Wood Gobbling VC Winter Warm

[VC-Dave]

Great looking website!

I have been burning with a Large VC Winter Warm Insert for 2-seasons. I bought it used and it was about 6-years old when we got it. After a serious ice storm in December, we were without power for almost a week. With the help of a power inverter and a deep cycle marine battery, the insert kept the house comfortable.

Anyway, the trouble is that the stove is a wood eating pig! Most Winter Warm owners state they can go 6-8 hours on a burn of wood. No matter how well I stoke it, my stove only burns for about 2-3 hours tops. It has done this from day one. I have replaced the door gasket as well as the damper and rear panel gaskets. All are dollar bill tight and the stove still tears through wood like heck while the combustor is operating. Even with the air intake shut as low as possible, there are huge flames!
The refractory assembly still looks all together and seems to have no draft causing damage. Those steel sheet rock screws are silly!
After looking at this link, the cat combustor looks whipped.
(broken link removed)
The 9 year-old combustor, has some peeling going on and the ceramic is cracking and crumbling. I tipped it upside down and chunks of ceramic tumbled out. I’m going to replace the tired ceramic combustor with a metal one. It costs about $30 more going with the metal version, but it will likely be more durable.

Has anyone had good luck with the metal cat combustors?

If the new combustor does not make things any better, what should I trouble shoot for next?

At 2-3 hours on a burn, this stove is really swilling wood!

Thanks in advance!

 

[redhat]

If you are getting huge flames with the primary intake closed you have an air leak into the firebox somewhere. Gaskets are an obvious thing to check but sounds like you have already taken care of those. Until you identify the air leak a new cat won't help much with the wood consumption.

Regardless, it is a good idea to replace the cat, being 9 years old and having physical damage it is ready for the scrap heap. The next cat I buy will be steel, from what I've read they are worth the extra $$$. It would be nice to hear from someone who has actually operated with one, but they are fairly new and probably not a lot of them in circulation yet.

 

[Corey]

Wood species and size will have some effect on burn time. If you've got light wood, chopped up into small pieces, expect a raging fire. If you can score some dense hardwood in good sized chunks, that will extend the burn time considerably. I threw a 10" x 12" slab of hedge in my stove last night along with a few other assorted bits of wood - the thing was still putting off decent heat 10 hours later! I do agree with redhat, though. Your primary control should actually give "control" over the fire.

If you search around the forums for the user "Mo Heat" you will probably come across his VCWWL saga. He fought for several months to get the beast under control. I forget what the complete list of 'fixes' were - although I'm sure they are chronicled in the forums. One such post:

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/1397/

I'm, sure there are more out there.