Initial Draft Readings for Pacific Energy Summit LE Insert - Cause for Concern?

[begreen]

Good catch...that'll make a difference! And I'd let PE know...

Definitely pass this on to PE tech support, you can email them. It looks like an easy fix would be to either elongate the plate's mounting holes so that it does not press against the air control lever or a bit more complicated, widen the slot (or snip out the top portion).

 

[davidmsem]

Definitely pass this on to PE tech support, you can email them. It looks like an easy fix would be to either elongate the plate's mounting holes so that it does not press against the air control lever or a bit more complicated, widen the slot (or snip out the top portion).

I did submit the information to PE via their website.

 

[davidmsem]

I think all the changes are going in the right direction. Look at the secondaries, front and back, fill width of secondary plane.

 

[moresnow]

Watching this closely as a Super I pushed on a fella is displaying the same exact challenges. Rather embarrassing! I've even contemplated a replacement baffle from earlier. Hate to admit.

 

[davidmsem]

Watching this closely as a Super I pushed on a fella is displaying the same exact challenges. Rather embarrassing! I've even contemplated a replacement baffle from earlier. Hate to admit.

Happy to answer any questions based on my experience. I'd never recommend an install without instrumentation. I'm getting closer and closer to an optimized configuration.

 

[begreen]

I think all the changes are going in the right direction. Look at the secondaries, front and back, fill width of secondary plane.

View attachment 303328

Looks good. How is it doing at heating the home?

 

[davidmsem]

Looks good. How is it doing at heating the home?

Thanks for checking in ..... A chatty answer followed.

We live in Connecticut and it hasn't been too cold yet. Perhaps one night dropped down to 19. Many days with highs in the 40s.

That said, and I don't want to jinx myself, this unit will be at least as productive as the Regency I-3100L, and possibly more so. That means the 2500 ft² main living area will never require the boiler to be on, and only a remote room over the garage will need heat possibly.

It's amazing how much heat I can squeeze out of say five split pieces on a mild night. This makes me wonder how much heat I was blowing up the flu with my other unit and set up.

The nights it dropped into the high 20s, The bedrooms remained in the upper '60s in temperature without having a jam-packed box but pretty full.

There is the ability also to start one fire right from the prior fire embers 12 hours apart which I did not have before. This is very convenient.

The fire does seem to last longer and be more even. Seems the cruising temperature in the exhaust is in the 700s, with face temperatures between 300 and 400. Very reasonable. Really stellar secondary burns even with the EBT door obstructed by door sealing high temp rope. Truly fountains of fire at both the back and the front of the plane. These staying for 30 to 45 minutes.

That said, I can blow myself out of the room we are in downstairs so there are lots of fans circulating air. With exhaust temperatures in the 700s, the family room could reach 92°.I would love a way to direct more air up to the second story but hesitate to cut holes even though I have a good pathway to move air between stores. Would be curious about your opinions on that. Everything I've read says if you cut hardwood all you do is ruin hardwood when making holes to get to the second floor.

Happy to listen to ideas will gather some data regarding a burn cycle when the temps drop a bit here.

PS The sensor it turns the fan on based on temperature seems to be bad. It goes on very late, and when cycling down thrashes on to off every minute or so. Very minor thing but going to get that fixed by getting a part.

Think I might really love this unit. Even though the fire box is a touch smaller, I think the improved efficiency with both the unit and the way I have set it up means it will yield more BTU than my prior installation. Fingers crossed.

 

[stoveliker]

I'm very happy to see that your persistence has paid off!

Regarding moving air: in my view you need to make a circuit of air. Pushing warm air up only is not going to do the trick.
If you are not willing to cut holes, I would add a fan on the landing upstairs, slowly blowing cold air down the stairs. It'll (necessarily) be replaced by warmer air.

I did make a hole (my stove is in the finished basement). Added a wooden register (stained in the same color as the hardwood floor in my living room), metal ducting running between the joists to the side wall of the basement, an elbow, a firedamper (! fusible link type), flexible duct down along the wall, inline fan (mounted on the floor, not the studs of the chase I built, or the wall, to minimize vibrations traveling to the living room floor), and another register out of the chase. This fan sucks the coldest air from the floor of my living room and deposits it on the floor of the stove room (basement). This necessarily pushes the warmest air from near the ceiling of the stove room up the stairs to the living room.

The point of this long story is that it shows that a circuit for air to travel is most efficient. Having cold air (down) and warm air (up) go thru one path (e.g. stairs) results in turbulence and mixing. That diminishes the energy flow to the upstairs. It'll do a bit, but is not nearly as efficient.

I alway say that I run a 27 W fan to heat my home.

 

[begreen]

It's good to hear that you are going into winter with a lot more confidence than last season. 12 hr burn times are pretty common with this firebox. I suspect you will see a notable saving in wood with the more efficient burn and agree that a lot of heat was going up the flue with the prior stove.

The sensor it turns the fan on based on temperature seems to be bad. It goes on very late, and when cycling down thrashes on to off every minute or so. Very minor thing but going to get that fixed by getting a part.

Try tensioning the spring for firmer contact of the snap switch thermostat before replacing.

 

[davidmsem]

I'm very happy to see that your persistence has paid off!

Regarding moving air: in my view you need to make a circuit of air. Pushing warm air up only is not going to do the trick.
If you are not willing to cut holes, I would add a fan on the landing upstairs, slowly blowing cold air down the stairs. It'll (necessarily) be replaced by warmer air.

I did make a hole (my stove is in the finished basement). Added a wooden register (stained in the same color as the hardwood floor in my living room), metal ducting running between the joists to the side wall of the basement, an elbow, a firedamper (! fusible link type), flexible duct down along the wall, inline fan (mounted on the floor, not the studs of the chase I built, or the wall, to minimize vibrations traveling to the living room floor), and another register out of the chase. This fan sucks the coldest air from the floor of my living room and deposits it on the floor of the stove room (basement). This necessarily pushes the warmest air from near the ceiling of the stove room up the stairs to the living room.

The point of this long story is that it shows that a circuit for air to travel is most efficient. Having cold air (down) and warm air (up) go thru one path (e.g. stairs) results in turbulence and mixing. That diminishes the energy flow to the upstairs. It'll do a bit, but is not nearly as efficient.

I alway say that I run a 27 W fan to heat my home.

Thank you for your input.

I have a circuit in that i use two air conditioning ducts in the "hot room” to drop air from the ceiling of the second story. An inline fan in the attic drops the cold air.

I'm not adverse to cutting a hole to drop air but do not know how much more efficient this would be than my attic route. I can basically move the attic circuit to a more direct path from the room directly upstairs over the hot room. There's actually an excellent location in the closet or it would not be seen to drop air. Just don't know how much more of a punch this would provide for cooling than what I have. You don't know until you try and I'm not sure if it's worth it yet.

Thank you for your compliments about my persistence. I just want to get this as best I can.

 

[davidmsem]

It's good to hear that you are going into winter with a lot more confidence than last season. 12 hr burn times are pretty common with this firebox. I suspect you will see a notable saving in wood with the more efficient burn and agree that a lot of heat was going up the flue with the prior stove.

Try tensioning the spring for firmer contact of the snap switch thermostat before replacing.

Thank you for the hint about tensioning the spring. I will check to see how to do that.

I was starting to think the same thing, maybe I don't need as much wood as I have stockpiled with this unit? I keep track of how many loads of wood I need and I will compare last year to this for a rough assessment.

Appreciate the help we'll have some data later on fires.

 

[stoveliker]

I don't completely understand the duct system you describe. However, attic ducts (ducts outside the insulated thermal envelope) are known to often have poor performance for spreading heat in a home.

 

[davidmsem]

I don't completely understand the duct system you describe. However, attic ducts (ducts outside the insulated thermal envelope) are known to often have poor performance for spreading heat in a home.

I think most of the heat moves upstairs through the floor fans I use. I have one at the top of the stairs pushing cold air downstairs and then one that pushes the cold air into the heated room, and a couple others that create a circuit around the center hall on the first floor.

So I actually wonder if my attic system is doing anything significant. I also wonder if I cut a hole in the ceiling through to the second story, very near where the hot room is, if indeed that would work better.

I'll try to explain simply what I'm doing with the attic circuit. There are two pictures, one of the air conditioning return in the ceiling, and another picture of two vents in the ceiling of the heated room. In the attic I connect the large air conditioning return vent to the two vents in the heated room. I have a 6-in in line fan that is a pretty high quality. The ducts connecting the return to the feeds are flexible and lightly insulated. This is certainly a longer circuit than a straight drop into the room. There are pressure losses in my current approach as well as perhaps some thermal loss. But I just wonder how much punch it really has.

Appreciate your thoughts regarding ways to cool "the hot room" where the insert is.

Thank you

 

[stoveliker]

Before cutting I would then first measure temperatures and flow rates at the registers to calculate the heat delivered in the rooms.

Lightly insulated (standard 6" flex duct?) in the attic will lose quite a bit of heat.

 

[davidmsem]

Before cutting I would then first measure temperatures and flow rates at the registers to calculate the heat delivered in the rooms.

Lightly insulated (standard 6" flex duct?) in the attic will loose quite a bit of heat.

R2 insulation on the 6" flex duct...... Very very little. About 10 to 15 feet of duct.

 

[stoveliker]

That's going to have a fair amount of negative effects, imo. But that has to be weighted against the semipermanent of another hole and its visual presence.

 

[davidmsem]

That's going to have a fair amount of negative effects, imo. But that has to be weighted against the semipermanent of another hole and its visual presence.

Agreed.

 

[begreen]

R2 insulation on the 6" flex duct...... Very very little. About 10 to 15 feet of duct.

In the least replace that with R8 flex duct. That's what I used for our heat pump branches.

 

[weee123]

This was a very interesting thread to read and I enjoyed all of the experimentation. It seems some of these solutions could probably be relayed to other stoves and systems that draft a little too well.

 

[davidmsem]

This was a very interesting thread to read and I enjoyed all of the experimentation. It seems some of these solutions could probably be relayed to other stoves and systems that draft a little too well.

Thank you. The group here is really fantastic. They know what's going on and pushed me to explore and find out what was really going on. I got extremely motivated after bad luck with a unit that went bad. It really was the install, not the unit which I loved.

My takeaway from this is that I wonder how many units are installed that experience high drafts and high temperature shortening their lives. It took a concerted effort to hunt these issues down. The folks here really guided me, even hung in there when I was really not in a good emotional state over the whole thing.

When it gets colder I'm going to record some data and do some plotting of temperatures and vacuum over time.

I have a unit that doesn't run away and I can control for the first time ever after burning for seven seasons. It is very satisfying but it took a great deal of work.

I'm very happy that you, and others hopefully, will find my journey interesting and benefit.

 

[brenndatomu]

I wonder how many units are installed the experience high drafts and high temperature shortening their lives

I have $100 that says it's A LOT!

 

[weee123]

Im currently dealing with a stove that likes to draft through the secondaries really strongly with a full load, to the point where recently I’ve been limiting it to smaller loads to prevent runaways. No matter how few coals I leave on reload, or how quick I damp it down it will eventually run away. Sometimes right away or an hour later and boom secondaries are torches and STT shoots to almost 800 and steadily climbing before I smother the fire with ash to get it under control.

So my first experiment will be with the secondary air inlet (which I finally found) blocked 50% with a magnet. If that’s not enough I’ll try closing off the primary air hole some more with another magnet or installing the key damper I have ready to go in.

I’ve been reading up on a lot of threads with people that have been having similar issues and this is one of the best I’ve seen so far.

 

[brenndatomu]

Im currently dealing with a stove that likes to draft through the secondaries really strongly with a full load, to the point where recently I’ve been limiting it to smaller loads to prevent runaways. No matter how few coals I leave on reload, or how quick I damp it down it will eventually run away. Sometimes right away or an hour later and boom secondaries are torches and STT shoots to almost 800 and steadily climbing before I smother the fire with ash to get it under control.

So my first experiment will be with the secondary air inlet (which I finally found) blocked 50% with a magnet. If that’s not enough I’ll try closing off the primary air hole some more with another magnet or installing the key damper I have ready to go in.

I’ve been reading up on a lot of threads with people that have been having similar issues and this is one of the best I’ve seen so far.

Controlling the draft (via pipe damper) is far preffered over messing with the primary/secondary air balance.

 

[davidmsem]

Controlling the draft (via pipe damper) is far preffered over messing with the primary/secondary air balance.

Understand this, but I had to include both a pipe damper and adjust the primary and secondary. Adjusting the primary only still resulted in above acceptable drafting limits. The unit just drafted through the secondary. My experience is all three changes were required to bring my unit into close compliance with the specs. That's a damper, primary modification and secondary modification. The data certainly backs that up in my case.

 

[weee123]

Controlling the draft (via pipe damper) is far preffered over messing with the primary/secondary air balance.

Understood. But before I go drilling holes in my pipe to install said damper I want to experiment with easily removable magnets first to observe changes.