Wow... who needs airwash? Old Jotul Model 8 story.

[EddyKilowatt]

Been fooling around with an older Jotul Model 8 that sort of arrived along with the new house we moved to. This is an early '80s model, made after glass windows became popular, but before catalysts, secondary air, or airwash were developed. It's built from nicely-made individual cast plates, and has the spin-type draft control on the front door like this:

(broken image removed)

I've been adding ceramic-wool insulation between the firebox liner plates and the outside of the stove, and also on top of the baffle... along with a few firebricks around the upper part of the firebox, in order to encourage this stove to burn hot and clean.

My shoulder-season fires did a good job heating the room and didn't smoke too badly, but the glass in the door did get pretty smudged with smoke. This morning we had temps hear freezing so I had a good excuse to load three oak splits and let 'er rip. I had flue-collar exhaust temperatures around 1000F for an hour or so, and got the stove body (upper right side corner) up to about 650F. The neat thing was that the door glass, which started off dark brown, burned itself to near-crystal clear after the first 20 minutes or so... the cleanest it's been since we got the stove. My IR thermometer reported the glass outside temp at 750F, so I'm guessing the inside face was 50 or 100 degrees hotter than that... self-cleaning-oven temperature it seems, cause that's what was happening.

Anyway I miss the glass airwash on my old Avalon, but its nice to know I won't be spending the whole winter trying to see my fire through smoky glass, even with the early-modern-era design of this stove.

Eddy

 

[begreen]

That is a great stove, predecessor to the Castine F400. Your pup sure seems to like it.

PS: It looks like you need better hearth protection in front of the stove. What's showing in the picture is not adequate.

 

[EddyKilowatt]

It looks like you need better hearth protection in front of the stove. What's showing in the picture is not adequate.

:red: :red:

Not embarrassed about the stove, embarrassed 'cause you caught me hot-linking.

That pic is not of my stove... I don't have a server to put a pic of my stove on.

That pic is on Page 3 of the Hearth.com Picture Gallery, one of the first things that comes up if you Google "Jotul Model 8".

And I agree, it looks pretty questionable from a clearance standpoint. I've got a tile pad in front of my stove... not a super big one, but bigger than the nothing that you see there.

(My dog has shorter legs, too!)

Eddy

 

[begreen]

OK, now you're on the hook for a good pic of your stove AND the dog.

 

[EddyKilowatt]

Allrighty, here's the stove part; I don't seem to have a good pic of the pooch on the camera right now.

This pic shows the stove doing its self-cleaning-glass thing with about 600F measured by the magnetic thermometer on the upper right-side surface of the stove, and about 1000F measured in the flue gas at the flue collar by the old kiln pyrometer visible in the background. (1000F seems high to me; I haven't checked the calibration of this pyrometer though there's no reason to suspect it.) This is a direct-connect vent to a short tile lined chimney, so I don't mind sending a bit of extra heat up the stack.

The floor surface under the stove is not going to pass muster here at Hearth.com, but the thin wood tile is lying directly on a cold concrete slab and even with the stove at full bore, barely gets warm to the touch. You can just see the edge of the clay tile hearth pad I have in front of the stove door, where sparks can and do jump out that spin-draft opening that's visible in the photo.

Eddy