2022/23 VC Owner thread

[Rusty18]

Primary control? Secondary control? Bypass? My stove is just a magic box that I put wood in then it does what ever it wants to! The handles on the sides just present the illusion that I have some control over the beast...

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Ok was going to ask this. So I usually follow your process then my cat crashes at 1000 when I shut the air and then I would open it back to try and maintain and hold the 1000. Sounds like I dont have to do this.

How can I tell the difference between crash and a stall? I always assumed this was the cat stalling out

the cats crashing when it dropps temperature stays in the active zone and rebounds.. examp.. cat starts at 1100... dropps to 750 and goes back to 1000 and stays there for hours and then dropps after offgassing to say 800 and slowly decrease .. this is over a period of hours.

Cat stalling is your in the active range like 1000 and it slowly dropps out of the active range.. this will happen in like an hour.. no rebound cat not lit off at all.. you can tell this is happening because you getting a 20 hour burn per load.. lol..

major creosote is being accumulated in the stove and pipe with cat stall..

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Air all the way back?

Like the skid steer. I bet that's handy. I got my Kubota which is a great little machine but that skid steer looks like a real workhorse.

Yes air is all the way back.. if not.. my windows would be open..

That is one of my first skid steers.. I purchased this back in 2000.. I keep it at my house.. its semi retired.. I have 3 other skid steers and 2 trac machines.. the big track machines are whats up.. the first picture is my son at 10 driving a T590.. thats him doing wood in the next picture.. the last pic is with the T64.. last winter

 

[JohnDaileyNH]

the cats crashing when it dropps temperature stays in the active zone and rebounds.. examp.. cat starts at 1100... dropps to 750 and goes back to 1000 and stays there for hours and then dropps after offgassing to say 800 and slowly decrease .. this is over a period of hours.

Cat stalling is your in the active range like 1000 and it slowly dropps out of the active range.. this will happen in like an hour.. no rebound cat not lit off at all.. you can tell this is happening because you getting a 20 hour burn per load.. lol..

major creosote is being accumulated in the stove and pipe with cat stall..

This explains so much. I think the vast majority of the problems people are having with cats are leaving the primary too high too long.

 

[arnermd]

So last night I got the stove warm enough to obviously run, but didn't crank up draft ect.. my stove was roughly 500 and stovepipe probably 275/300ish. my cat was roughly 700.. I added wood like 3/4 large splits. Closed bypass right away waited for cat to shoot to 1000 degrees and turned the air all the way back.. the cat started to crash( which is expected) cat went down to 800 ish.. ( its ok if the cat crashes but not stall) Cat slowly combined back to 1000 and stayed there for a number of hours.. I finally went to bed and looked at the aubor on my way to the bedroom and cat was roughly 850 and burned throughout the night.. cat temps will drop as the wood offgasses and there is less fuel for the cat to burn.. woke up at 6am and that was what I have in the box

This is the advantage of the cat stove.. righ now my stove is still running with the air all the way back.. It will run all day today like this.. I added a little more wood when I came in from splitting.. cat is in the upper 600s

For this low burn run, did you rake coals to the back?

I am trying to emulate this burn this morning, had a nice bed of coals from last night, cat was at 700, STT at 400. Raked the coals to the front to help clean the glass. Added 4 smaller splits, 100% air, engaged the cat right away and I lost it. Cat hung at 450 - 500, lots of smoke. I blocked the secondary off temporarily to raise cat temp, at 700 smoke went away and opened the secondary, stepped air down. Cat went to 1050, reduced air to 0%. Cat never crashed still climbing after 30 min, 1200 now.

Thinking my initial mistake was raking the coals to the front so it took too long to light the cat off, ended up with too much heat in the primary.

 

[Kevin Weis]

Yeah I think for you guys with secondary bimetal control, as the secondary closes it will reduce the secondary air flow....obviously. But I suspect it actually increases the primary air flow at the same time because there are two streams in parallel. If the draft is a fixed pressure then closing off one of the parallel streams will increase flow in the other one. Seems to make some sense to me, it is shifting oxygen from the secondary to the primary.

Where I get mystified is how does this work with the 2n1 fixed restriction secondary...... baffles me.

In my figuring and observations of the flexburns there's not a separate primary and secondary airflow so to speak. There is a second flap that opens up as the primary flap is closed down. This second flab pulls air in back of the combuster (not through it) and to the flue exit to prevent a general draft stall. At least in the Intrepid and I believe the Encore as well these flaps are connected to the same primary flow lever. By disconnecting the second flap chain should therefore increase the flow some both the combuster and the airwash system. So what this is saying is the airwash and combuster are in the same airflow set up. I may be wrong in all this but looking at the diagrams and the workings of these stoves this appears to be the case. None of this though is clearly shown in any schematics literature from VC. Maybe some this is proprietary? I wouldn't think so but who knows. I have disconnected that second flap from my Intrepid and the stove seems to act more controllable to me. But I have fabricated a knob whereby I can open it separately if desired. Not suggesting anyone else do this just what seems to work for me.

 

[arnermd]

In my figuring and observations of the flexburns there's not a separate primary and secondary airflow so to speak. There is a second flap that opens up as the primary flap is closed down. This second flab pulls air in back of the combuster (not through it) and to the flue exit to prevent a general draft stall. At least in the Intrepid and I believe the Encore as well these flaps are connected to the same primary flow lever. By disconnecting the second flap chain should therefore increase the flow some both the combuster and the airwash system. So what this is saying is the airwash and combuster are in the same airflow set up. I may be wrong in all this but looking at the diagrams and the workings of these stoves this appears to be the case. None of this though is clearly shown in any schematics literature from VC. Maybe some this is proprietary? I wouldn't think so but who knows. I have disconnected that second flap from my Intrepid and the stove seems to act more controllable to me. But I have fabricated a knob whereby I can open it separately if desired. Not suggesting anyone else do this just what seems to work for me

That is definitely not how my defiant 2n1 model 1975 works. (and I am pretty sure the 2n1 encores are not like this either). I do not know the intrepid at all so I can't comment on that. In my experience the exploded parts diagram in the manual shows everything.

 

[U235]

The body/size of the stoves are the same, but they run a little different the older encore picture 1.. has a lower burn and not quite as high of a burn as the 2024 and a lower efficiency rating

picture 2.. the 2040 has a high efficiency rating but the low burn is a little higher and the higher burn is a lot higher at 65k BTUs

picture 3 the 2040cat c.. has a slightly higher low burn then the other 2 previous stoves the higher burn is not as high as the original 2040 and the efficiency of the stove is higher than the 2 previous stoves but only 4% above the original 2040 in cat mode i believe

the original 2040 was changed to meet to 2000 emissions standards..

View attachment 307186 View attachment 307187 View attachment 307188

@Woodsplitter67 I’ll add to this list of differences that I also do not see the bimetallic secondary flap on the 2040-cat-c exploded parts diagram. I saw @gthomas785 had posted in another thread that the catC now had a fixed area secondary circuit. I haven’t checked to confirm this on my catC but that would be a huge difference I would think.
Back to the drawing board on understanding how these things work. I know you recommended just focusing on the two input levers and the fuel, but I can’t help myself.

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Raking the coals up front is not a good idea.. also.. if your cat is in the active range during a reload there is no need to get things at a hight temp.. just close the bypass.. you may wat to leav the aire open to get the cat at the desired temperature and just cut the air back

 

[Woodsplitter67]

@Woodsplitter67 I’ll add to this list of differences that I also do not see the bimetallic secondary flap on the 2040-cat-c exploded parts diagram. I saw @gthomas785 had posted in another thread that the catC now had a fixed area secondary circuit. I haven’t checked to confirm this on my catC but that would be a huge difference I would think.
Back to the drawing board on understanding how these things work. I know you recommended just focusing on the two input levers and the fuel, but I can’t help myself.

They are supposed to burn a little hotter to meet the newer emissions standards

 

[arnermd]

For this low burn run, did you rake coals to the back?

I am trying to emulate this burn this morning, had a nice bed of coals from last night, cat was at 700, STT at 400. Raked the coals to the front to help clean the glass. Added 4 smaller splits, 100% air, engaged the cat right away and I lost it. Cat hung at 450 - 500, lots of smoke. I blocked the secondary off temporarily to raise cat temp, at 700 smoke went away and opened the secondary, stepped air down. Cat went to 1050, reduced air to 0%. Cat never crashed still climbing after 30 min, 1200 now.

Thinking my initial mistake was raking the coals to the front so it took too long to light the cat off, ended up with too much heat in the primary.

A tale of two burns......

This is pretty interesting. Today I was trying to duplicate low and slow as described by @Woodsplitter67 here:

• For all data my key damper was set to full closed, draft levels were 0.05 - 0.08 iwc and seemed to track flue gas temp as one would expect.
• I started by opening air up and burning down a coal bed from last night.
• At cat = 650 I raked coals to front (which I think was a mistake) and added 3 med splits, engaged cat, air = 100%
  • Took a while for the cat to come up ( because I raked the coals to the front)
• At 1050 air went to full closed, cat climbed to 1400+, but then dropped to 1200.... I do not know why.
• Cat climbed up to 1600 at that point I started opening air and damper to get things to cool down.
• Finally load burned itself out and dropped.

Second burn:

• Cat at 600, pushed coals to the back, loaded 2 med splits, air at 50%
• Cat hit 1000 pretty quick, air down to 10%.... no more adjustments for the rest of the burn.
• Cat dropped as described by @Woodsplitter67 and just cruised for several hours.
• At 15:00 cat temps launched..... I have no idea why. There were no changes.
  • Anybody have a theory why cat would launch at the very end of a burn?
• Sitting now with a healthy bed of coals, ready to try again..... two in a row?

Conclusions:
👎 Do not rake coals to front for low and slow. Takes too long to get cat hot again, lesson learned.
✅️ I was able to duplicate the low, slow burn when I raked coals to the back.
✅️ It is pretty impressive how long it burned at decent temps with very little wood. I feel like I got a lot of heat out of it for a long period of time.
✅ Glass was blackened from the first run but did not seem to get any worse after the second run.
✅ Checked for smoke several times and it appeared to be all steam and pretty light / whispy.

 

[JohnDaileyNH]

A tale of two burns......

This is pretty interesting. Today I was trying to duplicate low and slow as described by @Woodsplitter67 here:

• For all data my key damper was set to full closed, draft levels were 0.05 - 0.08 iwc and seemed to track flue gas temp as one would expect.
• I started by opening air up and burning down a coal bed from last night.
• At cat = 650 I raked coals to front (which I think was a mistake) and added 3 med splits, engaged cat, air = 100%
  • Took a while for the cat to come up ( because I raked the coals to the front)
• At 1050 air went to full closed, cat climbed to 1400+, but then dropped to 1200.... I do not know why.
• Cat climbed up to 1600 at that point I started opening air and damper to get things to cool down.
• Finally load burned itself out and dropped.

Second burn:

• Cat at 600, pushed coals to the back, loaded 2 med splits, air at 50%
• Cat hit 1000 pretty quick, air down to 10%.... no more adjustments for the rest of the burn.
• Cat dropped as described by @Woodsplitter67 and just cruised for several hours.
• At 15:00 cat temps launched..... I have no idea why. There were no changes.
  • Anybody have a theory why cat would launch at the very end of a burn?
• Sitting now with a healthy bed of coals, ready to try again..... two in a row?

Conclusions:
👎 Do not rake coals to front for low and slow. Takes too long to get cat hot again, lesson learned.
✅️ I was able to duplicate the low, slow burn when I raked coals to the back.
✅️ It is pretty impressive how long it burned at decent temps with very little wood. I feel like I got a lot of heat out of it for a long period of time.
✅ Glass was blackened from the first run but did not seem to get any worse after the second run.
✅ Checked for smoke several times and it appeared to be all steam and pretty light / whispy.

View attachment 307330

When your cat spiked at 1400 did you do anything? Or just let it fall?

 

[arnermd]

When your cat spiked at 1400 did you do anything? Or just let it fall?

No inputs what so ever, before or after the spike.... Its like a middle finger. My stove has a bad attitude.

I do not think there is any concern with a short spike to 1400 like that. But what do I know.....

 

[JohnDaileyNH]

No inputs what so ever, before or after the spike.... Its like a middle finger. My stove has a bad attitude.

I do not think there is any concern with a short spike to 1400 like that. But what do I know.....

Haha yeah but that's a good burn. Spike to 1400 is perfectly fine. It threw off good heat?

 

[Woodsplitter67]

A tale of two burns......

This is pretty interesting. Today I was trying to duplicate low and slow as described by @Woodsplitter67 here:

• For all data my key damper was set to full closed, draft levels were 0.05 - 0.08 iwc and seemed to track flue gas temp as one would expect.
• I started by opening air up and burning down a coal bed from last night.
• At cat = 650 I raked coals to front (which I think was a mistake) and added 3 med splits, engaged cat, air = 100%
  • Took a while for the cat to come up ( because I raked the coals to the front)
• At 1050 air went to full closed, cat climbed to 1400+, but then dropped to 1200.... I do not know why.
• Cat climbed up to 1600 at that point I started opening air and damper to get things to cool down.
• Finally load burned itself out and dropped.

Second burn:

• Cat at 600, pushed coals to the back, loaded 2 med splits, air at 50%
• Cat hit 1000 pretty quick, air down to 10%.... no more adjustments for the rest of the burn.
• Cat dropped as described by @Woodsplitter67 and just cruised for several hours.
• At 15:00 cat temps launched..... I have no idea why. There were no changes.
  • Anybody have a theory why cat would launch at the very end of a burn?
• Sitting now with a healthy bed of coals, ready to try again..... two in a row?

Conclusions:
👎 Do not rake coals to front for low and slow. Takes too long to get cat hot again, lesson learned.
✅️ I was able to duplicate the low, slow burn when I raked coals to the back.
✅️ It is pretty impressive how long it burned at decent temps with very little wood. I feel like I got a lot of heat out of it for a long period of time.
✅ Glass was blackened from the first run but did not seem to get any worse after the second run.
✅ Checked for smoke several times and it appeared to be all steam and pretty light / whispy.

View attachment 307330

Ill be honest.. I cant see this happening at all, im not saying your doing something wrong with the equipment, maybe something is malfunctioning.. Realistically.. there is no way your stove can spike like that after 8 hours of burn and all the wood offgassed.. there is absolutely no fuel for the cat to consume at that point.. you enev stated if im correct that you were down to coals.. If you were.. theres nothing for the cat to run on..

 

[GrumpyDad]

A tale of two burns......

This is pretty interesting. Today I was trying to duplicate low and slow as described by @Woodsplitter67 here:

• For all data my key damper was set to full closed, draft levels were 0.05 - 0.08 iwc and seemed to track flue gas temp as one would expect.
• I started by opening air up and burning down a coal bed from last night.
• At cat = 650 I raked coals to front (which I think was a mistake) and added 3 med splits, engaged cat, air = 100%
  • Took a while for the cat to come up ( because I raked the coals to the front)
• At 1050 air went to full closed, cat climbed to 1400+, but then dropped to 1200.... I do not know why.
• Cat climbed up to 1600 at that point I started opening air and damper to get things to cool down.
• Finally load burned itself out and dropped.

Second burn:

• Cat at 600, pushed coals to the back, loaded 2 med splits, air at 50%
• Cat hit 1000 pretty quick, air down to 10%.... no more adjustments for the rest of the burn.
• Cat dropped as described by @Woodsplitter67 and just cruised for several hours.
• At 15:00 cat temps launched..... I have no idea why. There were no changes.
  • Anybody have a theory why cat would launch at the very end of a burn?
• Sitting now with a healthy bed of coals, ready to try again..... two in a row?

Conclusions:
👎 Do not rake coals to front for low and slow. Takes too long to get cat hot again, lesson learned.
✅️ I was able to duplicate the low, slow burn when I raked coals to the back.
✅️ It is pretty impressive how long it burned at decent temps with very little wood. I feel like I got a lot of heat out of it for a long period of time.
✅ Glass was blackened from the first run but did not seem to get any worse after the second run.
✅ Checked for smoke several times and it appeared to be all steam and pretty light / whispy.

View attachment 307330

LOL I love your graph comments. "the middle finger"

Ive been having some great luck with my stove, and am operating it in a manner that it runs nicely for a long time and my glass is CLEAR (most of the time). I'm talking 99% clear aside from a spot behind one of the log stoppers (whatever they are called). Sure there are periods when the top right/left of the glass get darker.

It all comes down to having a thick healthy bed of coals before reloading, but not letting that healthy glowing bed of coals burn down too much. And then, letting the next load catch to a healthy level of flames from bottom to top / side to side. Not blazing but flames. Then as long as I have that healthy bed of coals and that wood caught, I can switch over to secondary and lower air control a notch or two. If it is warmer in the room, I adjust down in 1 or 2 increments until I just barely see a flame but never let it get to the point that I see no persistent flame OR an orange glow from the MIDDLE of the wood. Otherwise the glass will darken and you fight the temps. If this happens get flames going firmly for awhile and then readjust. Doing this I ride at 450 STT, let that load burn nicely. Or if I need more heat, I just crank it up some more.

 

[U235]

Ill be honest.. I cant see this happening at all, im not saying your doing something wrong with the equipment, maybe something is malfunctioning.. Realistically.. there is no way your stove can spike like that after 8 hours of burn and all the wood offgassed.. there is absolutely no fuel for the cat to consume at that point.. you enev stated if im correct that you were down to coals.. If you were.. theres nothing for the cat to run on..

The BK King 40 brochure provides this explanation for a late burn catalyst spike:

“Peaks result as the burning wood collapses, stirring up sparks and smoke, which is fuel for the combustor, and exposing unburned wood to the fire, resulting in rising firebox temperatures.”

IDK. Glad you were recording!

 

[Woodsplitter67]

The BK King 40 brochure provides this explanation for a late burn catalyst spike:

“Peaks result as the burning wood collapses, stirring up sparks and smoke, which is fuel for the combustor, and exposing unburned wood to the fire, resulting in rising firebox temperatures.”

IDK. Glad you were recording!

The blaze king is a little different as they can burn ALOT longer then the VC stoves by more then double. The king I believe is like a 4cuft box and something like a 30hr burn. Our stove are 10/12 hour stoves.. so 8 hours into the burn theres nothing left.. OP stated hes down to coals.. if he was.. all the fuel was already consumed and the temp spike shouldn't happen

 

[arnermd]

Ill be honest.. I cant see this happening at all, im not saying your doing something wrong with the equipment, maybe something is malfunctioning.. Realistically.. there is no way your stove can spike like that after 8 hours of burn and all the wood offgassed.. there is absolutely no fuel for the cat to consume at that point.. you enev stated if im correct that you were down to coals.. If you were.. theres nothing for the cat to run on..

2 words..... demonic possession

There was a heavy load of coals, a lot of black chunks on top of a glowing base. I would say 1/3 of the firebox was full of it. I will take a picture next time. I just knocked them down and spread them and threw fresh splits on top. Thinking maybe I should have dialed the air up and cooked them down a bit.... this load has been creeping for 2.5 hours up from 850 to 1400...... I got a bad feeling.

Thinking maybe my draft is too low and it is not enough air through the EPA hole to keep the coal bed hot enough with air shut off.

It was not 8 hours on one load, it was two part loads. 4 hours each.

 

[Eman85]

Well on the other hand my stove has become obedient for now. One thing I can relate is humidity is very high, 75-85% temps from high 40's down to high 20's. Hot reloads and even cold reloads where I had very few coals and had to build heat before engaging cat.
The only raking of coals I do is on a hot reload I'll move coals around with the first stick of wood I'm loading. Only reason is to break down the height of the coals and knock some ash down.

 

[Woodsplitter67]

So by looking at the graph was that you adding wood a roughly 12.30 pm.. when the cat temp went up

I was under the impression that this was 1 load burning.. which it was such a head scratcher..

 

[Woodsplitter67]

I had very few coals and had to build heat before engaging cat.

This will need to be done from time to time.. Especially in warmer weather.. If is somewhat cold, Ill try to keep hot reloading just letting the stove get borderline to restart cat like 600.. Then bringing it up to a low run and keeping the cat active and a lower range like 7/800 and making sure I have no smoke out the stack

 

[arnermd]

So by looking at the graph was that you adding wood a roughly 12.30 pm.. when the cat temp went up

I was under the impression that this was 1 load burning.. which it was such a head scratcher..

Yep... at 12:30 I added a couple more splits on top of coals, engaged the cat and throttled air down as cat went to 1000.

I tired a low slow burn overnight, air at 0%, will post data later. Cat temps crept up to 1500 over a couple hours. I woke up this morning and cat was at 300 with a lot of coals. Opened air up to 100% and the coal bed started glowing good cat went to 850.

My point here is the stove does not seem to bringing in enough air to keep a coal bed hot enough to burn down. My guess is I dropped the draft too much especially with the lower stack temps. I am going to try again today with the key damper open.

 

[JohnDaileyNH]

A tale of two burns......

This is pretty interesting. Today I was trying to duplicate low and slow as described by @Woodsplitter67 here:

• For all data my key damper was set to full closed, draft levels were 0.05 - 0.08 iwc and seemed to track flue gas temp as one would expect.
• I started by opening air up and burning down a coal bed from last night.
• At cat = 650 I raked coals to front (which I think was a mistake) and added 3 med splits, engaged cat, air = 100%
  • Took a while for the cat to come up ( because I raked the coals to the front)
• At 1050 air went to full closed, cat climbed to 1400+, but then dropped to 1200.... I do not know why.
• Cat climbed up to 1600 at that point I started opening air and damper to get things to cool down.
• Finally load burned itself out and dropped.

Second burn:

• Cat at 600, pushed coals to the back, loaded 2 med splits, air at 50%
• Cat hit 1000 pretty quick, air down to 10%.... no more adjustments for the rest of the burn.
• Cat dropped as described by @Woodsplitter67 and just cruised for several hours.
• At 15:00 cat temps launched..... I have no idea why. There were no changes.
  • Anybody have a theory why cat would launch at the very end of a burn?
• Sitting now with a healthy bed of coals, ready to try again..... two in a row?

Conclusions:
👎 Do not rake coals to front for low and slow. Takes too long to get cat hot again, lesson learned.
✅️ I was able to duplicate the low, slow burn when I raked coals to the back.
✅️ It is pretty impressive how long it burned at decent temps with very little wood. I feel like I got a lot of heat out of it for a long period of time.
✅ Glass was blackened from the first run but did not seem to get any worse after the second run.
✅ Checked for smoke several times and it appeared to be all steam and pretty light / whispy.

View attachment 307330

This is a good method. Replicated this last night. Cat performed fairly similarly. Loaded at 6:30 Cat at 590. Full load. Got up to 1000 cut the air. Cat dropped for 840. Fluctuated there for about an hour then went to 920 and stayed. Went to bed woke up at 430 Cat was at 400, stove top at 300 and I had a healthy bed of coals. Reloaded and right back to 1000. Cut it and off I went

 

[Woodsplitter67]

This is a good method. Replicated this last night. Cat performed fairly similarly. Loaded at 6:30 Cat at 590. Full load. Got up to 1000 cut the air. Cat dropped for 840. Fluctuated there for about an hour then went to 920 and stayed. Went to bed woke up at 430 Cat was at 400, stove top at 300 and I had a healthy bed of coals. Reloaded and right back to 1000. Cut it and off I went

That sounds excellent.. quality burn there..Thats a good overnight burn..