Snap Discs

[Bkins]

is there any way to make a 2 step snap disc setup? My convection blower disc causes the Quad to blow cool air for what to us seems like a extended time. I moved this disc to the exhaust pathway at the rear of the stove which allows the blower to come on earlier and in the past shut off earlier also.

Was wondering if there is a way (affordable) to link 2 different discs, with 2 different temp settings, so I can get this stove to turn off sooner? There is very, very little heat remaining in the stove while this blower continues to run. I can put my bare hand on the fire pot and also on the baffle cast cover without any harm.

Maybe the disc is going bad but it does come on at the correct time, just seems to run longer then it should, or I should say then it has in the past.

My mod of moving the snap disc was picked up over on the IBC website and comprises of moving the disc from on top of the baffle camber to the exhaust pathway by the rear of the stove. This turns the blower on earlier and off earlier because I'm not waiting for the thicker steel above the baffles to heat up and cool down.

Any thoughts!

 

[Lake Girl]

Do you run Quad with the OAK? I notice my burnpot is very cool by the time exhaust blower shuts down due to cool outside air rushing past. You may get the convection blower on quicker but, since exhaust temp controls it not heat at baffles, I would think that it would stay on longer too.

Snap discs do fatigue with time. Usually inexpensive to change out...

 

[Bkins]

The reason I mentioned the plate above the baffles is because that is where the snap disc was mounted from the factory. By my moving it the stove comes on a good bit earlier and also goes off earlier as the somewhat small exhaust pathway cools off faster then the big steel plate above the baffles.

I've thought about a snap disc going bad but it does work correctly on the heating up cycle and for all I know on the cool down cycle also. We may of just gotten use to it and now it seems like a longer cooling down time. I suppose the spring/disc in the snap disc could be getting tired of snapping back, or opening.

Was really hoping some one of our members, with a lot of electrical acumen would chime in with yay/nay ideas.

 

[Lake Girl]

Most of what I've seen discussed is getting the stove to run properly ...

 

[Bkins]

Yep. Worth a shot asking I guess.

 

[DMKNLD]

It sounds like your low temp set point for the #1 snap disc is on the way out. I replaced mine with the adjustable temp snap disc from Grainger products, (broken link removed)

It has temp adjustment for the upper and lower set points. Installing that, together with the wiring mod that B-mod, TJ and others came up with to have the convection fan blow on high at all the stove heat settings, as well as putting springs in the heat exchanger tubes to increase the contact time between the convection air and the exchanger tube heat, has helped cumulatively squeeze allot of what would otherwise be wasted BTU's out of my vintage Quad.

 

[Bkins]

It sounds like your low temp set point for the #1 snap disc is on the way out. I replaced mine with the adjustable temp snap disc from Grainger products, (broken link removed)

It has temp adjustment for the upper and lower set points. Installing that, together with the wiring mod that B-mod, TJ and others came up with to have the convection fan blow on high at all the stove heat settings, as well as putting springs in the heat exchanger tubes to increase the contact time between the convection air and the exchanger tubes, has helped cumulatively squeeze allot of what would otherwise be wasted BTU's out of my vintage Quad.

Thanks, this is JUST the type of info I am looking for. I'll search the site to see what I can find for the items you mentioned. The disc from GRAINGER is no longer available, at least through your link. I'll look in their catalog to see if it's been replaced with something else. Hope it has.

 

[SidecarFlip]

My mod of moving the snap disc was picked up over on the IBC website and comprises of moving the disc from on top of the baffle camber to the exhaust pathway by the rear of the stove. This turns the blower on earlier and off earlier because I'm not waiting for the thicker steel above the baffles to heat up and cool down.

Could have fooled me. The IBC website has been inoperative for at least 5 years.

 

[Bkins]

Didn't say or mean to imply it was recently. It doesn't seem like 5 years ago though. I know they came and went and came back. Kap would have a much better handle then me on when it finally closed. I very much liked the site and they way you could search by stove brand and get help on each brand stove. To bad it went bye, bye.

 

[SidecarFlip]

John Abbot was a crappy site owner.

I suspect Kap and a few others (me included) aren't all that happy with John Abbott.

Of course I preferred IBC because I'm a corn burner, well I burn the cheaper fuel. Looks to be next year will be a mostly corn year. I just filled the tanks with $3.60 cleaned field corn. $3.60/53 lbs is a whole lot better than 5 buck a bag pellets (40lbs for $5.00). Don't need to be a math whizz to figure that one out.....

 

[Lake Girl]

$3,60/53 lbs is a whole lot better than 5 buck a bag pellets (40lbs for $5.00)

Maybe you need that math whizz What burn rate do you have corn vs pellets = lbs/hr?

 

[SidecarFlip]

Maybe you need that math whizz What burn rate do you have corn vs pellets = lbs/hr?

I have fat thumbs and those keys are neighbors on my keyboard.......

Typically, I run corn at a reduced PPH alogrithm because corn yields a higher BTU content per volume burned than pellets do, so I use incrementally less corn than pellets., how much less is a crapshoot because that depends on ambient temperatures amongst other factors (like how warm I want the house to be).

I never realized (until Kap informed me) that most stoves aren't equipped with the wide range of controllable by the end user asjustments, my stove has. Most stoves are basically low-medium and high. I can control every aspect of combustion from draft to fuel delivery and room air blower speeds as well as output temperatures.

It's not substantially less volume wise (corn) but at the price point (pellets versus corn), it works out to be substantially less costly factoring in corn and pellets at current prices,

30 odd years ago when I started out, pellets were cheap and, conversely, so was field corn but, my first stove wasn't a multifuel unit (Englander 25 PDV double auger bottom pusher feeder, analog control) so corn wasn't part of the equation anyway.

Along came a true multifuel stove and corn then became a viable fuel to combust, which I did, but then corn went through the roof, due in part to Obama's green inititative and ethanol (which I won't get into except to say IMO, e-gas is crap gas) so I went with the alternative, processed wood pellet fuel.

Now, pellet extruders have discovered the European market (as you alluded to in a post sometime back with links that I found quire interesting) and what was a value added product has become a 'value' product and the prices are getting stupid (like corn got stupid 6 years ago. Corn did a reset last summer and now corn has replaced the once economical pellets as my fuel of choice. At least I have choices to pursue. Not everyone (geographically) has a choice.

How long will corn tay below the break point 4 buck a bushel level? Who knows. That will depend on world markets and how much domestic crop is planted this year. I, for one won't be planting any corn, the inputs are too high to realize a good margin. I won't have any issue tanking and roasting it however.