Top draft knob

[DaveNY49]

On some older stoves I notice an upper draft knob. Especially on the Atlanta Huntsman models. Upon reading manuals for these stoves online it’s stated that the upper air control wheel is to provide “secondary burn”.

Out of curiosity, how well did this design work? Did the uppper draft knob function as a secondary burn well?

 

[stoveliker]

I had an old cat stove with an upper air inlet - I thought it worked well. It does bring in another parameter to tune though, so finding the sweet spot to burn with load size, weather, heat output wanted, and now two air knobs gets more complicated.

 

[bholler]

On some older stoves I notice an upper draft knob. Especially on the Atlanta Huntsman models. Upon reading manuals for these stoves online it’s stated that the upper air control wheel is to provide “secondary burn”.

Out of curiosity, how well did this design work? Did the uppper draft knob function as a secondary burn well?

It was a very primitive secondary burn attempt that really didn't do much with wood. To work well with wood the air really needs to be preheated. Or to be dumped onto a hot metal grid like in the cawley Lemay stoves. It did work pretty well in coal stoves because coal gas is much more volatile