Hello, I just replaced an air of fisher grandpa bear with a VC intrepid. The question I have is about the secondary burn dampner . I purchased the cat performance pack but haven’t installed it yet. Without the cat is there any benefit of using the secondary burn dampener or should the temperature control be used only and the secondary for longer burn overnight or when trying to cool. I imagine with the cat out the stove would have no benefit and should still have additional combustion via the flex burn?
VC intrepid question
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We just had our Intrepid installed a couple months ago so I’m not 100% familiar with it but this was in the sales manual. Looks to me like you will need to close the damper to get secondary burn. If you have the cat pack why not install it? It sure isn’t going to hurt anything giving it installed.
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I had this stove and it kicked out nice heat. You need the catalyst in the back in order to make use of the damper. The stove comes with a thermostatically controlled air lever that adjusts as the stove heats up which plays into this. You can burn without ever engaging the cat, but your burn times are significantly shorter (think 3-4 vs ~8 hours) on a single load.
How I operated it after it came up to temp, with damper open, was load up then wait for temp to climb to ~500 STT, close the damper, wait for the temp to normalize then adjust the air if I wanted lower heat/longer output. With how much the air lever adjusted, I could never lower it more than a quarter before it shut the air off completely.
Then when you're ready to reload - open the air, open the damper and repeat.
How I operated it after it came up to temp, with damper open, was load up then wait for temp to climb to ~500 STT, close the damper, wait for the temp to normalize then adjust the air if I wanted lower heat/longer output. With how much the air lever adjusted, I could never lower it more than a quarter before it shut the air off completely.
Then when you're ready to reload - open the air, open the damper and repeat.
I have a 2020 Intrepid, did not buy the cat pack. Yes, you extend burn time quite a bit if you engauge the damper. Yes, the cat pack will likely extend burn time/heat extraction even more, as well as decrease emissions.
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