New Progress Hybrid not getting up to temp?

[dhumohr]

Help! We installed our new Progress Hybrid in August, and after that (in September or early October) we began to have our initial burns. We were careful to have small fires, engaged the cat at about 300 and thought we were doing really well. We had several burns of 550-600, which worried us--we thought that might have been too hot too soon. But the stove seemed fine with it.

At this point, though, we are having difficulty getting the stove temps above about 450, and with the cold weather we've been having, we need to run the stove hotter in order to heat the house. First, I tried to simulate our initial burns but using more wood, thinking that we would then get hotter burns. No such luck. We would have coals in the morning, though, which is good. Then I started up the fire with a large split in the back, a small split in the front, and a medium split in the middle on top of the other two. I let the temp on the stovetop next to the stove pipe get to a little over 500 before closing the damper down most of the way and engaging the cat. The temp, instead of rising, fell back to between 400 and 450.

Our burn times have been 6 to 8 hours during the day with three splits, and overnight about 10 hours with usually 4 to 5 splits, with the stove top at just under 300 in the morning.

When I called Woodstock, I was told to check the innocent screen visually through the glass because it could have gotten partially plugged. This surprised me. In fact I was told to remove it and burn the fire without it to see if it would get hotter, the theory being that then we'd know if it was the inconel. In looking at the screen through the glass, it doesn't "appear" to be plugged, and anyway, we'd need to get the stove fairly cool in order to reach in and remove it. With the temps the way they have been, we decided to limp along for a bit, hoping we could find something else that might be contributing to the issue. We're willing to do it, but wanted to ask here first.

The wood we're using has been seasoned for two years, and besides, the early burns seemed fine with it, so we don't think that it's that.

So can anyone give us a clue?

 

[Boiler74]

First, how dry is your wood? (Sorry, had to ask)

Second, are you turning down the air all the way and shutting off the secondaries? If I want lots of heat I will fill up the firebox and let her rip for a while. If the stove has coals in it and at or above 250, I will let it burn for a while with the bypass open in order to get rid of some moisture in the wood. Once I close the bypass I will turn down the air in stages until I have very active secondaries on top of the wood but the wood itself will not appear to be burning. I'll let this run for quite a while to heat the stove up to my desired temp and then shut down the air almost all the rest of the way to let it cruise.

If you are expecting 500+ throughout the burn that ain't gonna happen. But last year during Polar Vortex 1 I ran it hard like that for quite a while and did just fine with marginal wood. This year with even drier cherry things are even better. Next year oak comes ready and I'm looking forward to that.

 

[toddnic]

I operate my PH between 350 - 550 degrees. If the screen is clogged (or semi-clogged), you are going to have a very difficult time getting the temperature up. My wife likes to use lint and a lot of paper to get the PH going when I'm not home. I almost always have to clean the screen when I get home. You should clean it monthly at a minimum. I've found with my PH that when it is not performing properly, something needs to be cleaned or I have wet wood.

The first thing that I would do is let the stove cool and clean it.....gently blow out the catalytic combustor and clean the screen. This most likely will take care of your issue.

Also, once you have engaged the catalytic combustor, you can increase the temperature by adding more air. I normally can keep my air almost off and the stove will operate around 400 degrees. If I need it a little hotter, I just add a little more air (shorter burn time though).

 

[hoss1962]

I pretty much use the same procedure as boiler 74 that works well for me even at 450 to 500 the progress should be putting out a ton of heat

 

[Tenn Dave]

Last year I was burning 2 year seasoned oak and hickory and was having the same problem. Max stove temp I was getting was 400* with average burn temps of 350* to 375*. I use super cedars to start my fires and have never had the screen or the cat clog. This year my wood is now 3 years seasoned and my burn temps are 450* to 500* depending how much air I give it, and the heat pours out with very good burn times.

 

[chipsoflyin]

you will also see lower stove top temps when flames are active in the firebox. The only time We've seen stove top temps above 500 is when the box is black and and the cat is above 1000. The cat is very reactive when new and over time will diminish. Our stove's sweet spot is right around 400 and will cruise for hours at that temp. I think you using up too much wood getting the stove top to 500 before damping back. Try this, run the stove top up to 300 with air wide open and bypass open, close bypass, run stove top to 350 and start damping back, 1/2 then 1/4 then crack above closed, to full closed. Look into getting a cat probe, that way you know exactly what's going on

 

[Wolf]

There are a couple things I have learned as I play around with this stove. First, I have a tall chimney (around 27') so my draft was always too strong even when the damper is fully closed, so I installed a pipe damper and it helps slow things down a bit.

Also, I was originally closing the bypass around 300 degrees and started immediately closing the damper a quarter turn at a time every few minutes. However, my stove always cruised around 400-415 degrees. So my procedure now is to run the damper fully open and bypass open until 300 degrees. Then close the bypass and wait til 325-350 and close my pipe damper. This still allows quite a bit of primary air(instead of secondary) to be fed at the bottom of the stove, but at a much slower rate. Then I let this run until 400+(Still in testing) and finally begin the closing of the stove damper in stages. Once I close the stove damper, it pretty much locks the temperature in place. Sometimes, it will run up a little on me.

P.S. Last year I had the dreaded WOOF from the stove when I closed the stove damper all the way (it actually rattled the stove top a little. Scared the **** out of me. My fault for closing down to fast). So I installed a metal stopper on the intake to prevent it from closing all the way. It makes it so it is always a hair open even at the fully closed position. Haven't had a woof this year yet. I still get the cyclical secondary light off to the cat burn switch, but just not the house shaking, dragon breathing ones

Keep us posted on what you figure out

 

[dhumohr]

Thaks so much for all the input. Let's see if I can remember to answer all the questions. First, the wood we're burning was seasoned for two years before we got it this summer, and it had been stored in an open shed where it couldn't get rained on.

No, we know that the stove won't burn constantly at 500. What we were hoping for is that we could get it up to about 600 and then let it burn slowly and drop to around 300 before we added wood. I'd like to get a 12 hour burn where it would still be heating the house when we added new wood.

So what I'm hearing is that most that replied don't bring it up to 600 at all? We have an old house with not much insulation, and on the first floor we have about 1000 sq ft. What our hopes were was that it could heat that much for us reasonably. Our situation is that we have a kitchen on one end of the house with a laundry room behind it. Next to the kitchen is the dining room where the stove is. Then we have, going toward the other end of the house, a living room in front and a library behind that, with a closed stairway between. Then a bedroom on the other end of the house and a bathroom behind the bedroom. We'd hoped that we'd at least have good heat in the dining room (of course) and in the living room and library, and lesser heat in the bedroom and kitchen. We don't want the house hot and 65 would be fine in the LR and libe.

Wolf, what you're doing sounds exactly like what we've done, but with the low temps and wind here, our LR and library were running about 58, a little low for sitting around in. Now that we don't have the wind and the temp has gone up, it's better. But we were hoping for a bit more from the Progress, because those rooms are adjoining the dining room.

Toddnic, how do you go about getting your temp to 550? We've been playing around with it and getting it up maybe to 500 by leaving the damper open and not activating the cat till it gets there, but we were also concerned about wasting wood that way. Somewhere on the forum, I thought I read that when you close down the damper and engage the cat, the stovetop temp (measured next to the stovepipe on the top of the stove on the cast iron) would go up while the temp on the stovepipe would drop. The temp on the stove pipe does drop but we don't see much rise on the stove top temp.

Chipsoflyin, what do you mean when you say "The only time We've seen stove top temps above 500 is when the box is black and and the cat is above 1000"? What box is black and where are you measuring to say cat is above 1000? Maybe our stove's sweet spot is about 400 too (temp at stovetop says 400), because it will cruise there for hours on ours too, but sometimes that's not good enough to put the heat into the adjoining rooms.

Sorry to take up so much space and maybe not answer everything, and thanks for your advice!

 

[toddnic]

Thaks so much for all the input. Let's see if I can remember to answer all the questions. First, the wood we're burning was seasoned for two years before we got it this summer, and it had been stored in an open shed where it couldn't get rained on.

Toddnic, how do you go about getting your temp to 550? We've been playing around with it and getting it up maybe to 500 by leaving the damper open and not activating the cat till it gets there, but we were also concerned about wasting wood that way. Somewhere on the forum, I thought I read that when you close down the damper and engage the cat, the stovetop temp (measured next to the stovepipe on the top of the stove on the cast iron) would go up while the temp on the stovepipe would drop. The temp on the stove pipe does drop but we don't see much rise on the stove top temp.

dhumohr, my normal operating temperature is around 400 degrees. Our house is around 2,400 sq. ft. and that keeps the house warm most nights. On some of our coldest nights, I can get the stove between 500 - 600 degrees by adding dry wood (75% to 80% full) and adding more air than normal. I engage the cat around 350 degrees and never run the stove temp up without it engaged. My normal air adjustment is 1/4 inch from closed (all the way down). Again, have you checked to make sure that everything on the stove is clean? If my stove is not clean, it definitely won't operate at its best. Keeping the screen clean in the front of the firebox is imperative as well as the cat. Also, do you have good draw/draft? This is also imperative to get the right amount of air movement through the stove.

 

[NE WOOD BURNER]

Can you give us more information RE: the chimney interior/exterior? Insulated? SS Liner or clay tiles? Diameter of pipe etc. Pictures will save many words. we love pics!

What species of wood are you burning?

 

[chipsoflyin]

Black box means that no active flames can be viewed. At the time of purchase 1/12/12, WS didn't offer a cat probe so we went and installed a thermocouple with a LCD readout. With the secondaries firing, we have never seen a 500 stove top, heat output is much higher with secondaries firing vs all cat burn.

 

[Dairyman]

There are a couple things I have learned as I play around with this stove. First, I have a tall chimney (around 27') so my draft was always too strong even when the damper is fully closed, so I installed a pipe damper and it helps slow things down a bit.

Also, I was originally closing the bypass around 300 degrees and started immediately closing the damper a quarter turn at a time every few minutes. However, my stove always cruised around 400-415 degrees. So my procedure now is to run the damper fully open and bypass open until 300 degrees. Then close the bypass and wait til 325-350 and close my pipe damper. This still allows quite a bit of primary air(instead of secondary) to be fed at the bottom of the stove, but at a much slower rate. Then I let this run until 400+(Still in testing) and finally begin the closing of the stove damper in stages. Once I close the stove damper, it pretty much locks the temperature in place. Sometimes, it will run up a little on me.

P.S. Last year I had the dreaded WOOF from the stove when I closed the stove damper all the way (it actually rattled the stove top a little. Scared the **** out of me. My fault for closing down to fast). So I installed a metal stopper on the intake to prevent it from closing all the way. It makes it so it is always a hair open even at the fully closed position. Haven't had a woof this year yet. I still get the cyclical secondary light off to the cat burn switch, but just not the house shaking, dragon breathing ones

Keep us posted on what you figure out

How's the PH treating you Wolf? Might be time to change your avatar.

 

[dhumohr]

OK, here goes again, after saying thanks for more input. Our draft is fine, we have a non insulated 6" stovepipe, I don't know what the height of the chimney is but it goes up two stories. We had two Lopi stoves over the last 25 years, and both had no trouble reaching quite hot burns--they just didn't hold the heat and heated the dining room nicely, but not any of the rest of the house very well. And you didn't want to stand too close if the fire was hot! Ours is an old house (circa 1825), as I said, and it doesn't have much insulation and has old single pane windows that also let in more cold than we'd like. It is what it is. We've been implementing some of the suggestions here, and it's doing much better--two adjoining rooms tonight are 65, which is great. But of course we don't have the crazy high winds and the temp has been in the 20's so that helps.

In checking the screen, it doesn't seem to be clogged--we can see all the holes nicely and there doesn't seem to be any buildup around the holes.

Toddnic, thanks for more details in how you burn. We've been letting the stovetop temp get higher (about 450) and then engaging the cat and closing the draft about halfway, which has resulted in getting up above 500. Then closing the damper down to where you're talking about (1/4") and letting it burn, which has resulted in a nice slow "black" burn for 10 or 11 hours at night, having plenty of coals to start up in the morning and a temp of about 300. I think we need to learn the stove a bit more and we'll be fine.

Chipsoflyin, thanks for your input, too. We've seen the temp go up after closing down the damper and "blacking out", so that seems different, even though it's not for long. We want to be as economical as we can with our wood, without sacrificing our comfort, so we've been trying not to have the secondaries going a lot, but I think we need to heed your input and balance things out because we don't want to save wood only to be cold!

Obviously, we're not going to be able to heat the whole house the same as other people with great insulation, but I think it will work well for what we want once the stove and we get used to each other. We love our Progress and it does a MUCH better job than our Lopis--there's no way we'd go back!

What I'm finding is that I'm not crazy about the side load (and I thought I would be) because the door opening seems pretty small and we're having trouble fitting in a lot of splits. Putting in a large split so that it goes all the way in is hard because of the weight of it and having to hold it from the end instead of the middle like you can with a front load. We had our wood split larger than we used to and are finding the splits to be too heavy for us to handle easily. The back of the firebox is also not the same height as the front, which probably has something to do with burning efficiency but still makes it challenging to fill the box easily. Someone mentioned that they took the little heat shield off the top of the door frame--has anyone here done that to make it easier to fill? What would be the danger in doing that?

So, more questions!

 

[fire_man]

I removed the annoying smoke baffle. Yes it does block some smoke from exiting, but it also blocks big splits from loading. No danger other than some smoke spillage on reload.

 

[dhumohr]

Oops, NE wood burner, didn't say what we're burning--a lot of ash with some oak right now and some other mixed stuff. We buy our wood so take what he has. This has been in an open three sided shed and seasoned two years. The wood we bought for next year is red oak, hickory, ash, and cherry, mixed. Our wood guy gets semi loads of logs and has to take what they send him.

I'll try to attach photos here--you'll see that we have a 90 degree, and then another 90 on the other side of the wall, but it doesn't affect our draft which has always been very good. These are from tonight, cat engaged, damper about 1/4 way open. Red temp gauge on stovepipe, other on stovetop.

 

[NE WOOD BURNER]

I would suggest buying a moisture meter and checking the oak moisture content. it may surprise you. especially since you have larger splits this year. I buy log truck loads myself. they are a mixed bag of species maple,ash, oak and some birch. When I process my wood I throw the oak in a separate pile as it will take longer to dry. I would try just burning the ash for a couple of days and see if you see an improvement. ash is a quick heater and lighter to load in the side door.
A non insulated liner/pipe will be cooler. the initial fire or morning start up if you use the ash will warm your chimney and provide a quicker heat to room. then put oak on for long burn times.
much discussion on the Hearth about oak and moisture content. next years wood: it is bought, but is it CSS yet?

 

[NE WOOD BURNER]

Nice looking Hearth and placement of wood to the side door BTW!

 

[dhumohr]

next years wood: it is bought, but is it CSS yet?

What's CSS? It's covered and stacked--what's the third "S" for?? Just thought, it might be cut, split, and stacked?? I'm embarrassed to say that I'm not real good yet about ID'ing wood. I know red oak and white oak and cherry and know that our wood guy only sells hardwood, maybe I should just assume that the rest is ash?

Thanks for the reminder that oak takes longer to dry--I knew that but had forgotten. That may be part of the issue in terms of putting out heat. Our wood is all stacked for this year and next, so we're not going to restack it, but we can try to be careful when bringing it in to have a good mix.

As I said, we're doing better with our burns, but it's also warmer outside. We'll think about getting a moisture meter--what would be a good one to get and where?

Thanks for the comment on the hearth--it's stone from the property here--it was here when we bought the farm, so can't take a whole lot of credit for it, but we enjoy the natural look of it.

 

[dhumohr]

I removed the annoying smoke baffle. Yes it does block some smoke from exiting, but it also blocks big splits from loading. No danger other than some smoke spillage on reload.

Is the baffle hard to remove? How did you do it? I think we'd like to do it, too.

 

[NE WOOD BURNER]

CSS= cut, split and stacked. some say CSSC= cut, split, stacked and top cover.
I do not have a meter yet so can't comment on that, but much conversation on meters and seasoning on here.

 

[NE WOOD BURNER]

http://firewoodresource.com/firewood-btu-ratings/

As you can see from this chart. The Ash has less BTU then Oak.

 

[Tenn Dave]

If you are going to burn oak and hickory in your Progress and you have the room, try and get 3 or 4 years ahead on your wood supply. When my oak went from 2 years old to 3 years old, my average stove top temp went from 375* to 475* when burning with the air totally shut off. If I increase the air so the secondaries light off, the stove temp goes to 500*/525*. My burn times have also increased. For my Progress it was all about the moisture content of the wood.

 

[rideau]

The little smoke screen inside the left upper corner of the door is attached with a screw. Simply unscrew.

The screen can also simply be removed. I got rid of mine last Spring. Verified with Woodstock a few days ago. It s quite alright to burn without the screen. The airpath to the cat is long enough to allow ash to fall before reaching the cat.
My cat clogs because of my tall chimney stack in an exposed site. I need to get an ashpan. Seems I was correct: ashpan keeps ash out of the exhaust stream.

 

[dhumohr]

Wow, you guys, thanks for all this info! Dave, that's a really good idea--I'd been told that oak aged three years is much better than two years, but your experience sure proves it. We thought we were doing well to get a year ahead--just spent quite a bit to get this year's and next year's, but maybe we'd better try to get another two years supply next year and we can sort it out so that the oak gets the extra year of seasoning.

And thanks Rideau for the shield dismantling instructions--we'll do that when we get back after our Thanksgiving trip, and also try removing the screen. We do have the ashcan, and it's nice to get the info that it helps with keeping ash out of the exhaust stream.

 

[NE WOOD BURNER]

For giggles you could buy a cord of kiln dried wood and see how the stove works then!
We have a local place near me that sells Lopi and Kiln dried firewood. Pretty good match for customer satisfaction. I remember back in the 80's when cats where put on VC's and many unhappy people, but most would not admit that their wood was not dry.