Has it been a year already?

[mellow]

Crazy how time flies by, almost a year since the first Wood Stove Design Challenge.

Hopefully next years challenge will allow the public to be involved again, wasn't happy to see it locked down this year

You guys that got the pass to go please take pictures for the rest of us.

 

[mellow]

Not sure why I overlooked this but photo's were published from this year at: http://forgreenheat.blogspot.com/2014/11/test-results-presentations-and-photos.html

 

[John Ackerly]

We are also publishing test results from the stoves for the real stove geeks that like to look at those things. Also posted there are copies of the expert presentations and the stove presentations. One interesting thing was that we used a test protocol that captures some start-up emissions, and several of the stoves tested with 50% moisture content wood! And, they probably could have been certified as emitting less than 7.5 using wet wood, but since we did not follow Method 28 exactly, its hard to know if our grams per hour were that close to a certification test run grams per hour. We are trying to figure out what to do next year. Not sure if we will have funding to do it on the Mall again. A Pellet Stove Decathlon is tempting though.

 

[mellow]

It doesn't have to be on the mall again, but that was really cool, I was very fortunate when someone pulled out of a parking spot relatively close to the event, that was the only downfall was parking, well that and the federal park rangers hovering over everything.

I know that event was not easy to pull off, but hopefully the people that did stop into the tent left with more knowledge about wood burning than when they walked in. I personally think more public events like that need to be held to educate the american consumer on good burning practices.

My vision would be an outfitted mobile trailer with different wood stoves in it that could travel the US at select stops doing customer education about clean burning, it would need the major players to buy into the idea and help support it but I think that would be the way to go to help educate people.

A pellet stove decathlon? Is there much more that can be done to pellet stoves to make them burn cleaner?

 

[begreen]

I was super happy to be able to attend the decathalon last November and to meet with the stove makers and enthusiasts like mellow. It was very educational and I loved seeing all those flues with no smoke coming out of them. I appreciate that this year's event was more of a lab testing and development nature and hope some good results come out of these tests. One thing I noted after reviewing the results is that there does not appear to be a lot of work done to regulate temperature output. Because of this, no matter how automated the air intakes are, human intervention is going to be necessary. One can not heat a house running the stove full bore on autopilot without overheating the house at times. I'm curious about what was discussed about thermostatic regulation and/or shoulder season burning. So far it appears that Blaze King and VC in the US and Nestor Martin in Europe are amongst the few companies that offer good regulation. Can we expect to see more stoves offering this feature with computerized intakes?

 

[John Ackerly]

Yes, several of the teams said that they plan to have temperature output settings on the stove. But we didn't have any stove with an external ambient air sensor. The Kleiss had 5 output settings, and it was sophisticated enough to override or delay the operators request, if it could not be accomplished cleanly. Once a stove gets up to temperature, it has more leeway to turn way down, if the room gets hot enough. One very cool feature in 2 of the stoves, were catalysts that were engaged right from the start, just as they are in our cars. If you pre-heat a catalyst with electricity, it should be hot enough to handle start up smoke. And, once the operator doesn't even know the stove has a catalyst, just as most car owners don't know, you have entered into another level of stove technology. I think we will see some stoves like that on the market in a few years, automated or not.

Here are some more photos from Norbert Senf and Dave Misiuk: http://www.heatkit.com/research/lopez-2014-11-09 Brookhaven.htm.

 

[BrotherBart]

Happens every time. Hand me the microphone and the next year they lock the doors.

 

[mellow]

So was Wittus and Mulciber were the only ones there that was also at the Decathlon? Man, my wife complains about all the thermocouples I have attached to our insert, can't imagine what she would say if she came home to this