Cat Question

[ohio woodburner]

I have a VC winterwarm. When i have a good hot fire i have no smoke out of my chimney. I close the damper to engage cat and throttle her down a little and i have more smoke coming out of the chimney than i did before i closed the damper. Any comments or suggestions? It's a new unit this year

 

[Lanningjw]

Give the cat 20 minutes to kick in. Then check for smoke.

 

[fbelec]

how long is it been burning when you flip your damper? and if you have a thermometer what is the temp?

 

[katwillny]

I normally wait 10 to 20 minutes depending on the kind of wood that i am burning. It usually takes that long for the thermometer to read 300 to 400 degrees.

 

[fbelec]

go about 45 mins or 1 hour. or get up to at least 500 then flip it over

 

[fbelec]

at 3 to 400 it's not hot enough to fire the cat off

 

[Todd]

Are you sure it's smoke and not steam? if it's white and dissipates quickly it's steam produced from high efficiency burning.

 

[ohio woodburner]

go about 45 mins or 1 hour. or get up to at least 500 then flip it over

Last two nights i've tried this. Seems to work much better now. Seems you really got to get this thing kicking before that cat really starts working

 

[fbelec]

glad it's working out. if you continued going the way you were going you would have had a big creosote problem.

 

[SolarAndWood]

I close the damper to engage cat and throttle her down a little

Are you throttling down at the same time you close the damper? You might also try letting the cat light fully after you close the damper before you start throttling back. I usually give it 5 minutes or so.

 

[philipabell]

Yeah, you got to let that puppy crank up before kickin' the cat on! Also, a couple things I've learned. When it's hot, I take the cat offline for a couple minutes when I put in new wood. If you fire it back up too quick you can shock the cat with steam coming off the wood. Even, well seasoned wood has a bit of ambient moisture in it. I think I did this myself because my first cat didn't last two years, when I took it out it was all busted up. Checked the new one after ayear and it is in perfect condition, you do need to clean it out every year, get your self an ashvac, theres some caverns back in there. I may also have gottten it too hot, no need to go crazy with filling a cat stove, I've found they work best with just a couple nice size logs and let go down to a bed of coals before reloading. I save some really big pieces for all nighters, they work well but you have to have a good bed for that. I'm talking 8 x 8 sized pieces, works nice when you split your own. I burn almost 24/7 when winter settles in and I might tip 5 chord in a year. The thing rocks.

 

[North of 60]

I close the damper to engage cat and throttle her down a little

Are you throttling down at the same time you close the damper? You might also try letting the cat light fully after you close the damper before you start throttling back. I usually give it 5 minutes or so.

Solar, it sounds like you are getting the hang of it now. A few tricks of the trade make a big difference to become one with your stove.
N of 60