Catalytic vs Secondary Burn Technology Advantages?

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Here is a picture I took of the Ideal Steel during a cat burn. As you can see it is dark in there. The temperature is holding steady. It's not making a ton of heat.

This is 45 minutes after I closed the bypass and shut the air to #2. I will likely open it up more as it is to be the coldest night of the year here. I just wanted to give you a peek.
 

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My main concern is getting enough heat. I know my stove will operate at and above 700*F peak temp when it's really cold out. It's great all these stoves will burn for 24+ hours on one load but 3/4 of that duration on that setting might not be useful heat in my application. My living space is a single floor 1800 sqft but the stove is in the basement and heats the basement (with a drafty drive out insulated garage door) and naturally rises up to heat the house. That kind of demand might over tax some of these newer stoves. I'm concerned with having to run something like the IS hybrid at full tilt an over firing it. Their web site does not list a max BTU/hr output where as BK does...
 
My main concern is getting enough heat. I know my stove will operate at and above 700*F peak temp when it's really cold out. It's great all these stoves will burn for 24+ hours on one load but 3/4 of that duration on that setting might not be useful heat in my application. My living space is a single floor 1800 sqft but the stove is in the basement and heats the basement (with a drafty drive out insulated garage door) and naturally rises up to heat the house. That kind of demand might over tax some of these newer stoves. I'm concerned with having to run something like the IS hybrid at full tilt an over firing it. Their web site does not list a max BTU/hr output where as BK does...
And this is key - it's all well and good to discuss efficiencies in terms of how much of the energy got extracted and transferred into the living space, but it tells you nothing about heat output rate. Secondary burn stoves like mine can have a ferocious output when secondary burn is going strong, but then it tails off. If you have no thermal storage and need a higher output rate during that period it may not work for you.

I really like the idea of a hybrid to get that massive output during secondary burn, and a cat to keep the output rate up after secondary burn - if it really works that way. Does the heat from secondary burn damage the cat? I know my flue temps do go up then, but not too extreme. Maybe there is no need to have anything "switch over" between secondary but and cat heat on the tail, because it is the process of catalyzing the particulates that makes the cat self-heat. So if there are less particulates to catalyze during secondary burn, the cat may not be hotter even if the flue gasses are elevated.

I'd like to see a plot of cat temperatures as the stove goes through a high output secondary burn and then finishes the load.
 
Do we know all the details? No. Of course not. I'm sure there are all kinds of posts about Blaze King problems but who cares? Both are reputable companies that try their best in an imperfect world. Blaze King is only as good as the dealer you bought it from. Woodstock is a small business. Please stop singling out and harassing one company. It is not fair.

As a consumer, you have the responsibility of researching a product and asking questions. If a 1 year warranty is not satisfactory for you then walk away.


I see you added the bolded text to your post. I agree with you 100% that it is the consumers responsibility to research a product and ask questions. Sometimes this research and questioning can be taken as an attack on a particular product. Keep in mind, there may be aspects of your stove that others don't understand and you should not take that as an attack.
 
Brian described that burn as a typical winter burn for his Ideal Steel. What you have just stated completely relates to the point I was trying to make about hybrid technology. If that burn was "cat and secondary" as you say and the results were as the graph represents, then there really is no point to hybrid technology in my opinion. And PLEASE understand, I am not trying to argue or down any particular stove. I just do not see the real world benefits. That is why I made the prediction that in a few short years, we will all look back and talk about the failure of hybrid technology (unless there is a major breakthrough).

I think it would be really interesting to see the exact same graph with the stove draft at the rest of the settings, especially the higher draft settings. I dont think a 400* surface temp is going to be high enough to heat my house. Maybe in shoulder season for the first month or so and the last month or so but surely not in peak season. Plus, it would be great info to see how the cat temperature responds with higher firebox temps. If I was doing the test I would do one without the cat installed too.
 
I think it would be really interesting to see the exact same graph with the stove draft at the rest of the settings, especially the higher draft settings. I dont think a 400* surface temp is going to be high enough to heat my house. Maybe in shoulder season for the first month or so and the last month or so but surely not in peak season. Plus, it would be great info to see how the cat temperature responds with higher firebox temps. If I was doing the test I would do one without the cat installed too.

Careful Marshy, your need for real world information could be seen as an attack. It seems the hybrid crowd is ultra sensitive to any talk about their stoves. Not sure how people will do research when they get beat up every time something is said. Heck even BrianK, who seemed so professional and helpful when he did his beta on this site, said this on FHC to a fairly new member who also had questions about the Ideal Steel:

"After the pathological postings of IdahoNative at AnotherSite towards Woodstock, it's products and their consumers, and then cross posting his BS here to several Woodstock threads, you have the unmitigated gall to feign insult? Get lost." --- "Please stop repeating the BS of these BK fanboys on our forum." --- "I just read the entire thread at Hearth. There is no low end burn issue with the IS. There are BK fanboys disparaging Woodstock products and stalking Woodstock IS owners from forum to forum to impugn them and their stove and their stove's manufacturer with patently false and absurd claims."

I think the best thing to do is quit asking questions about the IS. There is enough information out there for potential buyers to make up their minds. Forums should be a place where everyone can give their input without getting beat up. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case.
 
I think the best thing to do is quit asking questions about the IS. There is enough information out there for potential buyers to make up their minds. Forums should be a place where everyone can give their input without getting beat up. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case.
To paraphrase: "Let's not talk about that other stove I don't like, or ask me to back up my fantastical claims."

Some of us don't give a damn about brand and are interested in how these various stove designs work and would like real quantifiable data on how they perform, such as output rates over time at various settings, etc., which is what Marshy was discussing. That's different from the subjective, qualitative, sciency-sounding stuff you've been pushing non-stop here. Unfortunately such data is distinctly lacking, apart from the EPA testing data which only covers a single operating condition and is mostly concerned with combustion efficiency and not output rate.
 
To paraphrase: "Let's not talk about that other stove I don't like, or ask me to back up my fantastical claims."

Some of us don't give a damn about brand and are interested in how these various stove designs work and would like real quantifiable data on how they perform, such as output rates over time at various settings, etc., which is what Marshy was discussing. That's different from the subjective, qualitative, sciency-sounding stuff you've been pushing non-stop here. Unfortunately such data is distinctly lacking, apart from the EPA testing data which only covers a single operating condition and is mostly concerned with combustion efficiency and not output rate.

Chris, you are living proof a person can be book smart and have absolutely no common sense.
 
I hope you stove geeks keep striving to understand this hybrid tech. I'll keep reading this thread and try to understand it all lol.
 
What is needed is an independent testing lab and a certification that lays out various factors like heat output, turn-down ability, peak output and other various relevant factors to stove owners.

EPA certifications only really tell you about stove emissions, not real world performance. Too bad Consumer Reports doesn't test wood stoves with the detail that is needed.

Idahonative, I understand your skepticism but if you take a look at what you have posted, you have to admit that you have taken your advocacy of the BK brand to almost Fanboy levels. This is especially true given that there is no side-by-side comparison between the two stoves in real world tests.
 
I think the problem here is that you are used to adjusting your stove to whatever heat output setting you want and forget it.

The Ideal Steel is a manual controlled stove so burn times are inconsistent with different people. What you see is some people will leave the stove at one setting while others adjust it every few hours etc... The operator is in control of how long the stove burns, how much heat he needs during the burn, how clean he wants his glass, and the desired flame for aesthetics. There is no thermostat primary correction. So yes two different people could have completely different burn times.

To try and narrow it down to one persons results is a waste of time. I believe that is why Woodstock rates it conservatively at 10-14 hours. For those of us who like to experiment and push the limits, we make it go quite a bit longer.
 
I think the problem here is that you are used to adjusting your stove to whatever heat output setting you want and forget it.

The Ideal Steel is a manual controlled stove so burn times are inconsistent with different people. What you see is some people will leave the stove at one setting while others adjust it every few hours etc... The operator is in control of how long the stove burns, how much heat he needs during the burn, how clean he wants his glass, and the desired flame for aesthetics. There is no thermostat primary correction. So yes two different people could have completely different burn times.

To try and narrow it down to one persons results is a waste of time. I believe that is why Woodstock rates it conservatively at 10-14 hours. For those of us who like to experiment and push the limits, we make it go quite a bit longer.

Are you seriously stirring this thread up again after nearly two weeks of it being dead?
 
Wow.. I hate to get people angry for reopening a six month old thread, but I'm going to be laying out a lot of cash for a new stove, and I have found this banter very interesting. The one thing about the Woodstock stove that concerns me is weight. It, like the much more expensive, but lower emission Lopi Cape Cod, is a very heavy stove. Even the Blaze King Sirocco 30 is quite a bit lighter, and I have been considering the 20 for being lighter and smaller. For me, length of burn is much more important than getting my house 100% to an ideal temperature. I have no problem with the house being 58 degrees at night and mid 60's during the day, and if it's 62 in the kitchen and 66 in the living (stove) room and I'm chilly, I can sit by the stove for a bit. I just don't want to wake up to a dead cold stove, like with our old Franklin and have to start from scratch every morning. I go through tons of kindling and lighters every year. If the stove is only giving out 10,000 btu's at 9 am and it's 4 degrees out, I have no problem with the furnace kicking in a little bit. Now, the old Franklin, when it's fired up and really running hot, probably puts out about 150,000 btus or so, and that's nice if you need it, but I don't. The ~ three hour burn time is also unsatisfactory. The advantage to the Woodstock appears to be price. The advantages to the blaze kings, to me, is that they are better looking (not the king and queen, mind you,) lighter, and require only ember protection. Since my father put down slate in this house under the franklin, the blaze king makes more sense to me on that score because a hearth pad on top of the slate will look funny, be expensive, and removing the slate would be - OMG - WORK! - which is out of the question. I just ran across the Woodstock steel stove for the first time this evening, and it's an interesting contrast with the BK, and significantly less money. I don't think our floor is up the the challenge of a 600 pound stove, though. I keep a 42" firewood ring, the stove and my electronic pianer across the 12 foot width of our living room (parallel to 2x8@16 joists.) That's about 200+ pounds of wood, stove and my butt on the piano bench all sitting on the same joists. Food for thought. Anyone else out there, maybe with a production model of the Woodstock, that can chime in here?

BTW, I have a used old VC Dutchwest Catalytic stove in my house next door that I'm fixing up for eventual possible habitation. It's a nice stove. Even though it's an older one with the grates/shaker setup, the only complaint I have is that when you open it, you get ashes and embers on the pad, which are a pain to clean. The BK 30's have a very deep well for ash in the box and that's a big plus. The 20's have a pretty good sized one, but not as big as the 30's. I have to do some thinkin' for sure. Even with the annoyance of a hearth pad, the Woodstock comes in better than $1000 under BK.
 
What is needed is an independent testing lab and a certification that lays out various factors like heat output, turn-down ability, peak output and other various relevant factors to stove owners.

EPA certifications only really tell you about stove emissions, not real world performance. Too bad Consumer Reports doesn't test wood stoves with the detail that is needed.

Idahonative, I understand your skepticism but if you take a look at what you have posted, you have to admit that you have taken your advocacy of the BK brand to almost Fanboy levels. This is especially true given that there is no side-by-side comparison between the two stoves in real world tests.
I agree with what you said but there are standardized tests which can be used to clue people in on the stoves heating efficiency. If you look at the Blaze king web site you will see two efficiency ratings, HHV and LHV. You can look them up and find the differences but it's not exactly clear to the average person what they mean. Manufactures are not required by the EPA to use a specific test for heating efficiency, only for emissions like you said. Some manufactured use the HHV and LHV, some do only one and some don't bother telling you what method they use.
Some of the things you described are not easily quantifiable however, seeing a graph for temp vs time would be very transparent.
 
First off, ignore all of the garbage from before.
I can speak about Woodstock and my ownership of the Ideal Steel. It really honestly burns a long time on a small amount of wood. If you fill it full it would provide a ton of heat and without any doubt, you will wake up to a much warmer house. There will be plenty of heat left in the stove making an easy reload. I've owned a Franklin, and believe me they do not compare.

What is your sq ft and layout?
 

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