Hello all. I'm new to this forum and coming into it with some questions. I was poking around here for a few weeks as I researched and purchased a new (old) stove. So, here I am, ready to learn.
I just picked up a quadra fire 3100f, 1992. It's going into the questionably insulated basement of an old, small house with ok insulation, in northern Vermont. The house is 1100 sq ft - a third of that being basement. The quad is replacing a terrifying ec95 wood circulator or some such thing, like this...:
http://www.woodlanddirect.com/Wood-...1500-sqft/US-EC95-Stove-Wood-Circulator-Black
...that I burned last winter. Terrifying: impossible to shut down without a damper in the stove pipe. Which brings me to another thing - the house has 3+ stories of chimney and it draws very well; too well for last years stove and probably for the quad. I expect that I will be either keeping the damper in the stove pipe (bad, I know) or modifying the air intake on the stove, or both. The limiter screw on the primary air shut down looks easy to pull, as I saw on another thread here.
My first question, though, is regarding the baffle plate. It is a sheet of 3/8 steel with a lip bent down at an angle along the front edge, and it sits on a ledge that keeps it suspended a bit above the secondary tubes. It is badly warped. There is a pretty new kaowool blanket on top of that. I know that the newer quads have a ceramic board instead of a steel plate, and I'm trying to figure out if I should go out and have a new plate fabricated or if I should just replace it with the more modern ceramic material. I think that I read somewhere that the plate is over 25 lbs(?) and I wonder if that makes it a significant source of thermal mass. Conversely, I have seen the debates on here, pertaining to fire brick, about whether thermal mass or insulation is the preferred characteristic in the firebox... and maybe the ceramic is a better insulator? I don't know if they went for the ceramic in the new stoves because it is better, or because it's cheaper, or because it is better because it is cheaper when the steel inevitably warps! So... replace it with ceramic fiber board, and if so, is there a current consensus on the best DIY version of the expensive board from quad? Lastly, if I do use the ceramic, do I make it big enough to sit up on the ledge like the steel plate is currently, or do I rest it directly on the tubes the way the modern 3100 has it (I think)?
The bricks, by the way, are a mix of the original lightweight bricks and some new heavy ones - I figure I'll run it that way for now unless something/someone convinces me otherwise.
I'm sure that I left out some crucial info, and more questions will arise. But... thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
Matt
I just picked up a quadra fire 3100f, 1992. It's going into the questionably insulated basement of an old, small house with ok insulation, in northern Vermont. The house is 1100 sq ft - a third of that being basement. The quad is replacing a terrifying ec95 wood circulator or some such thing, like this...:
http://www.woodlanddirect.com/Wood-...1500-sqft/US-EC95-Stove-Wood-Circulator-Black
...that I burned last winter. Terrifying: impossible to shut down without a damper in the stove pipe. Which brings me to another thing - the house has 3+ stories of chimney and it draws very well; too well for last years stove and probably for the quad. I expect that I will be either keeping the damper in the stove pipe (bad, I know) or modifying the air intake on the stove, or both. The limiter screw on the primary air shut down looks easy to pull, as I saw on another thread here.
My first question, though, is regarding the baffle plate. It is a sheet of 3/8 steel with a lip bent down at an angle along the front edge, and it sits on a ledge that keeps it suspended a bit above the secondary tubes. It is badly warped. There is a pretty new kaowool blanket on top of that. I know that the newer quads have a ceramic board instead of a steel plate, and I'm trying to figure out if I should go out and have a new plate fabricated or if I should just replace it with the more modern ceramic material. I think that I read somewhere that the plate is over 25 lbs(?) and I wonder if that makes it a significant source of thermal mass. Conversely, I have seen the debates on here, pertaining to fire brick, about whether thermal mass or insulation is the preferred characteristic in the firebox... and maybe the ceramic is a better insulator? I don't know if they went for the ceramic in the new stoves because it is better, or because it's cheaper, or because it is better because it is cheaper when the steel inevitably warps! So... replace it with ceramic fiber board, and if so, is there a current consensus on the best DIY version of the expensive board from quad? Lastly, if I do use the ceramic, do I make it big enough to sit up on the ledge like the steel plate is currently, or do I rest it directly on the tubes the way the modern 3100 has it (I think)?
The bricks, by the way, are a mix of the original lightweight bricks and some new heavy ones - I figure I'll run it that way for now unless something/someone convinces me otherwise.
I'm sure that I left out some crucial info, and more questions will arise. But... thoughts?
Thanks in advance.
Matt
