BeGreen said:
OK, I guess I've wrestled enough with this thing to give some impressions.
Plusses:
Heats up VERY quickly!
Fantastic heat output - a very effective heater that burns HOT.
A design with very high heat transfer effiency.
Overall construction quality (welds, etc.) is very good.
Burns very clean.
Minuses:
Lots of small assembly flaws that effect operation.
Almost impossible to control the rate of burn.
Poorly designed airwash turns 25% of the glass brown.
Asymmetrical primary air from airwash causes stove to burn hot on the right and exhaust to the left.
None of the four separate air sources can be turned off, resulting in a quick cooldown and inabilty to maintain a bed of coals overnight.
Works best with wood much shorter than spec'ed - about 14" lengths seem about right.
As you can see, I'm struggling with this thing. It's absolutely awsome how quickly it warms up and gives off real heat. Good placement of air channels gives the flame path direct contact with outer surfaces, resulting in very high heat transfer efficiency. And the combustion chamber is optimised to heat up quickly and create lots of turbulence (good mixing of gasses and air) and secondary burn starts in a matter of just a few minutes from startup. But the overall feel is of an unrefined product compared to other stoves I've used, especially the Morso. Comparatively, I'd say the Quad 2100 isn't so much a wood stove, but a wood incinerator with several secondary air outlets added so it burns clean at high firing rates, and with limits placed on the air controls to make sure that only high firing rates are possible. It's like a car that runs at 50mph even when you're not touching the gas pedal. Larger diameter wood (6"-8" splits) helps some, but that's a small percentage of my wood supply, most of which is split into the 4"-6" range.
I bought the 2100 thinking it's front-to-back geometry would give a more controllable fire. But it isn't working out that way. It's almost impossible to control the burn rate. Even with air controls at minimum, it just takes off and goes. Bed-level air inlets in the front and rear of the firebox make it basically uncontrollable. None of the air inlets can be shut down.
After so many years of designing stoves with airwash systems, you'd think Quad would have it down by now. Fully 1/4 of the glass area turns dark brown within an hour. (And this is in a stove that burns very hot even with all air controls at minimum position!) It would add very little to the cost to put channels in the airwash chamber to direct sufficient air uniformly over the glass. Talk about creating a bad impression. By contrast, the Morso glass stays essentially clean at all firing rates, with only a slight browning of the bottom corners after a week of use.
Whether by design or by construction defect, the 2100's airwash is much stronger on the right side than the left, resulting in much dirtier glass on the left, and a right-to-left "swirl" burn pattern. I have a hard time believing this is by design. I suspect the left-side primary air channel either has a leak or an obstruction in it. But there's nothing I can do to investigate it further.
Well I guess I've trashed this thing enough. I wish I had better things to say about it. I've replaced the gasket, adjusted the front door, patched gaps, made spacers so the bricks lay flat against the sides, tried blocking various holes to get things under control, but nothing made much difference. In summary, I'd say the Quad 2100 is big on heat but comes up short in the aesthetic aspects of wood heating. I'm not sure I'll keep it.
