DonTee
Minister of Fire
Does the manufacturer give specific instructions on how to operate the stove without the cat installed?
The wood is good, here. He tested it properly.
It's the burning mode that's the issue.
Choking a fire can do that over night…even with 4 year cut, split, stacked off ground, and top covered wood. Read my above posts…because I just did it to mine. Made a mess. BUT I was assuming my door spinner intake openings were “normal” size…and they were not. Still user error on my part. I should have looked closer.Also, the picture of the glass door does not look good. That is not soot from overnight burn. That is shiny caked on creo from either sub par fuel (likely) or burning way too low (choking the fire). This is my personal view from what is said and shown.
Its still.a crap shoot on this.. Taking the OP information and assuming it is correct.. If ist off and higher.. this is adding to the issue.. That box in in really poor shape.. for being brand new.. the wood could be subpar..
Wow that glass looks like the inside of my dads smoker. This is only my second year burning, but I’m pretty paranoid about creosote formation. I’m always checking to make sure theres minimal if any smoke coming out of my chimney stack with every adjustment I make to my stove to ensure a clean burn.
Listen to these guys advice, they know exactly what they’re talking about and have given me good advice to any questions I’ve had so far in my short time here.
I have two. One regular and one wireless. Won’t burn without them. Washer and probe (have a second probe in box but never got around to putting in to compare liner skin temp to flue gas at the appliance adapter.AT200Chim with 4" probe for double wall. 90 bucks +/- shipped from Auber or Amazon 99 bucks prime shipped.
Thermometer for Stove Pipe,Chimney,Outdoor Wood Boiler,w/ Alarm Thermometer for monitoring temperature on stove, chimney, or outdoor wood boiler [AT200CHIM] - $74.99 : Auber Instruments, Inc., Temperature control solutions for home and industry
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Im in Monroe Twp probably 30 minutes from youwhat part of NJ are u in
Ok good to know that I am going to need to keep it to a certain temp to avoid this burning off in the future. That was somewhat frightening, until started reading more about this here and elsewhere.Take the stove up to 550-600º and let it cruise at that temp. There should be no need to adjust it after 30 minutes or so. At the end of the weekend, let the fire die down to ashes.
My vote goes to offgassing too.. 450 stove temp should be plenty hot to get things moving. So if it's shut down too much and the wood had a chance to start offgassing. You're gonna get a soupy mess of wood offgass and cooling that's got nowhere to go but stick to the doors. That doesn't look like just soot on the glass to me.
The heats there, the fuels there but no oxygen. Thus the glass looks like that, takes all the condensate. You gave it air again and poof
Go watch this video from the slo mo guys. It's obviously not the exact situation but a similar concept.
yea I think truer words have never been said. Give up on the overnight burns for now. And that's a shame. I spent so much time researching stoves, trying to find one that was locally well respected and was supported by a number of techs, and that would fit in my tiny space. Meanwhile my neighbor goes to tractor supply, just randomly picks up a stove and "it's great, heats our whole cabin, I dont even run the furnace all weekend now".Time for me weigh in. I like to ride the bottom end of my burn rate. In a secondary combustion stove you absolutely must keep secondary combustion active You can snuff out the primary but in a traditional tube stove the heat generated by the secondary combustion can keep the wood out gassing, this feeds the clean and complete secondary combustion. The down draft secondary combustion system I don’t think, and this is just my opinion looking at their brochure, would allow enough heat from the secondary combustion chamber to reach the wood providing a sustained and nearly only secondary combustion (ie lowest possible air setting and heat output). And I don’t see how adding a cat would clean up the glass but it would likely (if run properly keep the pipe clean and help prevent a chimney fire)
So the OP asked how do you run the stove. And my answer is hot enough to keep the glass clean would be a start. Flue gas probe too. It’s going to take time to learn a new stove and possibly even longer with the VC and it’s updraft system. Give up, for now at least, on the overnight burn. Hot and fast will keep things clean. You will learn how to ride low output line in time. But it can be frustrating. Changing weather, wood and MC all effect your learned low output settings. It may take babysitting the stove for 90 minutes (in my experience) to keep the burn clean and low. And sometimes I just give up and load a smaller load and let it burn on medium. I Hit the easy button(the thermostat temp up button) once in a while when it’s not too cold cold outside and I am worried about over heating the house. It will get colder and this low burn rate issue won’t be bothering you untill it warms back up in the spring.
I’d probably spring for the cat. And the AT200. Your experience will be much better with them.
I tested again on Sunday just in case I had a wood mix up as I have two areas of wood. One for the stove that is well seasoned and one for the fireplace that is seasoned but not as well. I pulled splits in Sat night, went about my day on Sunday eating breakfast out and doing some back back back country driving with the family. Picked up some potatoes and apples, then came back about 20 hours from when I pulled the splits inside, split and was reading anywhere from 12-16% MC in my wood. WHICH is making me start to wonder about my general MM as that MC seems REALLY low for wood that sits outside and was brought in 20 hours prior. The MC of the paneling near the stove is down to like 7.5%, whereas the outside wall it's 9ish. During the summer, those pieces get up there around 13-14MC. I have been tracking MC of a piece of wood flooring that Im interesting in getting, and it's width. Ive had one moment when the size of the board didnt correspond to the MC. Usually at 13%MC, the board is about 5 1/16 heavy or almost 5 1/8.The wood is good, here. He tested it properly.
It's the burning mode that's the issue.
It's not that I dont want to run it with the cat, if the cat were available online right now I would buy it. My local dealer is 1.5 hours away and they would require me to pick it up or would charge me $50 to ship it to me. So that kinda bothers me. Id also like to run it without the cat to determine if I get any value from the cat. I think if it were a necessary thing, they should have included it. "flex burn" is what they call my stove. What's so flexible about it if the cat is required IMOAppears to me the op does not want to run the stove with cat in. Therefore he needs to run it aka “everburn” mode. In this case he needs to maintain the secondary chamber @ 1000F in order to achieve a clean burn. It is possible at expense of shorter burn.
I agree it is really low.I tested again on Sunday just in case I had a wood mix up as I have two areas of wood. One for the stove that is well seasoned and one for the fireplace that is seasoned but not as well. I pulled splits in Sat night, went about my day on Sunday eating breakfast out and doing some back back back country driving with the family. Picked up some potatoes and apples, then came back about 20 hours from when I pulled the splits inside, split and was reading anywhere from 12-16% MC in my wood. WHICH is making me start to wonder about my general MM as that MC seems REALLY low for wood that sits outside and was brought in 20 hours prior. The MC of the paneling near the stove is down to like 7.5%, whereas the outside wall it's 9ish. During the summer, those pieces get up there around 13-14MC. I have been tracking MC of a piece of wood flooring that Im interesting in getting, and it's width. Ive had one moment when the size of the board didnt correspond to the MC. Usually at 13%MC, the board is about 5 1/16 heavy or almost 5 1/8.
The issue with the stove is that there is no set it and forget it mode. If the stove is fully loaded with a good bed of hot coals, STT around 500-600, I need to keep the air control on high to catch that bundle of wood somewhat. Because the full pack of wood has disrupted a good air flow. However, I will need to adjust back the airflow as I cant run like that else the burn time will be very low, and once the wood burns down to half then the stove will run away quickly and burn way too hot. Even setting it midway down, eventually the stove will burn VERY hot at like hour 4-5. Overnight burns are not possible then on this stove, as my sweet spot is about 3rd or 4th from the lowest. 4th from the lowest and I wake up to almost no coals. 3rd from the lowest I can wake up to large chunks of hot coals, to half the box being full.Sounded to me like the user described the stove as being able to run the stove in either mode. He happened to be running it secondary, likely a little too cool. But if the stove can be run without the CAT (I think it can) it should be able to run only in secondary mode only. At least that’s what dealers explained to me. EDIT: Just seen you confirmed it can run in either mode.
Still, it has to be operated at the proper temp for the mode of burn (seems we agree), regardless of which mode, and that much creosote points to being too cool for the mode chosen = operator error…for whatever reason…perhaps because it’s early fall and higher temp was needed for that size home. Still…user error as others have pointed out.
I loved the features of these stoves and would have loved to have bought a Flexburn but decided against it. What stopped me from buying was too many parts.
The wood is good. The last tested sample actually has me a bit worried my wood is too dry, or maybe my MM is wrong totally...but even if it were off by 5%, I would still be under 20%.Also, the picture of the glass door does not look good. That is not soot from overnight burn. That is shiny caked on creo from either sub par fuel (likely) or burning way too low (choking the fire). This is my personal view from what is said and shown.
The wood that I tested (twice) this weekend was taken outside to be split but was inside otherwise. When I split it is very obvious which is the freshly split side, but because it will get mixed up on the way in with all my other splits I drew a line with a marker to make sure I was measuring the fresh split.I agree it is really low.
And referring to my repeated questions above that you there answered affirmatively, I note that you did not say here that you resplit a piece right before you measured it, so you measure the moisture content on the inside.
We often see these numbers on the outside of splits that have been drying. Hence many people are concerned about the mc being right or not.
I will grab a picture next weekend when Im up there again. Some of it looks really well aged. Dark. Some of it looks freshly split. They all read the same MC. The stuff that is dark gets rained on if the rain is strong and sideways like you'd get with a strong storm. The other stuff is blocked by this pile. I do not cover my wood on the sides. Only the top and a bit on the sides to allow rain run off without impacting the wood.Can we see pictures of your wood pile? Does it look well aged?
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