Always thought this was easy, until I recently installed one of the Condar thermal probes to monitor Cat temp. Stove manual says something along the lines of 400-500 F (stovetop) is low, 500-600 medium and 600-800 high ,and I've never had a problem with exceeding those temps.
Now that I've installed the Condar probe, however, I've found several times when the stovetop temp is 500 and the Cat is as high as 1850! If I cut the air to a minimal level, it tapers down after a bit. It seems in general that when I load the stove up with dry wood, that I can reach these kinds of temps fairly quickly. The solution seems to be to get the stove going fairly well, cut to ~1/2 air till it gets hot at the cat, then back the air all the way down. Once the Cat temp drops below 1,000 or so, then I can open up the air gradually till it's full on.
This works, but does require a bit more attention than I'm used to. And I don't like exceeding the max recommended Cat temp of 1700 - which seems quite easy to do.
Thanks in advance for you thoughts on this.
John
Now that I've installed the Condar probe, however, I've found several times when the stovetop temp is 500 and the Cat is as high as 1850! If I cut the air to a minimal level, it tapers down after a bit. It seems in general that when I load the stove up with dry wood, that I can reach these kinds of temps fairly quickly. The solution seems to be to get the stove going fairly well, cut to ~1/2 air till it gets hot at the cat, then back the air all the way down. Once the Cat temp drops below 1,000 or so, then I can open up the air gradually till it's full on.
This works, but does require a bit more attention than I'm used to. And I don't like exceeding the max recommended Cat temp of 1700 - which seems quite easy to do.
Thanks in advance for you thoughts on this.
John