I gave the gift of EPA heat again....

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

I talked my friend Jamie into buying a used stove the other day. It is a Buckstoves model 81 that he bought for 750 bux. I didn't go with him to pick it up because of schedule conflicts. I wanted to see what I talked him into and finally today I did. Wow, what a nice stove! A tad rough on the stove top because they apparently let water over boil on it, no biggie. There were no signs of over heating and it came with a new thermal blanket for the baffle. I am going to have him get some other material for the baffle which we can get from a fellow who works at a steel mill. This has a steel plate then the blanket on top. The plate was warped so we straightened with a little persuasion.....we jumped up and down on it

Long story short, we went and bought a liner kit for 450 and stuck it in the hole. We did not buy the insulation because his chimney was in very good shape and it is centrally located. Funny when we were putting the liner in you could feel the heat blowing up the stack really well! So here's the pix..

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

Whoops here that are

 

[Ashful]

Nice! Not bad at all for $1200 total investment.

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

Not at all...he is happy as hell! He is a very, very good friend and he works on my cars I do his electrical/mechanical. That's a good thing because my TDI needs a clutch and now he won't b@$?h! His last stove a slammer that I kept telling him how dangerous and inefficient it was. He sees the "fire" now!

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

Update: my buddy has not left his living room since I left him yesterday at 3:30pm. This guy has his own European auto mechanic business that is extremely successful and he never leaves the garage. So for him to relax in front of the fire with some Haufbrau Octoberfest for 24+ hours is amazing!!
By the way the blower on this thing is like a jet engine. It is loud and the speed is adjustable but it moves some serious air. You can feel it on high like 10 feet away. If you sit on the couch and it is on high it dries your eyes out. Nice thing it is automatic and manual. Mine's not like that!:-(

 

[tfdchief]

Good job PWF. Get him on the forum so we can corrupt him

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

Jamie thought I was crazy for belonging to this forum, respectfully. But now he truly respects the knowledge that I have gathered here. It's funny, Jamie and his brother Ron are always in a contest and now he is jealous. Ron has an 80's Buckstove that really needs replacing. I am working on him to get a new Buck or an Englander 30. He has seen it at my parents restaurant but never burning. He will have one in a week!;-)

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

Update...I don't go to Jamie's house to often but the last few times I noticed his glass was always black. Black like you cold barely see flame even when raging. I didn't say anything til I watched his technique. Basically he get the fire going decently for maybe 5 minutes and closes it fully closed. I said dude you can't do that, you gotta close down it steps and explained my process. Well I am sure some are familar with the folks who have burned for years, they don't know the epa stoves!
Fast forward to today and I get a phone call which I missed. I guess he was have some major back puffing so much that it was, really all of a sudden he said, coming through the stove that was previously burning well. He looked up at the cap which is a spark arrester type with .5" by .5" square holes and it was completely plugged! Him and his brother went up on the roof and cleaned and now it burns like a new stove again but now he gets it...gotta burn hotter and close down in stages. He uses a Rutland thermo that is years old that has seen better days. He is going to use his laser thermo which I recommended from day one. He said he got about a half a coffee can full of crap mostly from the top of the pipe. I think he learned the easy way!

 

[Woody Stover]

By the way the blower on this thing is like a jet engine. It is loud and the speed is adjustable but it moves some serious air. You can feel it on high like 10 feet away. If you sit on the couch and it is on high it dries your eyes out. Nice thing it is automatic and manual.

Yeah, we ended up moving the couch at MIL's, for more room around the 91 and to prevent dry-eye. Blower is pretty loud on the 91 as well. It's off in the stove room so it's not too noticeable where she spends most of her time. You're right, that blower can move the air for sure. The Lopi Liberty at the stove shop is very quiet. I wonder if there's any way to either quiet the blower or substitute a different one. Maybe use some of that sound-deadening foam they use on car audio systems...

 

[nate379]

Stages?

I don't usually do anything like that. Let it run wide open till the fire is burning good, engage the cat and set it to low.

Basically he get the fire going decently for maybe 5 minutes and closes it fully closed. I said dude you can't do that, you gotta close down it steps and explained my process. Well I am sure some are familar with the folks who have burned for years, they don't know the epa stoves!
!

 

[Woody Stover]

Ron has an 80's Buckstove that really needs replacing. I am working on him to get a new Buck or an Englander 30. He has seen it at my parents restaurant but never burning. He will have one in a week!;-)

Sure is fun getting people to replace their old smoke-bombers. Got a couple guys I'm working on myself...

Stages?

I don't usually do anything like that. Let it run wide open till the fire is burning good, engage the cat and set it to low.

I always cut the air as the load catches. I want to get the stove hot enough where the cat will take off as soon as I close the bypass but I don't see a need for full blast air when a moderate fire will do the job. But I think his point was that the guy was cutting the air before the load was even burning halfway decently.
Can you see the cat on your stove or do you rely on the probe to tell you that the cat is burning?

 

[nate379]

I can see the cat and there is a probe. I engage based on how the fire is burning though.

Sure is fun getting people to replace their old smoke-bombers. Got a couple guys I'm working on myself...

I always cut the air as the load catches. I want to get the stove hot enough where the cat will take off as soon as I close the bypass but I don't see a need for full blast air when a moderate fire will do the job. But I think his point was that the guy was cutting the air before the load was even burning halfway decently.
Can you see the cat on your stove or do you rely on the probe to tell you that the cat is burning?

 

[jeff_t]

The 81 is a tube stove. Can't compare it's operation to either of your cat stoves.

 

[Ashful]

Ditto what jeff_t said. I've always heard the non-cat guys say you need to back down in stages, to bring on the secondaries as you shut down on the primary burn.

I'm only aware of two problems with cutting a cat stove back too far, too fast:

1. Watch your cat temp. If the fire is going strong, the wood is likely off-gassing at a very high rate. When you cut the air back quickly, you are no longer burning those gasses in the firebox, and the cat will pick up the slack. This can cause cat temperatures to really spike.

2. Backpuffing. Again,the rate at which volatiles are gassing off the wood is very high, and when you cut back air very far, you're now not moving them out of the firebox quickly enough. This scenario can often lead to backpuffing.

When you reduce air incrementally, you slow the off-gassing at a gradual rate, preventing both of the problems above. Nate lives in an unusually cold climate, running an exceptional stove. He can get away with stuff the rest of us cannot.

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

He said the reason he is shutting down like that is the room it is in (12'x20'something) gets to 90 F quickly! He has not yet begun to move air around and his house is like a maze. I told him to build small hot fires and see how that works.

 

[Woody Stover]

The 81 is a tube stove. Can't compare it's operation to either of your cat stoves.

I was mainly talking about bringing the stove up to temp, after nate mentioned ramping up with the air wide open. I'll burn the Buck with more flame and heat when ramping up, but seldom with wide open air for more than a minute or two. With the Fv, I'm bringing it up more gradually because it's got seams with cement, and stone instead of plate steel. I want to minimize stress from excessive, uneven heating of the materials and interfaces. I really prefer a smoother ramp-up with any stove, regardless of construction.

Ditto what jeff_t said. I've always heard the non-cat guys say you need to back down in stages, to bring on the secondaries as you shut down on the primary burn.
1. Watch your cat temp. If the fire is going strong, the wood is likely off-gassing at a very high rate. When you cut the air back quickly, you are no longer burning those gasses in the firebox, and the cat will pick up the slack. This can cause cat temperatures to really spike.

2. Backpuffing. Again,the rate at which volatiles are gassing off the wood is very high, and when you cut back air very far, you're now not moving them out of the firebox quickly enough. This scenario can often lead to backpuffing.

When you reduce air incrementally, you slow the off-gassing at a gradual rate, preventing both of the problems above. Nate lives in an unusually cold climate, running an exceptional stove. He can get away with stuff the rest of us cannot.

I don't know if my stove would backpuff but I've seen my SIL's, where the air leaks don't allow as much control, backpuff on occasion.
As far as gassing, yeah, I want that and the flame at a moderate level, closer to cruising conditions, when I close the bypass. More like a smooth shift in a car as opposed to a power-shift. I see no need to subject either the cat or stove to abrupt changes.

 

[gerry100]

I talked my friend Jamie into buying a used stove the other day. It is a Buckstoves model 81 that he bought for 750 bux. I didn't go with him to pick it up because of schedule conflicts. I wanted to see what I talked him into and finally today I did. Wow, what a nice stove! A tad rough on the stove top because they apparently let water over boil on it, no biggie. There were no signs of over heating and it came with a new thermal blanket for the baffle. I am going to have him get some other material for the baffle which we can get from a fellow who works at a steel mill. This has a steel plate then the blanket on top. The plate was warped so we straightened with a little persuasion.....we jumped up and down on it

Long story short, we went and bought a liner kit for 450 and stuck it in the hole. We did not buy the insulation because his chimney was in very good shape and it is centrally located. Funny when we were putting the liner in you could feel the heat blowing up the stack really well! So here's the pix..

Not sure I have a clear picture but I would be careful about sticking an insert in a chimney without looking at the chimney design.

Many fireplace fireboxes incorporate a "smoke shelf" which in the old smoke dragon days was a great creosote collector and fuel source for chimney fires. ( we nearly burnt the house down 30 yrs ago this way)

Probably much less of a threat with today's cleaner EPA design stoves, but I would check the design of the fireplace and maybe put a liner in the chimney.

Just my 2cts

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

We did line it and the chimney was cleaned before install read the last sentence....

 

[gerry100]

We did line it and the chimney was cleaned before install read the last sentence....

Good

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

Well, I gave the gift again! This time to the fellow at the top of this threads brother. I found for him a used NC-30 that was stored in a nice shed but the moisture has rusted the outside (surface rust). It has some light pitting on the top where the owner put a pot with water that, "boiled over several times". No big deal as we started with a wire brush on an angle grinder that made it look 100% better in no time. He is going to put several layer of high temp flat back paint and look like new. He got it for 400bux which is not such a bad deal cause it looks to be hardly used and is has the big blower.
I am excited for him and he is too. He had a large Buck Stove that was a hog and he seen how his brothers wood use was cut down big time. His setup goes into a thimble and the thimble used to go into his chimney which, several years ago, fell over.....yep. So now it goes into Fab tech I think triple wall up about 25'. There is a 90 in the stove room to the thimble which he may replace with 2-45's. But he said it drafted very good already. It's cheap enough and the place to get the pipe is only minutes away and they have eeeeeeverything!

So hopefully I get another shirt to give to my buddy?

 

[begreen]

Update: my buddy has not left his living room since I left him yesterday at 3:30pm. This guy has his own European auto mechanic business that is extremely successful and he never leaves the garage. So for him to relax in front of the fire with some Haufbrau Octoberfest for 24+ hours is amazing!!

Nice job. I want what he is drinking.

 

[PLAYS WITH FIRE]

Sorry it was Metal Fab pipe and it was Hofbrau Oktoberfest and it pretty heavy beer!