjoy it. This past fall it occurred to me I had not run my hot water baseboard circ pump in ~5 years..... Figured I better turn the thermostats on to make sure the system still runs.... it was fine.

Now if I could just get this stove to run right......

Kiln dried in NH is like 450 a cord so 500 in NJ wouldn't surprise me

 

[arnermd]

Happy Monday all....

Seeing some very odd stove behavior the last 2 burns. Seems to be taking much longer to get my cat up to temp and then once it does light off when I close down the air it crashes the cat. Very strange.....

Sunday morning I woke to find the stove pretty cold and a lot of unburned coals, I opened the air up at 4:30 and the cat went to 1000. The overnight air setting was ~40% so it was not like I had it choked down.

On the next load at 9:20 cat temps went up as normal and then crashed, I actually plugged the secondary inlet around 9:50 to get the cat to light off. Once it did it seemed fine for a few hours.

I opened up the refractory last night and inspected.... all seemed normal. Pics of the metal cat are below, it looks to be in pretty good shape. The frame is still relatively square and straight. The mesh is clearly more distorted than it was but is still structurally sound.

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Kiln dried in NH is like 450 a cord so 500 in NJ wouldn't surprise me

Hears the thing.. most sell kiln dried and its not actually dried. Its heated for a little bit to kill the bugs on the outside. Some have posted of purchasing kiln-dried wood and its still wet in the center of the split. The people that are purchasing from me are getting truly kiln-dried wood. The people that purchased received wood that was anywhere from 9 to 14% MC depending on where the wood was in the kiln and the size and species of wood. Believe it or not 500 dollars is a bargain compared to some.. I posted in a thread a while back on another forum someone was asking for 700 per cord for pretty much the same thing Im selling.. and not delivered I believe this was in Massachusetts.. or CT.. there are people here asking for 400 to 500 a cord for so-called smoking wood sitting outside most likely at 30%... I dont advertise and I do it more for fun.. my son does it for the money.. Is a source of income for him while he's in high-school..

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Happy Monday all....

Seeing some very odd stove behavior the last 2 burns. Seems to be taking much longer to get my cat up to temp and then once it does light off when I close down the air it crashes the cat. Very strange.....

Sunday morning I woke to find the stove pretty cold and a lot of unburned coals, I opened the air up at 4:30 and the cat went to 1000. The overnight air setting was ~40% so it was not like I had it choked down.

On the next load at 9:20 cat temps went up as normal and then crashed, I actually plugged the secondary inlet around 9:50 to get the cat to light off. Once it did it seemed fine for a few hours.

I opened up the refractory last night and inspected.... all seemed normal. Pics of the metal cat are below, it looks to be in pretty good shape. The frame is still relatively square and straight. The mesh is clearly more distorted than it was but is still structurally sound.

View attachment 310677 View attachment 310678

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this was something that was happening to me a number of weeks ago.. did the shutter adjustment and vacuumed ot the inside of the stove...

 

[arnermd]

this was something that was happening to me a number of weeks ago.. did the shutter adjustment and vacuumed ot the inside of the stove...

I thought of you when it happened.....

Last nights burn was more "normal" but it still went to 1400 pretty quick, then slowly crashed to 800 and then ramped back to 1400 over the course of 3 hours....
This morning had a lot of unburned wood still in there, opened the air up and cat went from 400 to 900 before dying off.

Stove is cooling today so might have another peek tonight.

 

[Woodsplitter67]

I thought of you when it happened.....

Last nights burn was more "normal" but it still went to 1400 pretty quick, then slowly crashed to 800 and then ramped back to 1400 over the course of 3 hours....
This morning had a lot of unburned wood still in there, opened the air up and cat went from 400 to 900 before dying off.

Stove is cooling today so might have another peek tonight.

The unburnt wood is saying.. yo.. im stalling.. WTF when I was waking up at 5am is what i said back

 

[JohnDaileyNH]

The unburnt wood is saying.. yo.. im stalling.. WTF when I was waking up at 5am is what i said back

Mine was doing this after running pretty hard for about 10 days in a row and when I cleaned out the ash it went back to normal. It was loaded. That is what prompted me to ask the primary air flow question. I was curious if having too much ash would restrict the flow and cause the cat to stall. Seems to be the answer is yes, but not for the reason I was thinking

 

[arnermd]

Mine was doing this after running pretty hard for about 10 days in a row and when I cleaned out the ash it went back to normal. It was loaded. That is what prompted me to ask the primary air flow question. I was curious if having too much ash would restrict the flow and cause the cat to stall. Seems to be the answer is yes, but not for the reason I was thinking

I looked mine over real good and I do not see any issues, had a build up of some fly ash under the cat but not a ton..... I did notice a larger than normal gap between the front and rear refractory sections, I considered stuffing it with some insulation but decided to leave it for now. I could use more secondary air anyway to keep the temps down.

I do not see how it is possible to restrict airflow with ash buildup. The only passage that could get plugged are the 8 holes in the front refractory at the bottom, and they always seem to be covered by the ash anyway.....

I suppose if you had a massive pile of ash underneath the cat you could choke the draft there a bit and reduce airflow when in cat mode. Air does not flow up through the ash pan area so if that is full or not shouldn't matter. (mine was emptied 2 days ago)

🤷‍♂️ IDK..... I put some wood in it "and fired that mother up", to quote the late, great Charlie Daniels. I'll let you know in the morning.....

 

[Eman85]

Been too warm but last night they predicted high 30's so I lit the stove even though it was 50 out. Built a good bed of coals , loaded 1/2 box and engaged the cat. it did climb and at 1000 I cut the air back, temp climbed and looked like it was going to cruise around 11-1200. checked a little later and it was in the 900's and dropping. no smoke from chimney I went to bed. I got up about 8 hours later and opened the air, stove had a little heat and a small pile of coals. Threw a couple of thin splits in and opened the door and fire came back for morning coffee, temps in the 70's so I Iet it burn out.

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Been too warm but last night they predicted high 30's so I lit the stove even though it was 50 out. Built a good bed of coals , loaded 1/2 box and engaged the cat. it did climb and at 1000 I cut the air back, temp climbed and looked like it was going to cruise around 11-1200. checked a little later and it was in the 900's and dropping. no smoke from chimney I went to bed. I got up about 8 hours later and opened the air, stove had a little heat and a small pile of coals. Threw a couple of thin splits in and opened the door and fire came back for morning coffee, temps in the 70's so I Iet it burn out.

sound like a nice burn

 

[arnermd]

Perfect burn last night.... I do not know how or why. Apparently pigs are now flying and hell has in fact frozen over.....

• Key damper was open for the entire burn
• Stove was cold so I light off a few sticks to get some heat in the stove and the flue got fairly hot.... cat light off with no trouble.
• Let that burn down to coals and then loaded up with a full load of red oak, large and med size splits.
• Immediately engaged the cat, air set to 100% open.
• Nudged the air down slowly a couple times to 50%, cat settled in around 1230.
• Cat temps were very stable and slowly decayed overnight down to 1000 when the cat quit.
• Woke up to a nice 4" bed of hot coals still throwing plenty of heat....

What changed to achieve this result? Nothing....

I have a hunch that I have secondary air leaking through the refractory seam into the smoke stream just above the cat and that is helping to control the cat exit temps by increasing the amount of excess air in the reaction. If this trend continues I may try plugging it just to confirm. (Keywords: If this trend continues....)🙏🤞

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Perfect burn last night.... I do not know how or why. Apparently pigs are now flying and hell has in fact frozen over.....

• Key damper was open for the entire burn
• Stove was cold so I light off a few sticks to get some heat in the stove and the flue got fairly hot.... cat light off with no trouble.
• Let that burn down to coals and then loaded up with a full load of red oak, large and med size splits.
• Immediately engaged the cat, air set to 100% open.
• Nudged the air down slowly a couple times to 50%, cat settled in around 1230.
• Cat temps were very stable and slowly decayed overnight down to 1000 when the cat quit.
• Woke up to a nice 4" bed of hot coals still throwing plenty of heat....

What changed to achieve this result? Nothing....

I have a hunch that I have secondary air leaking through the refractory seam into the smoke stream just above the cat and that is helping to control the cat exit temps by increasing the amount of excess air in the reaction. If this trend continues I may try plugging it just to confirm. (Keywords: If this trend continues....)🙏🤞


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nice..

 

[Eman85]

One thing with my stove that I know effects it is that much of my wood is split pretty thin. I have had a tendency to split smaller as it's easier to handle and my wife starts the fires and loads the stove and she likes it as it's easier to handle. My wood has been split for quite a few years now and split small so it's very dry. I do have my wood mixed so there's everything from red and white oak, hickory, beech, walnut and everything else. It can make the fires pretty hot and I have to adjust for that. Been splitting quite a bit this year and my splits are larger for the future, also separating some of the wood as I've got a lot of each species. If these weather trends continue I'm probably splitting wood for 5 or more years from now today! We're up to the 80's in March, this ain't right. I'd say this is going to lead to more dead trees in the near future also.

 

[arnermd]

One thing with my stove that I know effects it is that much of my wood is split pretty thin. I have had a tendency to split smaller as it's easier to handle and my wife starts the fires and loads the stove and she likes it as it's easier to handle. My wood has been split for quite a few years now and split small so it's very dry. I do have my wood mixed so there's everything from red and white oak, hickory, beech, walnut and everything else. It can make the fires pretty hot and I have to adjust for that. Been splitting quite a bit this year and my splits are larger for the future, also separating some of the wood as I've got a lot of each species. If these weather trends continue I'm probably splitting wood for 5 or more years from now today! We're up to the 80's in March, this ain't right. I'd say this is going to lead to more dead trees in the near future also.

I agree, certainly smaller splits burner hotter and faster, regardless of moisture content. I always try to make a mix so I have some big "overnighters" sprinkled in. I also started splitting my wood square when I can, much easier to pack in there. Its a lot harder to split em square when you are doing it by hand though, unless you have square trees....

 

[arnermd]

Do not fret....all is right with the world, pigs are grounded and hell has thawed.

Last nights burn, same procedure as previous....

• Key damper open, small splits to start, then a full load of larger oak splits.
• Cat lit off quick, brought the air back in increments to 50% at 1100
• Peaked at 1400 and then came back down all on its own, no adjustments, I thought we were on a good trajectory
• 21:10 the cat rocketed off to 1600.... I have no idea why, I was asleep.
• Smaller but hot bed of coals when I woke up this morning.

 

[gthomas785]

The spike was probably due to a piece of wood falling down as the ones beneath it burned away. I see the same thing happen in my stove. Wood burning is a highly chaotic process so you're never going to repeat the same behavior exactly twice.
Or another possibility is that the moisture in the center of the split finally finished baking off.. a process that can take several hours even for <20% wood.

 

[arnermd]

The spike was probably due to a piece of wood falling down as the ones beneath it burned away. I see the same thing happen in my stove. Wood burning is a highly chaotic process so you're never going to repeat the same behavior exactly twice.
Or another possibility is that the moisture in the center of the split finally finished baking off.. a process that can take several hours even for <20% wood.

Sure that all makes sense and seems like a logical explanation.

What continues to irritate me though is that this is happening at >1400F for sustained periods of time.

 

[Eman85]

Lit the stove last night and loaded about 3/4 box full after the initial cat light off and a few hour burn. cat wanted to be very active and unless I cut the air it was going past 1500, finally settled with the air cut back and burned from 10pm to 8am. Opened the air and let the coals burn for an hour and then reloaded about 1/2. Cat got active and with air at 1/2 went to 1400+. One thing I did notice was at 1300 I still had wispy white smoke from the chimney. Also noticed I could see actual flames at the slot in the back of the stove where the cat is, never noticed actual flames have seen a good glow in the past.

 

[wolfize69]

Just got my dauntless installed, did about 8 fires in it (a few low temp fires + some shorter modest temp fires). Still too warm to run this for very long, although one night I did fill it up fairly full and woke up to a cold stove with very little ash. Oh well. Much to learn still.
I have a slight concern as I noticed smoke coming from the back of the stove. In another thread, someone suggested looking down there a bit with a flashlight with the lights off to see if I could pinpoint where it is at. I dont think it's manufacturing oil or anything. I didnt really want to take a big whiff to tell what it was. We shall see. Hopefully Im not having warranty service done on a brand new stove. That would really set my tone about this brand back a few notches having paid 3.1k for it (plus all the pipes etc)

Be grateful . Our stove is 5 months old. We paid $9g and 3 things have broken on it so far. This Defiant has been a huge disappointment and i am embarassed i bought it. We bought it for the 14 hour burn aspect, we got almost 8 hours one day. We have spent hundreds of hours perfecting and honing our burning skills too. I would never buy this crap in the future.

 

[Lorde]

Be grateful . Our stove is 5 months old. We paid $9g and 3 things have broken on it so far. This Defiant has been a huge disappointment and i am embarassed i bought it. We bought it for the 14 hour burn aspect, we got almost 8 hours one day. We have spent hundreds of hours perfecting and honing our burning skills too. I would never buy this crap in the future.

What are your issues?

 

[wolfize69]

Lit the stove last night and loaded about 3/4 box full after the initial cat light off and a few hour burn. cat wanted to be very active and unless I cut the air it was going past 1500, finally settled with the air cut back and burned from 10pm to 8am. Opened the air and let the coals burn for an hour and then reloaded about 1/2. Cat got active and with air at 1/2 went to 1400+. One thing I did notice was at 1300 I still had wispy white smoke from the chimney. Also noticed I could see actual flames at the slot in the back of the stove where the cat is, never noticed actual flames have seen a good glow in the past.

Please let me know how you have been able to get more that 8 hours burn time on your stove We got almost 8 hours one time. We burn 24/7 for our primary heat source but have to reload every 3-4 hours. We've spent hundreds of hours of research and trial and error but to no avail.

 

[NewGuy132]

Please let me know how you have been able to get more that 8 hours burn time on your stove We got almost 8 hours one time. We burn 24/7 for our primary heat source but have to reload every 3-4 hours. We've spent hundreds of hours of research and trial and error but to no avail.

If you give everyone a step by step of how you get a fire going including temperatures I am sure that someone can chime in and help. What do you typically run for stove top temp? What is the temp of your cat after you close they bypass?

 

[GrumpyDad]

Happy Monday all....

Seeing some very odd stove behavior the last 2 burns. Seems to be taking much longer to get my cat up to temp and then once it does light off when I close down the air it crashes the cat. Very strange.....

Sunday morning I woke to find the stove pretty cold and a lot of unburned coals, I opened the air up at 4:30 and the cat went to 1000. The overnight air setting was ~40% so it was not like I had it choked down.

On the next load at 9:20 cat temps went up as normal and then crashed, I actually plugged the secondary inlet around 9:50 to get the cat to light off. Once it did it seemed fine for a few hours.

I opened up the refractory last night and inspected.... all seemed normal. Pics of the metal cat are below, it looks to be in pretty good shape. The frame is still relatively square and straight. The mesh is clearly more distorted than it was but is still structurally sound.

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Hey there,
Just chiming in on your stall and unburnt wood.

So I had a similar issue recently. I had smoke pouring back into the room from the top griddle and would end up with unburnt wood. Gasket looked fine. It really had me paranoid that I had a monster creosote clog in the chimney that I can't inspect from the inside due to an elbow.

SO I had to finish running the stove with primary open.

There was a monster wind storm in the area. On one side of my chimney there was a small shopping bag stuck to my chimney near the cap. I eventually crawled up there and removed it, thankfully it wasnt burnt on but it was melted a bit.

I tried to burn again and has the same exact issue.

Turns out, while I normally leave coals against the secondary entrance - for whatever reason my recent burning of mostly oak only has created ash that clogs the air flow more than normal. And I probably should have cleaned this out sooner. I took out about 1/2 of a 5 gal bucket of ash/coals, and I've burned a good bit of wood since with no issue.

If you have this issue again, just make a space for near coals to build up in that area, sweeping the old to the sides and forward a bit.

 

[wolfize69]

What are your issues?

The ashpan handle wouldn't open very easy and bent to the the point of breaking so had to get it replaced. Then the wooden knob fell off of it. The ashpan is warped out of shape beyond repair from the heat Really? This is a wood stove. The longest burn time was 8 hours. We have applied every method and followed a lot of research advice. Oh and the first time I looked at the catalyst it was broken into pieces. (They did replace it though)