Progress Hybrid Install and Experience

[barnaclebob]

I dont mind the brass handle and if it gets a nice patina on it that would look really good I think. Some kind of brass plug in the ends might clean up the look a little though.

 

[begreen]

I dont mind the brass handle and if it gets a nice patina on it that would look really good I think.

Probably just me, it looks crude to my eye. Like something grabbed off the machinist's shelf.

 

[barnaclebob]

Probably just me, it looks crude to my eye. Like something grabbed off the machinist's shelf.

Its probably a piece of stock but they did chamfer the ends very nicely and the finish quality is good. There is also some lettering engraved or milled into the handle to say if the bypass is opened or closed.

 

[begreen]

Will you be firing that beauty up before next fall if we get a cool day in June?

 

[barnaclebob]

Will you be firing that beauty up before next fall?

Definitely. It gets cool in the evenings through July here so I should be able to do the break in burns with the doors open and some fans on. My wife always fights to keep the heat off in fall until she is under a pile of blankets on the couch. I don't think that will be the case this fall however...

I'm still a little concerned how the stove will interact with the large hood in the kitchen once the house is closed up in fall though. My house is old but appears to be pretty well insulated and sealed based on the gas bills. Its not as good as a modern house but I surely wouldn't call it drafty by any means.

 

[begreen]

Definitely. It gets cool in the evenings through July here so I should be able to do the break in burns with the doors open and some fans on. My wife always fights to keep the heat off in fall until she is under a pile of blankets on the couch. I don't think that will be the case this fall however...

I'm still a little concerned how the stove will interact with the large hood in the kitchen once the house is closed up in fall though. My house is old but appears to be pretty well insulated and sealed based on the gas bills. Its not as good as a modern house but I surely wouldn't call it drafty by any means.

Commercial range hoods can affect the stove and in some cases reverse draft. If so an outside air kit could be a necessity. Once you have the flue system in place turn on the kitchen fan and place a candle flame, smoking punk, or cigarette near the flue exit of the stove and observe. If the flue still drafts then it should be ok. If the draft reverses then plan on an OAK or some form of fresh air makeup (ERV/HRV) to compensate for the fan.

 

[fire_man]

I hired movers to bring in my Progress and they charged $300 to move it it 100 feet (up hill) from the Driveway to the hearth. Two little guys using shoulder straps carried the uncrated stove all by themselves and they made it look easy. My back hurts thinking about it.

They also moved the Fireview to the basement.

Your gonna love the Progress.

 

[barnaclebob]

I hired movers to bring in my Progress and they charged $300 to move it it 100 feet (up hill) from the Driveway to the hearth. Two little guys using shoulder straps carried the uncrated stove all by themselves and they made it look easy. My back hurts thinking about it.

They also moved the Fireview to the basement.

Your gonna love the Progress.

I looked into companies that move safes and the only one that got back to me wanted $550 and couldn't move until May 23. Another full service moving company said it would be about the same. After seeing how cut rate movers operate first hand there is no way I would trust them to touch anything over 300lbs. They just barely were able to get my cooking stove that was 350lbs up my front stairs and that was with me and a friend helping. Trailer rental, dolly rental, and shoulder straps cost about $175 and I own the shoulder straps now.

 

[fire_man]

I had lots of trouble finding someone that would even do the job.I jumped right on it for $300.
My Palladian took me a full day to move but that I did myself.

I still can't believe two guys moved that Progress.

 

[Joyboy]

Shes all put back together now. Here is a bunch of pics of the internals and some tips in case anyone else decides to shed some weight to move one of these beasts.

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Finished product. The color is charcoal, it looks blackish in some pics but that's just the lighting i guess. Didn't even need to shim one of the legs so I guess my hearth is flat enough.

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I could never find close ups of the details before I bought so here is one. I need to back the set screw (top center hole in the corner trim) out a little bit and tighten the threaded rods (pic of that below) so the top lines up with the side trim better.

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Emblem detail.

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Rufus gets to stay above the stove until the pipe gets installed, then he moves to another nearby wall.

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Under the hood.

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Bypass door closed.

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Bypass door open.

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Cat close up.

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Threaded rods that hold the top on. Tighten these last or you deform the whole thing and make it difficult to install the window or corner trim. Be very careful removing the window as the panes can fall out. There is a youtube video of how to replace the window, watch that first. But one difference from the video is that it looks like they started gluing the upper soapstone panel to the fire box so you don't need to worry about that falling out. Be careful though and don't assume any of the soapstone is glued on until you can verify it. You need an M8 12 point bit to remove the window surround.

View attachment 226552
The cleanest the firebox will ever be. The back soapstone blocks can be removed by sliding them up and pulling from the bottom.

I have a before pic with the rear heat shield bit forgot to take an after. Ill do that and post a pic tomorrow.

The ash pan and heat shields went on with no problems and no extra wood support was needed. Just follow the directions and hold one end up, get a bolt or screw in, the do the same on the other end.

Now I have to wait until the end of may before I can light it up because the chimney guy is booked that far out.

Nice job with all the pictures. When I got mine I was in such a hurry to get it fired up that I hardly took any. To late now. Lol. Congrats on a awesome stove!

 

[barnaclebob]

I was hoping this post would be of my first fire in the new stove but of course the house has to throw me a curve ball after delivering a watermelon with the shaft through the second floor. This is what the chimney installers found when they cut the hole in the ceiling and were unable to proceed. Time to open up the ceiling more and sister some joists.



The piece of wood running left to right (parallel to the larger beams) isn't structural as its a 2x4 turned flat to support the drywall. The joist seems to have some 2x2 "ledger" running parallel to it up against the sub floor so I'm not sure what that's about. I'm at work so I can only see the pictures my wife sends me.

 

[Squirrel1410]

Wow odd there’s a joist so close to the wall...

 

[barnaclebob]

Wow odd there’s a joist so close to the wall...

Yeah I was assuming there would be no joist there but its an older house so anything is possible. Turns out the "joist" is a 2x6 with a 2x4 half overlapping and nailed to it to make a janky 2x8. Its possible the whole floor is like this

Also the joists aren't contacting what I'm pretty sure are structural exposed beams in some of the places that I see. It could be that the house has flexed and gaps formed. Most of the floors aren't level. The room span is 25 feet and there is no way a real 2x8 can do that without flexing let alone a janky "2x8" so the exposed beams have to be taking load somehow, just maybe not distributed as evenly as it should be.

My plan is to shim the offending joist to the beams then cut the joist at a place where i can use some blocking to tie it to the next joist and that wall. I had my wife go to the floor above that and jump around. The 2x4 part of the joist flexes a little bit but the 2x6 part doesn't so it cant be taking that much load.

 

[Squirrel1410]

You could make a box to distribute the weight around, just like when doing so for windows in a wall... have to take a lot more of the ceiling out though, re-drywall etc. maybe you’ll make it even stronger if that 2x4 is flexing. Some joist brackets/hangers would help with that.

 

[barnaclebob]

You could make a box to distribute the weight around, just like when doing so for windows in a wall... have to take a lot more of the ceiling out though, re-drywall etc. maybe you’ll make it even stronger if that 2x4 is flexing. Some joist brackets/hangers would help with that.

Yes thats what I did. I took the ceiling out to the next joist, reinforced that newly exposed joist, put a ledger board on the wall, shimmed the joists to the beam, cut and boxed it out with joist hangers. This whole area of the house seems to be a bit of a mess structurally as the walls, some of which i know are load bearing, don't really line up from one floor to the next. In any case, the kerf didn't pinch my sawzall blade or open up so it probably wasn't carrying much load to begin with and its stronger than it was before. Pics to come once I get it fully patched up.

 

[barnaclebob]

No smoke yet but at least my house looks normal again. I was able to match the unique brushed texture of our ceiling reasonably well and the chimney is installed to right below the roof. It was threatening rain last Saturday and after 5PM so the chimney guys said it would be best to cone back on Wed rather than cut a hole in the roof. Luckily I had tried to fit the stove pipe to the stove after the last visit and found out that it needed the adapter from Woodstock because this double walled chimney wouldn't slip over the stove outlet.

Forecast for wed (tomorrow) is iffy so my fingers are crossed.


My neighbor guesses that these wonky "joists" used to be the floor of the attic before the second floor was added to the house. You can see the current brick chimney here. Some of the grout was loose.


Added a header beam, sistered the next joist back to the exposed beams, and boxed off the cut ends.


Drywalled back up.


Taped, mudded, trim reinstalled, textured, painted, and stove pipe installed.

All thats left is for the chimney guys to finish the install through the roof and to add the trim around the cement.

 

[barnaclebob]

A stove comes to life:



The chimney install was finished yesterday despite the rain because the chimney guys brought a canopy to put up on the roof. They said to wait a day for some seal to dry before having a fire. So today I made a small fire with 4 short splits of some kind of soft feeling wood. I don't think I got the cat to engage even though the temps on the stove top got up to around 300 which woodstock says is hot enough so I did most of the burn with the bypass open. Maybe there just wasn't much smoke to combust though.

I'm really glad I thought to just keep the ash pan lid in the closet vs storing on the pan while I waited for the chimney to be installed. I definitely would have forgotten to remove it and did open the ash pan door for like 5 seconds to check when I thought I had forgotten to remove it.

The stove seemed plenty easy to drive and the flames shut off right away when the control lever was closed.

The smell was noticeable but not too bad with the windows and doors open. Ill increase the fire size by 50 to 75 percent again today after work.

 

[begreen]

A stove comes to life:

The smell was noticeable but not too bad with the windows and doors open. Ill increase the fire size by 50 to 75 percent again today after work.

Very nice. That has to be one of the few PHs this far away from VT. What was the shipping cost?

I'm looking forward to your next winter reports. It's ironic that the install happened on one of the very few rainy days we've had this spring, but good that you waited. Better get that second fire done tonight. It's going to get pretty warm by Sunday.

 

[barnaclebob]

Very nice. That has to be one of the few PHs this far away from VT. What was the shipping cost?

I'm looking forward to your next winter reports. It's ironic that the install happened on one of the very few rainy days we've had this spring, but good that you waited. Better get that second fire done tonight. It's going to get pretty warm by Sunday.

I think the shipping was about $750 before the $400 discount. That was for the main crate, the ash bucket, and another accessory package with the ash pan and a few other things. Waiting for the April sale probably saved me about $1000 including the accessories they threw in.

It actually wasn't raining at my house too bad until they mostly finished up. I think we were in a rain shadow from the Olympics.

 

[Squirrel1410]

Looks beautiful, great job handling that ceiling issue, and not being able to use the actual chimney.

Yeah that break-in smell is definitely... unique.

 

[barnaclebob]

The hearth is now fully complete with the install of the trim and touching up the paint on the wall.

The wood is stained cherry with a chamfer. The splines are walnut. I originally wanted to avoid stains to keep the wood natural looking but it would have been too light. Finished in place with about 4 or 5 coats off satin poly using 0000 steel wool between coats.


The joinery is rated at about 2 to 3 feet. This was my first try at "real" joinery. Dont be afraid to try it, it doesn't need to be perfect.

 

[begreen]

That looks great Bob. It finished out nicely.

question - is that the central heating thermostat behind the stove? If so, it may need to be relocated on the other side of the wall.

 

[Squirrel1410]

Looks great! I love the walnut splines - definitely a nice touch.

 

[barnaclebob]

question - is that the central heating thermostat behind the stove? If so, it may need to be relocated on the other side of the wall.

Yeah ill fix that problem when it happens. There are a few options for relocating the thermostat when it becomes an issue.

 

[barnaclebob]

Someone asked about how I was liking the stove so I'll throw some updates in. This might be bit rambly so sorry in advance.

So far my wife and I have been playing around with how to run the stove and we've been loving it so far. We've tried smaller fires to just keep the house warm, loaded it up all the way and let the logs get going good for hot fires, and done hot reloads of various sizes. We get great heat distribution up to the second floor through the nearby stairs. Both floors are 1000 sq ft. No noticeable heat into the basement as can be expected.

The stove is very easy to operate and seems to have about 4 informal settings on the damper. 1: wide open to start a fire and get the logs caught, 2, shut down half to 3/4 to heat the unit up. Basically turn it down so there are still strong flames but the logs aren't getting blasted with air. 3: damper just cracked open during a burn to heat the stove up a little more or encourage some secondary action 4: shut down all the way for long burning.

The stove temp with my setup also seems to only be able to be increased until the logs burn down. Essentially if you load it up and let it get above about 475, secondaries will kick into high gear and heat the stove up to about 550 where it will stay until it runs out of fuel. On a hot reload where you pack it full, the secondaries seem to start up no matter what after a an hour to a couple hours even when you shut down the damper immediately. When it gets like this it really cranks out heat and has no problem heating our whole house when the temps are in the mid to high 40's at night and I doubt it will have any problems in winter either. We had to crack windows and doors and it was still very warm.

After a very warm weekend in the house I've been trying to figure out how to run it at lower temps so we don't waste wood or sweat to death. It seems like the best method so far is to load the firebox about half full, get the fire started, turn down the damper to slowly get the stove up to temp, then shut it down for the rest of the burn when the stove top temp hits 300. Depending on the time the fire started after work I'll throw a few logs on before bed, let them catch a little then shut it down. The stove will be out in the morning but still warm to the touch and the house is still comfortable.

The longest burn we've gotten was about 9 hours overnight after a full hot reload and closing it down immediately. There were still plenty of coals after the 9 hours and the stove was still making useful heat but we added some logs at the point. The wood was a "northwest blend" probably a mix of Fir, vine maple, and whatever else grows around here, nothing really good like oak.

As discussed in another thread the wall behind my Selkirk double wall pipe was measured at 165 degrees with an IR thermometer after the stove had been cranking for several hours. Still within the safe limits but not by much. Not sure if I'm going to add another heat shield or not yet.