So, I dug this out of Precaud's "taming the wild quadrafire 2100" thread:
"Now, I must say... I really like having full control of the secondary air; it especially helps controlling the fire at lower burn rates. But the Quad 2100 has two separate secondary air inlets, on opposite sides of the stove (see photo 7.) Fabricating a sliding control for that is a bit of a pain. I'll deal with that in the off-season. For now, I'll settle for blocking plates so it can be shut off. I happened to have some thin pieces of stainless steel with a right angled bend on one end, so I cut them to size and added a screw for a handle (see photo 13.) In use, after the flames have died, these two pieces are slid closed on either side of the stove and the secondary is then shut off (see photo 14.)..."
My question:
I am in the process of hooking up my '92 quadrafire 3100, attaching it to a tall and feisty chimney that I had to fight hard to keep from overfiring my old junky circulator stove. I expect that I will have the same problem with the quad, as it is impossible to shut down in it's stock form. It looks like it has even more unshuttable secondary intake than Precaud's 2100 - two more 1.25"x1.25" openings at the back corner of the stove that feed up to the tubes in the top of the stove. So, should I be installing a damper, or does it make sense to use magnets or bent up sheet metal to partially block the secondary air inlets? It seems like an awful lot of fussing to fidget with the startup air, the primary air, and FOUR separately controlled secondary air controls in the course of the fire - especially since it's not just me that will be running this stove. I suppose that if it's just a matter of leaving them wide open and shutting them after the flames have died, it's not THAT much fiddling - they are hard to get at though. Or would it be possible that I could just experiment with various degrees of blocking off the secondary intakes until I come up with an ideal setting for them that I can just leave alone for all stages of the fire? I've already pulled the stop screw that limited the shut-down of the primary air. You can almost hear my the gears in my head.
"Now, I must say... I really like having full control of the secondary air; it especially helps controlling the fire at lower burn rates. But the Quad 2100 has two separate secondary air inlets, on opposite sides of the stove (see photo 7.) Fabricating a sliding control for that is a bit of a pain. I'll deal with that in the off-season. For now, I'll settle for blocking plates so it can be shut off. I happened to have some thin pieces of stainless steel with a right angled bend on one end, so I cut them to size and added a screw for a handle (see photo 13.) In use, after the flames have died, these two pieces are slid closed on either side of the stove and the secondary is then shut off (see photo 14.)..."
My question:
I am in the process of hooking up my '92 quadrafire 3100, attaching it to a tall and feisty chimney that I had to fight hard to keep from overfiring my old junky circulator stove. I expect that I will have the same problem with the quad, as it is impossible to shut down in it's stock form. It looks like it has even more unshuttable secondary intake than Precaud's 2100 - two more 1.25"x1.25" openings at the back corner of the stove that feed up to the tubes in the top of the stove. So, should I be installing a damper, or does it make sense to use magnets or bent up sheet metal to partially block the secondary air inlets? It seems like an awful lot of fussing to fidget with the startup air, the primary air, and FOUR separately controlled secondary air controls in the course of the fire - especially since it's not just me that will be running this stove. I suppose that if it's just a matter of leaving them wide open and shutting them after the flames have died, it's not THAT much fiddling - they are hard to get at though. Or would it be possible that I could just experiment with various degrees of blocking off the secondary intakes until I come up with an ideal setting for them that I can just leave alone for all stages of the fire? I've already pulled the stop screw that limited the shut-down of the primary air. You can almost hear my the gears in my head.
