I need to begin this post by saying that I'm really a pretty frugal guy. I try to stretch my dollar as far as it will go with all my purchases. I feel this works good for me most of the time, but once in a while it bits me in the butt which is why I'm writing this post.
This season marked the 4th season for the 1st generation stainless cat in my Fireview, and it's been a rough one. The cat was very finicky with light offs and was quite easy to stall. I was also just not getting the heat from the stove that I remember it was capable of. It is important to remember that cats don't die out over night. They slowly decrease performance starting with the first fire until you finally decide its useful life is over. This makes it somewhat hard to judge just how weak a cat may be performing.
Anyway, I decided to order a new cat after fighting through 2.5 cords of wood so far this winter. I received the new one ( from Woodstock) last Friday and installed it Saturday morning. Absolutely amazing difference in heating performance. The cat lit off at a outside pipe temp of 375 ( I had to wait until 500 with the old cat) and I could immediately shut the air down without a stall. The stove climbed to a stovetop temp of 600 and remained around there for nearly six hours! Saturdays temps never got above 14 degrees with wind and the Fireview kept my furnace off all day while heating 2200 square feet in Maine.
Moral of the story: Don't be so stingy when it comes to wood stove maintenance. A new cat earlier in the season would have saved me time, money and wood. My house would have been warmer too.
This season marked the 4th season for the 1st generation stainless cat in my Fireview, and it's been a rough one. The cat was very finicky with light offs and was quite easy to stall. I was also just not getting the heat from the stove that I remember it was capable of. It is important to remember that cats don't die out over night. They slowly decrease performance starting with the first fire until you finally decide its useful life is over. This makes it somewhat hard to judge just how weak a cat may be performing.
Anyway, I decided to order a new cat after fighting through 2.5 cords of wood so far this winter. I received the new one ( from Woodstock) last Friday and installed it Saturday morning. Absolutely amazing difference in heating performance. The cat lit off at a outside pipe temp of 375 ( I had to wait until 500 with the old cat) and I could immediately shut the air down without a stall. The stove climbed to a stovetop temp of 600 and remained around there for nearly six hours! Saturdays temps never got above 14 degrees with wind and the Fireview kept my furnace off all day while heating 2200 square feet in Maine.
Moral of the story: Don't be so stingy when it comes to wood stove maintenance. A new cat earlier in the season would have saved me time, money and wood. My house would have been warmer too.
