Pleasant Hearth WS-2417 install/challenges/questions/observations

[Das Jugghead]

Well another round of testing and modification. I let the stove burn down and removed the rear secondary tube (I'm getting kind of good at this) and pulled the stainless steel nuts from the ends of the tube. When I reinstalled the tube I put it in the stock orientation with the holes facing forward. I loaded the stove a little over half full and am three hours into this load. I will probably reload in another hour or so. I want to experiment with the rear secondary tube both in terms of orientation as well as constriction to see what gives me the best burn cycle.

I made another sort-of-modification by hooking the fan that blows air toward the stove into a mechanical timer. I have noticed that the stove produces the hottest temperatures during the first several hours of a burn cycle. I actually have two fans; a small one to move air along the mantel to keep it cool and another larger one about six feet away hidden by the TV blowing air toward the stove. The larger one is on a mechanical timer now to try and get as much of that initial heat circulated back into the room. It does not increase burn times but it does seem to make better use of the available heat.

 

[Crocks]

Flamd waterfall. That is awesome . I really like the looks of your burn. That's crazy u pack so much wood on top of coals. How much sq ft are you heating? What kind of stove top temps does your stove hover around?

 

[Das Jugghead]

Flamd waterfall. That is awesome . I really like the looks of your burn. That's crazy u pack so much wood on top of coals. How much sq ft are you heating? [/QUOTE]

Thank you. We heat around 3,000 sqft of well-insulated house evenly divided between two floors. If I am loading the stove I am loading it completely full - there's no other way to do it unless we are in shoulder season.

What kind of stove top temps does your stove hover around?

While I have not conducted any data logging I have done spot checks during various parts of the burn cycle.

In general the stove initially fires to a little over 600 degrees and stays between 500 and 60 degrees for the first two to two and a half hours. From there temperatures slide down to the 400's for an hour or so and then to the 300's for the remainder of the burn. I typically get about 7 or 8 hours of burn when temperatures outside are around freezing. When we get into the 20's it's between 5 and 6 hours. Once we hit the single digits we are running hard and reloading every 4 hours. When running hard we generate a lot of ash and I clean out ash every couple of days.

 

[Das Jugghead]

Another video.

This is with rear secondary tube in the stock orientation and the stainless steel buts removed from inside the tube. Both the middle and front secondary tube still have the stainless steel nuts installed in them. Note the holes in the middle secondary tube are glowing orange and there is some secondary action from this tube on the far right. Temperature taken at collar of stove.

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[begreen]

It looks like by restricting the two forward tubes more air is drawn from the rear tube. Maybe too much air if it reduces turbulence from the tubes in front of it.

 

[Das Jugghead]

It looks like by restricting the two forward tubes more air is drawn from the rear tube. Maybe too much air if it reduces turbulence from the tubes in front of it.

At that stage of the burn the rear secondary tube does seem to get the majority of the air but prior to this stage the middle tube is quite active. Even so, I do think I want to explore some modifications to the rear tube. At the end of each burn cycle there is always a significant remanent of wood along the back wall of the firebox so I have considered fabricating a tube with fewer holes facing forward and four to six holes facing straight down to help burn that more completely.

In the end its a cheap stove and one must be honest in that it will never perform like a BK or any other quality stove. In the interim I enjoy tinkering with it and appreciate the observations and feedback of the members here.

 

[Das Jugghead]

It looks like by restricting the two forward tubes more air is drawn from the rear tube. Maybe too much air if it reduces turbulence from the tubes in front of it.

I made another video to show the middle secondary tube during the early part of the burn.

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[begreen]

That actually looks pretty good.

 

[Das Jugghead]

That actually looks pretty good.

Thank you sir. I still think I need to slow the burn down a little.

 

[begreen]

Slow it down with thicker pieces of wood and turning down the air sooner.

 

[Das Jugghead]

Slow it down with thicker pieces of wood and turning down the air sooner.

That is on the list for processing wood in a week or so. The first season I have wood that was cut too long for the stove (it was originally cut for a fireplace) so I had to re-cut it to length. Then I found that the wood was not correctly seasoned to run in an EPA stove so I re-split most of it in a desperate attempt to get anything close to a decent burn.

This season I cut wood to the correct length and got it put up under clear plastic to dry for the whole summer and have pretty decent wood this season. The mentality of splitting everything down to small pieces prevailed from the previous season and that was a mistake I will be sure not to repeat this time around. In addition to having bigger splits I also plan to buck the majority of my wood for the E-W length rather than the N-S length.

 

[Woodcutter Tom]

In addition to having bigger splits I also plan to buck the majority of my wood for the E-W length rather than the N-S length.

I plan on doing just the opposite. I am currently making little pieces out of big pieces. Mine runs hotter with N-S and smaller splits.
As I mentioned to you, I did run into some wet wood. It smoked (steamed??) while other pieces were starting to light. I think I have a section of my wood pile that is a bit wet. I had noticed this before when I took some pieces from that section.
No chance to add another 3 feet to the chimney. Snow on the roof.
I have had my middle tube turn orange from heat. It seems that the rear tube can have it's air shoot out with enough force that it does not ignite until it reaches the middle tube. Without really knowing a person would think that there were holes in the rear of the middle tube and the air and flames were exiting the back of the middle tube.

 

[Das Jugghead]

I plan on doing just the opposite. I am currently making little pieces out of big pieces. Mine runs hotter with N-S and smaller splits.
As I mentioned to you, I did run into some wet wood. It smoked (steamed??) while other pieces were starting to light. I think I have a section of my wood pile that is a bit wet. I had noticed this before when I took some pieces from that section.
No chance to add another 3 feet to the chimney. Snow on the roof.

Weather never cooperates when you need it to - the past twenty years in landscaping have taught me that. I am very curious to see if the extra chimney height helps you at all. I am also curious as to if wood is a factor as well even though your described protocol for determining MC seems to be dead spot on. I hit a wet section of my wood pile yesterday where the tarp had ripped and I am trying to mix that with dry wood. When I find pieces that are heavier than I think they should be I lay them out on the hearth in front of the stove for a burn cycle or two to try and dry and warm them with varying degrees of success.

I have had my middle tube turn orange from heat. It seems that the rear tube can have it's air shoot out with enough force that it does not ignite until it reaches the middle tube. Without really knowing a person would think that there were holes in the rear of the middle tube and the air and flames were exiting the back of the middle tube.

I have witnessed this phenomenon as well and your explanation makes absolute sense. I do think this is a good thing (maybe not the turning orange) in that middle secondary tube is heated up quite a bit which may aid in igniting the air coming out of it.

On a separate note I made another modification to the rear tube and am currently running several days of tests/observations before posting about it here but thus far things do look promising in terms of completely burning the back area of wood in the firebox.

 

[Crocks]

Weather never cooperates when you need it to - the past twenty years in landscaping have taught me that. I am very curious to see if the extra chimney height helps you at all. I am also curious as to if wood is a factor as well even though your described protocol for determining MC seems to be dead spot on. I hit a wet section of my wood pile yesterday where the tarp had ripped and I am trying to mix that with dry wood. When I find pieces that are heavier than I think they should be I lay them out on the hearth in front of the stove for a burn cycle or two to try and dry and warm them with varying degrees of success.



I have witnessed this phenomenon as well and your explanation makes absolute sense. I do think this is a good thing (maybe not the turning orange) in that middle secondary tube is heated up quite a bit which may aid in igniting the air coming out of it.

On a separate note I made another modification to the rear tube and am currently running several days of tests/observations before posting about it here but thus far things do look promising in terms of completely burning the back area of wood in the firebox.

How's the tests going? What's your primary air supply like? How much is open at fully closed? Have your ever just tried loading say 3 peices, can you get any secondary flames going with that small of a load?

 

[Das Jugghead]

How's the tests going? What's your primary air supply like? How much is open at fully closed? Have your ever just tried loading say 3 peices, can you get any secondary flames going with that small of a load?

It seems that the amount of water that got in has raised the moisture content of all the wood in that pile. I am burning oak that I cut last year in an attempt to keep things going here. The point being that any testing at this point is skewed as a result in terms of comparative burn time. Having said that the load does burn more evenly overall. I still have a couple of more ideas I want to try out so I will be obtaining some stainless steel tubing to fabricate a couple of different design approaches.

I can get secondary flames with three pieces of wood if the wood is very dry. The primary air supply is composed of a triangular shaped opening with a sliding plate above it welded to a rod to move it back and forth over the triangular shaped opening. Even at "fully closed" it has an opening of approximately one square inch in addition to the gap all the way around the perimeter of the opening as well.

 

[begreen]

It seems that the amount of water that got in has raised the moisture content of all the wood in that pile. I am burning oak that I cut last year in an attempt to keep things going here. The point being that any testing at this point is skewed as a result in terms of comparative burn time. Having said that the load does burn more evenly overall. I still have a couple of more ideas I want to try out so I will be obtaining some stainless steel tubing to fabricate a couple of different design approaches.

I had this happen many years ago with a few cords of maple that I was relying on to get us through most of the winter. There were sags in the tarp that leaked through and over the two years that the stacks sat, a lot of moisture settled in . That was a real pain in the butt to work with. Now all wood that is to be burned in the winter, goes in the shed in the previous spring for final drying.

 

[Das Jugghead]

I built an outside air intake for the stove. The thread for the build is here:

Pleasant Hearth WS 2417 Outside Air Intake Build

At the end of 2018 I purchased a Pleasant Hearth WS-2417 woodstove. That installation and subsequent learning process is described here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/pleasant-hearth-ws-2417-install-challenges-questions-observations.173074/ Several issues have been on the list to...

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