We have Ignition! (Infrared pics of stove startup)

[EddyKilowatt]

I borrowed a Fluke thermal camera from work over the weekend and snapped these infrared pics of my old Jotul #8 doing the "ignition sequence start" thing. Thought folks here might be interested... though I'm sure someone's posted these kinds of images here in the past.

The pictures were taken at roughly 0, 2, 5, 20, and 40 minutes after light-off. The first four all use the same 350F temperature scale, but on the fifth (#0116) I re-scaled to 650F because most of the image was above 350F and thus blown-out. (I also left my coffee cup on the stove while taking the pic.) The first two pics show uneven heating of the stove since the door is ajar for start-up air (opens on left, hinges on right).

The last pic is outside looking up at my stainless stovepipe, and illustrates one of the pitfalls of IR temperature measurement (including the handheld single-point guns)... emissivity correction. The glowing patch on the side of the stovepipe that the camera measures as 126 degrees is just the remnants of the paper label that was on the polished stainless pipe. The rest of the pipe, that the camera thinks is 64 degrees, is almost certainly the same 126 degrees as the label... maybe a little hotter. But because polished stainless has an emissivity of 0.1 or less, whereas paper is 0.9 or more, the temperature reported for the polished metal is cooler by a factor of two or so. (The soot inside the cap is a pretty good IR emitter, too.)

Eddy

 

[begreen]

Nice sequence! It belongs in the picture hall of fame. Moving over there, but will leave the link here for all to enjoy. Thanks for posting Eddy.

 

[maplewood]

Very interesting. Could you show how the heat radiates to the floor, furniture, etc. as the room goes from cool (no fire) to toasty warm?
Thanks for the new way to view our stoves!
Happy burning.

 

[WOODBUTCHER]

Man thats sweet! Thanks for sharing!

 

[EddyKilowatt]

Very interesting. Could you show how the heat radiates to the floor, furniture, etc. as the room goes from cool (no fire) to toasty warm?
Thanks for the new way to view our stoves!
Happy burning.

I might have one or two pics like that, I'll look. They're not too dramatic... imagine a candle sitting where the stove is, casting dim light and shadows into the room, and then a pic of that... that's pretty much how the radiant heat from the stove behaves (though obviously with a lot more power). But I'll post one if I can find it. I didn't take any pics of the ceiling above the stove... I'm wondering if it warmed visibly from the convection off the stove.

Eddy

p.s. as everyone's probably noticed, the picture sequence got scrambled when I uploaded them... but it is pretty obvious to figure out from the temperatures what order they should be in.

 

[Skier76]

That's awesome! Thanks for sharing.

 

[madison]

Very "cool", pun intended.

I am somewhat surprised that the horizontal flue exit shows a uniform temperature around the circumference.

I looks as though the camera would be useful for finding the hottest spot for placement and monitoring stove temps with a magnetic thermometer.

Eddy, It would be nice to know the stove type, flue etc, so others could learn/compare.

 

[begreen]

It'd be interesting to see the F400 in the exact same setup to see the temp difference in the rear connecting pipe.