I got the stove shut down. It appears I have seriously cracked the cat. Not sure how I did that....There were some comments about being able to see the cat glow. I never saw it and I’m wondering how you see it.
If the cat is hot, and you open the door and load more wood, moisture can 'thermal shock' the cat. When reloading, open the bypass for a few minutes to let the cat cool, before opening the door.
important to heat the load of wood up to drive moisure out before engaging the cat.
Follow WS instructions for properly heating up the stove prior to engaging the cat. Don't leave the cat engaged when the loading door is open.
Right, if the wood is still a bit damp, burn it longer to drive off the moisture. When the stove top is at around 200, you can try closing the bypass and see if the cat starts to burn. As mentioned, you might need to keep a little flame going in the box to keep drying the wood. You don't want big flames that will hit the cat when you close the bypass, though.
To see if the cat is glowing, you get your head down kinda low and look up through the window, through the metal mesh on the front of the combustor scoop. Now, if you have some flame in the box, that will be burning some of the smoke, and the cat may not glow very bright. The cat doesn't
have to be glowing to be burning smoke, but you
should see a steady rise in stove top temp if the cat is burning.
I have been reloading at 250 so not really getting to that stage. When I let it burn out finally there was some cold coal left.
Having some black charcoal left in the box may indicate that the wood is damp. Is your window getting pretty dirty? That happens with damp wood as well.
Make sure WS knows you are switching from a ceramic to a stainless. The setup is a little different.
Right. To switch to steel, you also have to get the stainless combustor scoop with the screen on the front to catch some of the fly ash and keep it from plugging the cat. Every so often you'll need to remove the cat and dust the front and back with a soft brush, then manually blow it out to remove any remaining ash in the cells.
If the cat never glows, you can try a ceramic cat from firecatcombustors.com. It's about $200. You also need some interam gasket to wrap the two cat sections, to seal smoke from getting past the cat between the cast iron cat housing and the cat itself.
The stainless cat is cheaper, so with it and the stainless cat scoop, cost might be about the same. I recently put in a ceramic cat, and swapped back to the original cast iron cat scoop on my Keystone, and it seems to be working well so far. Stove top temps generally go up around 500-550. That's partly because I don't like to see the cat glowing very brightly, I prefer a medium red glow, not a real bright orange glow. I figure this will be easier on the cat in the long run.
I wouldn't give up on the old cat just yet, though. If you had 620 on the stove top with that wood that dried in the house for a while, unless you had huge flames in the box, that cat was
blazing!