Question about 2013 Progress Hybrid Primary/Seconday Intakes

[dave323]

hey there woodstove folks! i have several calls and emails in to Woodstock Soapstone but not heard back so i thought i would try here. We bought a house with a 2013 Progress Hybrid and have been ignoring the lower level where it is installed in favor of the living room with the large window and the Vermont Castings Resolute. but now that i have mastered the VC, i wanted to get familiar with the PH in anticipation of this next winter. i have read the instructions/manual many times and lurked about on the forums here reading anything i can about the PH.

heres the rub: our model doesnt have a carefully sliding, graduated damper lever on the back. it has a simple open/close flapper. i took it apart yesterday trying to match the mechanism with the manual and it is opposite. lifting the lever UP opens the damper fully and lowering it closes the damper. there is no halfway as there is no friction and the weight of the handle itself chooses DOWN for you. secondly, the fire will not start with the damper OPEN and everything else closed. the door has to be cracked open or the ash tray door opened. the draft is good on our chimney, its 16" vertical out of the top of the stove, 16" horizontal to the wall, then 18' out. if i leave a door cracked it burns well and hot. so i vacuumed the top ports inside and could see light through to the damper (when i had the back off). so i know its clear, but obviously the fire doesnt pull well from the ceiling of the stove and isnt getting air down low.

i have been unable to find an exploded diagram of the stove, but in reading here people have mentioned primary and secondary intakes. the crux of this post is to find out where exactly, down below, does the stove pull air from? then i can go look for that since it must surely be blocked due to the observed behavior. i would like to get it figured out and learn the intricate subtleties i have read about here.

thank you for any help or wisdom!
d.

 

[Leeks]

Welcome to the forum! I'm fairly new here but I have been burning wood for almost 40 years, the past 2 years with a Progress Hybrid.

A 2013 would be one of the early versions and from what you describe, still has the original air intake damper. From what I've read, these did a poor job of regulating the intake air. After early 2020 Hearthstone updated this flapper to a sliding plate design which gives much better air regulation especially when operating at the nearly closed end of it's range. I believe there is a retrofit kit to update the older flapper design to the new sliding plate. Info Here. and Here

But on to your other issue - difficult cold starting.

I noticed the same problem with mine from day 1 when it was new. Lots of smoke and sluggish burning for an hour or so. I also did the same thing you are doing, open the ash pan, crack the door, etc. (make it a rule to NEVER leave the room when the ash pan is open!). After studying the diagram Here, I decided to remove the rear intake assembly and lit small pieces of wood just inside the rear intake channels. With a decent draft, I could watch through the glass window the smoke from the small smoldering pieces as it was pulled into the firebox. It became pretty clear that air came through the top plate with all the holes (secondary air) and through the slot along the top of the window (air wash). Neither were really what I would call "primary air" although I guess when the air wash gets to the bottom of the glass it's supposed to feed the fire. There is also a small single hole in the middle of the andiron assembly near the bottom (you'll really have to look hard to find it - I did.) . This feeds a very small amount of air to the base of the fire. Just barely enough to keep it going but hardly enough to get a fire going. Cold starts always took forever and usually resulted in blackened glass too!

I ended up modifying my Progress Hybrid to have a "real" primary air induction system. Basically, I added a thermostatically controlled flapper intake to the ash pan. Here's a photo of the modified ash pan. Cold starts are easy now and the overall performance IMHO is much improved.

 

[dave323]

thanks for the information and great explanation. the info on the new damper install is great. i had no idea i could upgrade the stoves simple flapper but knowing that i can will be awesome once i get around to ordering it and making it happen. the problem i still have that i dont have a solution for is that the stove wont really run without the ash pan door or stove door cracked even after i get the fire going. so its less of a cold-start problem and more of a "no primary air" problem. even if the simple flapper damper is opened all the way it makes no difference. actually once i get the fire going i can close and open that to no avail, and the only thing that actually affects the burning is cracking side door or ash pan door otherwise is smolders out. now that i know there should be a small hole down low for an intake vent, i will go and look for it. the diagram you linked to the passages above the stove through the catalytic are good information also. i will do another once over and see if i missed anything, otherwise i will implement an ash drawer door vent like you did. that would work. thanks again!