Finally got my 24+ hour blower runtime on a single loading in my Kuuma Vapor Fire 100.

[JRHAWK9]

Finally got my 24+ hour blower time off of a single load of 96lbs of black locust. Loaded at 10:45am Sunday morning on a handful of coals before we left town. The blower shut off at 11:54am Monday morning. So over 25 hours of blower time on a single load. The black locust was popcorn dry (my MM does not even read any moisture in it). It's been c/s/s/ for well over 10 years and the last 4 or 5 it has been down stacked our basement. I only use it for situations like this. Going to miss it when it's gone, as I don't have a whole lot left anymore.

Outside temps were between 27-33° the whole time. House was 73° when we got home at noon today. Probably won't be having another fire till later tonight.

I've done similar loadings before a handful of times over the years when we would be gone for a day or two. Always got between 22 and 24 hour blower run times. Did a 93lb load earlier in December and I just missed 24 hours by 10 minutes.

 

[travis8352]

Now that is impressive

 

[JRHAWK9]

I was able to extract the data from my Smoke. I loaded at exactly 10:54am Sunday morning (the 10:45 I mentioned above was just a estimate based on when we left) and the blower shut off at exactly 11:56am Monday morning. You can tell by looking at the supply temps. At 10:54am (far left) Sunday morning it spiked, which means I manually shut the blower off to load. Then at 11:56am Monday morning the temp spiked up again, which means the blower had shut off, which it typically does right around the 96° area. So it ran continuously for 25 hours and 2 minutes. Typically when the blower shuts off I will have roughly a handful of coals to reload on, just enough to do a re-load if I have to.

Keep in mind my blower is speed controlled and slowed down to increase my supply temps. This house loves low volumes of hotter air vs high volumes of warm air. The speed controller will also speed up and slow down the blower based on supply temp in order to maximize its supply temp.

The flue temp graph you can see how long it stayed on pilot for. It went to pilot for the first time around 11am and then stayed there till around 4:30pm, then it did its c-1-c thing until a little before 11pm before it went to '1' for good. So a good 12 hours worth of either straight pilot time or going on/off pilot. It went to '3' for good at around 5:45am Monday morning, almost 19 hours after loading.


Supply Temps:

Flue temps:

 

[yooperdave]

Wow! Impressive!

Looking at your flue temps raises concern on my end though.

I never have flue temps above 300. I measure with an infra-red laser dot thermometer just before the barro damper on single wall pipe about 2' or so out of the back of the furnace. Masonry chimney after that.

 

[JRHAWK9]

I never have flue temps above 300. I measure with an infra-red laser dot thermometer just before the barro damper on single wall pipe about 2' or s out of the back of the furnace.

You are measuring external surface temp on the stove pipe. Mine are actual internal temps of the flue gasses about a foot from the collar taken with a probe inserted -into- the stove pipe. BIG difference. You would never see those kind of fluctuations measuring external pipe temps either.

 

[yooperdave]

Forgot to tell you-I called a mahindra dealer this week and asked about a unit in front of his shop. Turns out it is a TYM tractor.

I remember dealership opening up with a lot of hype and then a few short years later.....poof!....gone!......No more tym dealership.

 

[RockyMtnGriz]

Have you reduced your pilot air openings?

 

[JRHAWK9]

Have you reduced your pilot air openings?

No, I have not touched how the furnace burns the wood. I would never blindly start messing around with stuff like that. All the tweaking I have done has been to how the air moves through the air jacket and from where the blower gets it's air from. I've slowed down the blower when I speed controlled it and also changed where the return air is being taken from. Both of those have netted an increase in supply temps and made a noticeable difference in how this house is heated. As far as the physical burning of the wood, it burns it like it always has. Oh, I guess I have dropped my draft down to -0.035" or so, due to how dry my wood is.

 

[RockyMtnGriz]

I had to reduce my pilot openings substantially to prevent occasional hi temp alarms. i don't know if it's just my furnace, but in my case, it was clear that there was room to reduce. My draft was staying on "c" for long periods so the computer wasn't controlling the burn. In my case it was the wood controlling the burn! Temps would rise and rise on a loading, until alarming an hour or so into the load. It was bad for my sleep!

My thinking is if you are on "c" for 5 hours straight, there might be some reduction in burn rate available by reducing the pilot air a little.

 

[woodey]

there might be some reduction in burn rate available by reducing the pilot air a little.

I'm not sure I mess around with the reducing the pilot air as Lamppa states in the manual that pilot mode is the minimum amount of air needed to get the clean secondary burn need to prevent creosote issues.

 

[brenndatomu]

My thinking is if you are on "c" for 5 hours straight, there might be some reduction in burn rate available by reducing the pilot air a little.

If the firebox temps are stable, then I'd say its fine.

Temps would rise and rise on a loading, until alarming an hour or so into the load.

I get that when running full loads and loading on lots of coals...like when its really cold out, which rarely happens around here anymore it seems...some coming next week though, so we'll see...

 

[JRHAWK9]

My thinking is if you are on "c" for 5 hours straight, there might be some reduction in burn rate available by reducing the pilot air a little.

remember, this is with 96lbs of black locust. I can only fit ~65lbs of oak. There's some substantial BTU's being loaded all in one shot, so 5 hours of straight pilot time is not abnormal considering the load.

I don't really have an issue with the FB overtemp. Every once in great while if I load on too many coals it may trigger it.

I can also tell by my flue temps, when on pilot, if my FB temps are abnormally high. The little hump near the beginning of pilot....they are a bit high there, so I was probably seeing FB temps at or around the 1200° area for the brief moment before they settled back down into cruising.

 

[RockyMtnGriz]

If the firebox temps are stable, then I'd say its fine.

I get that when running full loads and loading on lots of coals...like when its really cold out, which rarely happens around here anymore it seems...some coming next week though, so we'll see...

It's fine, I was just wondering what had pursued in the way of chasing the long burn. Similar to adjusting the idle mixture on a carburetor I'd think that reducing the pilot air until there's cycling between "c" and "1", then increasing it a touch from there would yield the lowest, longest burn. If it had been pursued, I'd be curious as to the results. I see some effect with the crude adjustments I made to mine - basically cutting back the pilot air until the overtemp alarms ceased and coarsely doing what I described above. I can see that my plenum temps stabilized quite a bit with that. But I don't have a way to monitor what the control is doing like the 'hawk does so further futzing would require a commitment

You should have some cold coming your way. -20 here today, and -40 right now. Dewpoint now at -47 so it'll be interesting to see what the next 7 or so hours of night can do.

 

[brenndatomu]

You should have some cold coming your way. -20 here today, and -40 right now.

Yup, it started blowing in yesterday/overnight...still not that cold, but is dropping, and very windy...supposed to get to single digits by Sunday night, then cold all week...nothing like you have though!
I might actually get to let the Kuuma stretch 'er legs a little in the next week...I have it fully "reigned in" most of the time...NEO just doesn't have much of a winter anymore it seems, on average.

 

[sleewok]

I was able to extract the data from my Smoke. I loaded at exactly 10:54am Sunday morning (the 10:45 I mentioned above was just a estimate based on when we left) and the blower shut off at exactly 11:56am Monday morning. You can tell by looking at the supply temps. At 10:54am (far left) Sunday morning it spiked, which means I manually shut the blower off to load. Then at 11:56am Monday morning the temp spiked up again, which means the blower had shut off, which it typically does right around the 96° area. So it ran continuously for 25 hours and 2 minutes. Typically when the blower shuts off I will have roughly a handful of coals to reload on, just enough to do a re-load if I have to.

Keep in mind my blower is speed controlled and slowed down to increase my supply temps. This house loves low volumes of hotter air vs high volumes of warm air. The speed controller will also speed up and slow down the blower based on supply temp in order to maximize its supply temp.

The flue temp graph you can see how long it stayed on pilot for. It went to pilot for the first time around 11am and then stayed there till around 4:30pm, then it did its c-1-c thing until a little before 11pm before it went to '1' for good. So a good 12 hours worth of either straight pilot time or going on/off pilot. It went to '3' for good at around 5:45am Monday morning, almost 19 hours after loading.


Supply Temps:
View attachment 322511


Flue temps:
View attachment 322510

Question: is the speed controller something you rigged up? I have a heat commander and would love to set a fan speed controller that will lower the fan speed based on the output temps.

 

[brenndatomu]

Question: is the speed controller something you rigged up? I have a heat commander and would love to set a fan speed controller that will lower the fan speed based on the output temps.

IMO the HC would not be a good candidate for a speed controlled blower...too much going on there already from the factory....thermostatic control of the fire, fan already kicks on/off during low burn...