Cat stove reloading questions, etc.

[John Ackerly]

After 30 years heating my house with wood, I feel almost like a complete newbie now that I have a cat stove. I love it (and will never go back to non-cat) but having to re-learn how to use a stove!

My question is, how long do most of you wait to re-engage the cat after reloading the stove with a big batch of wood? If the stove is plenty hot (stove top at 450-500), can you re-engage the cat right away? My owner's manual says 10 - 15 minutes, which seems like along time.

I'm also really wondering how differently cat stoves operate from each other. I'd love to compare directions in owners' manuals. My owner's manual says it takes 20 - 40 minutes and stove top should be 250 degrees. It easily takes 40 minutes or even more. That seems like a long time to be running the stove with no secondary combustion and it can be a bit smoky. The manufacturer told me by phone that it only needs to be 150 degrees and/or 20 minutes. (I won't say which make & model I have yet, as I'm more interested about how cat stoves work generally than discussion about a particular brand.)

So far, it seems to me that benefits of a cat stove are the long, steady burn once cat is engaged. But in start up, it seems to be smokier than a non-cat. If there is a new test method one day that includes start-up emissions, this may make it harder for cat stoves, unless they are hybrids. Thoughts?

 

[begreen]

What stove John? Time to update the signature line?

 

[tarzan]

I engage the cat from a cold stove once the cat probe thermometer reads active. That's somewhere between 200* and 250* stove top according to my Rutland stove top thermo that's not "exactly" accurate.

On a hot reload, if the cat probe thermo reads active I still give it a few minutes to start moving upward before re-engaging.

I have yet to experience a cat stall but have only ran the Princess since October, the beginning of this season.

I to have noticed there seems to be more smoke while stove is bypassed compared to the tube stove getting up to temp.

As for my thoughts of the stoves performance. My family and I couldn't be happier to so far. Clean flue, long burn times, even heat, and an overall warmer home.

 

[jeff_t]

I don't really pay much attention to stove top temps or cat temps. It's hard to put a time limit on it, too. Lots of variables.

If I'm reloading a hot stove, maybe five minutes until it's rockin pretty good and I can close the bypass. Right now, I just put a full load of ash and oak on a pretty small coal bed, and it's taking some time. It takes a long time to get 80+ pounds of wood hot. It's been at least 20 minutes, and it will probably be 20 more.

Another factor that really influences that time is how the splits are loaded. If I leave an open path from the bottom to the top somewhere in the middle of the load, the time factor is greatly reduced. I didn't do that today. I don't really try, it just depends on how the load fits together.

Asking a question like this about cat stoves in general is, well, too general. I can give you some tips about minimizing the time spent in bypassing a Blaze King, but I can tell you absolutely nothing about a Buck.

 

[Rickb]

As long as the wood has been inside for a day or 2 I give it a few minutes. If its fresh from outside and wet and snowy I give it more time.

 

[Highbeam]

My cat stove makes much more smoke during warm up than my noncat. It's a cold heavy smoke too. I don't burn a cat for low smoke, I do it for long burn times and by that measure the cat stoves are excellent.

 

[bobdog2o02]

If I'm loading onto a good coal bed i engage it exactly 37.6 seconds after closing the door.

 

[turbojoe]

If I'm loading onto a good coal bed i engage it exactly 37.6 seconds after closing the door.

Damit, i have been engaging my Cat 1 second to soon, will this cause hair balls in my stack ??

 

[bobdog2o02]

No, but could cause E.D.

 

[rdust]

From a cold start I usually have the stove cruising and dialed down about 40 minutes in. I usually use some smaller splits with a super ceder. A warm stove in the 300* range with good coals I'll have it cruising in 15 or 20. From a cold start my stove is usually well above 250 on the ST after 40 minutes so the slow start seems odd to me.

From a cold start I'll close the bypass just before the cat is ready to go active on the probe since the probe lags and it's probably already there. On a hot start where the probe is showing active already I close it when I see an active fire.

You will find what works for you rather quickly. I had a Lopi Endeavor before my Princess and I find the Princess much easier to run and is pretty much repeatable load after load. I had the Endeavor for 2 seasons and I'm on my 4th with the Princess. I've typed it many times but I'd replace a cat ever year if it was necessary before I'd go back to a non cat. My cat is on it's 4th season and still doing good.

 

[John Ackerly]

Thanks guys. I may need a nice kitchen timer to keep by my stove, because half the time I get so distracted by something in the house (kids, relatives, etc.) that I forget to engage the cat and it seems half the wood load is already burned up! Maybe a sign of early alzheimers? So, I have the Woodstock Fireview, and the combo of the cat and the soapstone is wonderful. I want to put an additional slab of soapstone on top of the stove. Do many folks do that?

I have a smaller house - 1,800 square feet, so I could never put in a stove big enough to run through the night. In all these years, this is first time I've experienced having a really warm house 24/7 from the stove. I finally had to put the stove in front of the fireplace, instead of in it, because no one makes a small or even a compact medium sized cat stove.

 

[tarzan]

Since I put the Princess (cat stove) In our home, I have become to biased to contribute to the "which stove should I get" posts.

There are many non cats I would love to try, PE's come to mind. But not at the expense of taking what I have off the hearth.

 

[Highbeam]

Thanks guys. I may need a nice kitchen timer to keep by my stove, because half the time I get so distracted by something in the house (kids, relatives, etc.) that I forget to engage the cat and it seems half the wood load is already burned up! Maybe a sign of early alzheimers? So, I have the Woodstock Fireview, and the combo of the cat and the soapstone is wonderful. I want to put an additional slab of soapstone on top of the stove. Do many folks do that?

I have a smaller house - 1,800 square feet, so I could never put in a stove big enough to run through the night. In all these years, this is first time I've experienced having a really warm house 24/7 from the stove. I finally had to put the stove in front of the fireplace, instead of in it, because no one makes a small or even a compact medium sized cat stove.

My house is smaller get, 1700, and in a warmer climate. The current stoves from bk and Woodstock are absolutely small enough to burn overnight without making too much heat. You can turn them way down where the heat output is lowest, emissions are lowest, and burn time is longest. That fireview is capable of easy 12 hour cycles.

 

[John Ackerly]

Yes, I get a good 10 hours of heat of a load of wood, but even now, my house is too hot at its 38 degrees outside. I need to learn not to put a full load of wood in, when day time temps are mid-30s. Still getting used to batch burning, after throwing in a log every 60 minutes for so long.

Is there any cat stove out there with less than a 2 cubic foot firebox? I've been telling folks that have houses around 1500 that cat stoves tend to be too big, especially if they don't have an open floor plan, and stove is more of a room heater.

 

[begreen]

The VC Intrepid and Woodstock Keystone/Palladian are under 2 cu ft. Considering the low continuous output capability of a good cat stove, we have success stories here with these stoves in 1000 sq ft homes. In a northeast or upper midwest 1600 sq ft home I wouldn't recommend less than a 2 cu ft stove unless the place was very tight and quite well insulated.

 

[rdust]

So, I have the Woodstock Fireview, and the combo of the cat and the soapstone is wonderful.

That explains the slower warm up from a cold start, a big rock takes a bit more on the upswing but gives it back on the downswing. It's a great stove I'm sure you'll love it for years to come!

 

[Highbeam]

John,

Stove size is not what determines low end output on a cat stove. Bk has three sizes and the middle size is the one with lowest but output. The size of a cat stove is like the size of a fuel tank on your car. The engine is the cat, the cat makes the heat, not the stove.

If you still insist on a tiny cat stove you will have only reduced the burn time. Woodstock makes two stoves that are smaller than the fireview and bk has started making a really little stove as well. Some folks like the smaller footprint.

I am burning my 2.85 c.f. cat stove right now with zero visible smoke and it is 52 degrees outside. Only 74 inside in the stove room.

 

[rdust]

So far, it seems to me that benefits of a cat stove are the long, steady burn once cat is engaged. But in start up, it seems to be smokier than a non-cat.

With my stove it's only one load a day in the shoulder season compared to two or three smaller starts with my non cat. During the cold stuff it's two loads a day when my non cat was three or sometime a small 4th as a quick warm up. I figure the start up emissions evens out at the end of the day.

I know for sure my BK on low is a bunch cleaner than my non cat on a low burn since my non cat didn't know what a low burn was.

 

[begreen]

This has been the warmest December I can ever remember. Our weather this month is more like March. It's 55F right now. No way am I going to heat with wood under these circumstances. It's much more cost effective and cleaner to heat with the heat pump. I had the stove going a couple days ago when the temp was 42-48F outside and it was fine. We never were cooked out even with full loads of wood. The cast iron jacket really softens the heat.

 

[Highbeam]

This has been the warmest December I can ever remember. Our weather this month is more like March. It's 55F right now. No way am I going to heat with wood under these circumstances. It's much more cost effective and cleaner to heat with the heat pump. I had the stove going a couple days ago when the temp was 42-48F outside and it was fine. We never were cooked out even with full loads of wood. The cast iron jacket really softens the heat.

I live close to bg but with no cheap alternative to wood heat so I have no guilt in burning wood cleanly when the house or barn gets cold. The cat stove low and slow and the noncat in a pulse and glide pattern. Folks driving by have no idea that either stove is burning.

 

[begreen]

Electricity is cheap in our area. If the house is well insulated one could easily heat with electric and not have a painful bill. I'm heating my shop and greenhouse plus lights, fan and dehumidifier and our electric bill is still very reasonable.

 

[Woody Stover]

how long do most of you wait to re-engage the cat after reloading the stove with a big batch of wood? If the stove is plenty hot (stove top at 450-500), can you re-engage the cat right away? My owner's manual says 10 - 15 minutes, which seems like along time. I'm also really wondering how differently cat stoves operate from each other. I'd love to compare directions in owners' manuals. My owner's manual says it takes 20 - 40 minutes and stove top should be 250 degrees. It easily takes 40 minutes or even more.

You should burn the load in a bit to dry any surface moisture off the wood, and to get enough wood gassing to sustain cat combustion. I never went by the stove top temp with the Fireview, since it lags so far behind what is actually going on in the top of the stove. I suggest getting the cat probe. It doesn't give you true cat readings but it's very useful for telling you what's happening in the top of the stove (where the cat is.) With a medium flame in the box, I ran the cat probe up to about 1000 then cut the air to hold it there for about 15 minutes. Cat would usually light off pretty quickly, even if the stove top was barely over 200. Since the backs of my stoves are flush with the fireplace opening and the probe was hard to see, I bent a paper clip around the bolt head on the probe so I could easily see where 1000 was, and could see the pointer when it was close to the clip.

If you try to start big splits off coals, there will be a lot of smoke for a while; The quicker you can get flame in the box, the more that flame will burn up the smoke. Use some kindling to get flame in the box faster when re-loading.
I can crash the cats in the Dutchwest and the Buck, depending on the type of wood, size of splits and how much they are gassing, how much I cut the air etc, but the Fireview is really easy to run and it's just about crash-proof.

I may need a nice kitchen timer to keep by my stove, because half the time I get so distracted by something in the house (kids, relatives, etc.) that I forget to engage the cat and it seems half the wood load is already burned up! Maybe a sign of early alzheimers?

Alzheimer's? If you forget where the stove is, I would start to worry. But yeah, I always use the timer on my phone, just in case I space out. It's easy to get distracted. I still try to remember without the timer, though. The Fireview is about the perfect size for an average 1800 home. You'll be glad you have it when it gets cold out. You should be able to run it pretty low while still burning clean, then run on the coal heat for a while on milder days. It worked well here for 1000 sq.ft. but heat loss in this house make it more like heating 1500.

 

[Highbeam]

I would have a fireview on my hearth if the clearances to combustibles worked out better. Ws makes a great stove. A little ornate but effective.

 

[ddddddden]

. . .If you try to start big splits off coals, there will be a lot of smoke for a while; The quicker you can get flame in the box, the more that flame will burn up the smoke. Use some kindling to get flame in the box faster when re-loading. . .

+1

Load the large splits toward the back and bottom, smaller stuff/kindling toward the front and top, which is where the air enters the firebox(above the glass.) Once the smaller stuff is rockin', incrementally reduce the air as much as possible(like 4, then 2-3, then 1) while maintaining turbulent flames. When you get the air control down ~1 with a nice burn going in the front of the firebox, you should be able to engage the cat most of the time. Adjust air down further for desired burn rate.

Yes, it might take 15 minutes to complete this process. . .maybe not with the stove top @ 450-500°, but that is too hot to be reloading, unless you are trying to survive a polar vortex and burning 5 loads/day. 250-300° = optimal time to reload.


Welcome to the temple of the cat.

 

[ddddddden]

So, I have the Woodstock Fireview, and the combo of the cat and the soapstone is wonderful. I want to put an additional slab of soapstone on top of the stove. Do many folks do that?

I have the slab. . .haven't burned much with it. Some discussion here suggests that less mass on the top of a stove will let more heat transfer out of the stove top before the hot exhaust goes up the flue. I dunno. . .

I finally had to put the stove in front of the fireplace, instead of in it, because no one makes a small or even a compact medium sized cat stove.

Better heat transfer to the room with the stove out of the fireplace, IMO.