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It was pointed out to Spider in the past that the chimney draft was way too high in his install. He also has multiple appliances hooked to the same chimney.
His bad install is a direct result of the EPA!
As usual, you're full of $h!t Del. My elitist stove has been installed in the shop for well over a year now... installed exactly per manufacturer's specifications. There has be zero... absolutely zero improvement. If you're gonna' try and add something to the discussion... at least try and add something of relative value instead of your self-serving bu!!$h!t.

...if you sort through the numbers it is there...
No... at least not that supports your claim of better heating efficiency (except through your own conjecture).

See... I believe too often in discussion such as this, too much emphasis is placed on fuel efficiency as the be-all-to-end-all. Sure, there are times when fuel efficiency is a consideration; such as lookin' to buy a car for my teenage daughter for drivin' back and forth to work. But if I'm lookin' for a truck to pull my stock trailer across the county horsepower comes way before fuel efficiency.

Now if I'm lookin' to put a stove in my cozy little den for a little ambiance and supplemental heat... and especially if I buy my firewood, fuel efficiency would be a consideration. But if I'm lookin' to heat my entire drafty, uninsulated, old farm house when it's -20° and blowin'... horsepower (i.e., BTU output per hour) is the only friggin' consideration. (And don't talk at me about insulation... we're talking about the difference in applications.)

I guarantee when high heat, really high heat, hour after hour after hour after hour is required, a smoke dragon pullin' air up through the fire from the bottom is gonna' outperform and elitist stove every friggin' time. Hang the friggin' fuel consumption, more horsepower requires more fuel. And it ain't linear, more horsepower necessarily means lower fuel efficiency (even in your elitist stove)... always has been that way, always will be.

What is, or isn't, "better" ain't as cut 'n' dried as you make it out to be... it's never been as simple as a few "efficiency" numbers.
I'm not the one in denial here, I fully concede to the points from the "other side"... it's the "other side" that (usually) refuses to concede any points from this side.
And that's why I call them "elitist stoves"... it friggin' fits.
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can we get one of the 100's of these Smoke Dragon vs. EPA stove ***** fest's put into a sticky? seems all of the same people forgot they already argued this BS far too many times...
 
A friend bought a "custom" knife for which he paid nearly 500 clams, it has sharp corners that make using it rough on the hand and doesn't hold an edge for crap, but to hear him tell it there is no better knife in the world.
Some of that comes into play when folks talk about their stoves. Something they spent big bucks on HAS to be better.
 
As usual, you're full of $h!t Del. My elitist stove has been installed in the shop for well over a year now... installed exactly per manufacturer's specifications. There has be zero... absolutely zero improvement. If you're gonna' try and add something to the discussion... at least try and add something of relative value instead of your self-serving bu!!$h!t.


No... at least not that supports your claim of better heating efficiency (except through your own conjecture).

See... I believe too often in discussion such as this, too much emphasis is placed on fuel efficiency as the be-all-to-end-all. Sure, there are times when fuel efficiency is a consideration; such as lookin' to buy a car for my teenage daughter for drivin' back and forth to work. But if I'm lookin' for a truck to pull my stock trailer across the county horsepower comes way before fuel efficiency.

Now if I'm lookin' to put a stove in my cozy little den for a little ambiance and supplemental heat... and especially if I buy my firewood, fuel efficiency would be a consideration. But if I'm lookin' to heat my entire drafty, uninsulated, old farm house when it's -20° and blowin'... horsepower (i.e., BTU output per hour) is the only friggin' consideration. (And don't talk at me about insulation... we're talking about the difference in applications.)

I guarantee when high heat, really high heat, hour after hour after hour after hour is required, a smoke dragon pullin' air up through the fire from the bottom is gonna' outperform and elitist stove every friggin' time. Hang the friggin' fuel consumption, more horsepower requires more fuel. And it ain't linear, more horsepower necessarily means lower fuel efficiency (even in your elitist stove)... always has been that way, always will be.

What is, or isn't, "better" ain't as cut 'n' dried as you make it out to be... it's never been as simple as a few "efficiency" numbers.
I'm not the one in denial here, I fully concede to the points from the "other side"... it's the "other side" that (usually) refuses to concede any points from this side.
And that's why I call them "elitist stoves"... it friggin' fits.
*

Actually it does support my claim of heating efficiency, and it's not conjecture.

Efficiency means the amount of useful work (thermal energy output in this case) versus the fuel input.

If the inputs are the same and the stack temps and emissions are lower, then the stove with the lower stack emissions and lower stack temperature is more efficient. It's simple thermodynamics and an energy balance.

We weren't ever talking about output until you brought it up, we were talking about efficiency and wood consumption.

Earlier in the discussion you said starving the fire for air at the bottom was stupid, and yet almost all modern industrial solid fuel boilers do exactly that.
 
But if I'm lookin' to heat my entire drafty, uninsulated, old farm house when it's -20° and blowin'...
-20° doesn't happen here anymore, but we heat our 180 year old house with an "EPA" secondary burn stove. We have a second, smaller "EPA" stove as well that is sometime used instead, sometimes in addition. Single pane old sashes with no storm windows. Precious little insulation. There is no backup heating system. It is, however, not very drafty.

As I said at the time, your stove had too low a capacity - the peak output with secondary combustion may have been just adequate, but the output profile over time was incompatible with your need for a high continuous output, especially with no thermal mass to smooth it out. You needed a bigger stove - there is no one to regulate btu/hour output claims so they are the typical lies and BS you would expect.

Now you have it in an uninsulated shop and it is still too small.

My stoves are surrounded by stone. This helps smooth out the heat output profile. Then too, we don't care much if the temperature stays constant from room to room or over time. All with these stoves you claim don't work - and we are not the only ones heating our homes with them.

Ambiance and supplemental heat my ass.
 
If the inputs are the same and the stack temps and emissions are lower, then the stove with the lower stack emissions and lower stack temperature is more efficient.
Good lord man... do I have to spell it out for you??
The friggin' inputs ain't the same... and if you take the time to read your link carefully, they clearly state that‼

-20° doesn't happen here anymore...
My stoves are surrounded by stone. This helps smooth out the heat output profile.
So... now we're back to different applications... huh??
So what has changed??
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Some of that comes into play when folks talk about their stoves. Something they spent big bucks on HAS to be better.
Wanna take a guess at how many big bucks I spent on my fancy stove? I bought it new a few years ago.
 
So... now we're back to different applications... huh??
So what has changed??
The application where I heat my house with a type of wood stove you claim doesn't work, and that only people who are using it for ambiance are satisfied with?

I'm not sure what you are asking has changed.
 
C'mon man, where did I say they "don't work" (don't pull that on me), I'm sayin' they ain't always the best choice... c'mon.
You've come close enough!

I don't actually care if people burn older stoves - my Dad does and it works great. He's had it since I was a teenager and knows how to run it. It seldom smokes much and there's no one for it to bother anyway. I suspect his flue is too short and has too little draft to pull much air velocity through the secondary manifold, and that it would not work for him - so I agree it's not the best choice for him.

Then again he's not heating his whole house with it. So I guess a smoke dragon is a decent choice if you just want a little ambiance in the den....
 
More on topic with the OP, I've been building up coals the last few days, as we've been burning hickory. Plus my wife had loaded it heavy and stopped it down a bit too far. I need to get some more ash moved down to the house! The type of wood you burn can make a difference. I burned a lot of them up tonight but not quite enough.

I'm going to try to actually come down and adjust the air inlet during the night - I haven't done that in years I don't think.

Well the stove is loaded and cranking with a nice secondary burn, and it is 90 in the basement (with the blower pulling all the air it can off the top of the room). I'm off to bed.
 
It is silly to argue these points without considering all the variables involved in any application and the end result.
Even something as simple as the wind direction and how hard its blowing plays a role in how well my stove preforms from day to day.
Even my own perception of how cold it feels from day to day will have an effect on how I perceive how well my stove is preforming.
So to sit here and continually argue numbers vs. application is silly.
As with anything results will vary, its as simple as that.
 
Coming from the point of view as a PE T-6 owner, my stove is VERY efficient (with good output until the secondaries extinguish) if I keep it damped all the way down after solid light-off. I have to do this to get good mileage out of it. If I run it any faster the cycle period of high and low output (very noticeable by feel) is greatly reduced and greatly pronounced. To keep from building up an entire bed full of coals when it's under about 25°F I have to basically let it burn almost to the point of extinguishment/exhaustion before re-loading or it will build up a box full of coals in short order with roughly 1/3-1/4 of it's usual heat output and no more room for fresh fuel. Running the draft/throttle higher to burn the coals more efficiently only exacerbates the problem. Once the secondaries quit, I usually open the door to let the coals burn down, to avoid shoveling out burning coals just to make room for more wood. This makes for a cranky wife. We're heating about 2400sqft and have been slowly insulating and increasing the efficiency of the house as funds have allowed. When it's below 30° the propane central heat is cycling on/of set at 67-68°. When the secondaries are going the output is nice. As soon as they shut down, it feels like the output is cut by 50%.

For reference, we're burning Locust, Oak, Maple, Hedge, Ash and a bit of Cedar (as starter/shoulder season wood). We have constant North or South winds in KS so my stacks are all N/S to take advantage of the wicking process. I do need to get a hydrometer to have definitive numbers, but, when I get a load of wood to refill the house, the bark readily falls off and the logs light usually within 20-30 seconds. There are no other devices connected to the stack and it is 2.5 stories tall with 4x 45° elbows in it, professionally installed and inspected.

Pros:
It is fairly miserly with wood. - Not as much as my buddies VC Defiant CAT stove, but more so than most of thee non-epa fireboxes.
It burns VERY cleanly - We had the chimney cleaned after 3 years of burning and the total amount of articulate filled up about 1/4 of the small, skinny coffee cans (whatever volume they are).
There is virtually no visible smoke outside of light-ups/re-lights.
When the secondaries are lit, it heats amazingly well.
Cons:
It's rated for a 20" log but 16-18" is about ideal. I'd rather burn 24" logs. (less bucking/splitting).
If I feed it like an old stove (reloading when the previous load has settled down to a flat coal bed) over about 6 hrs, it will build up a bed of coals deep enough to almost make it impossible to put more wood in, without either letting them burn down to ash, OR carrying a large bucket of live coals out of the house to make room for more wood.
Starting it (cold stove) with Hedge is almost impossible without leaving the door open until a good coal bed has formed.
When the secondaries go out, the heat output sucks.
I seem to have to replace the door gaskets yearly and the glass gaskets every 2 years.

Do I regret buying an EPA stove? No
Have I regained my initial expenditure back in heat savings over propane? YES!
Would I buy anther PE stove? NO. It would be a Jotul Black bear or a VC Defiant as a zone heater or a OWB for a whole-house solution.
For heat output with regards to consistency, duration and total volume, I'd be better off with a double barrel stove, even using it as a zone heater, but I don't want to go through that much fuel, so I'll deal with the things that piss me off about my elitist stove until I can afford to replace it with a VC or Jotul unit.
 
Coming from the point of view as a PE T-6 owner, my stove is VERY efficient (with good output until the secondaries extinguish) if I keep it damped all the way down after solid light-off. I have to do this to get good mileage out of it. If I run it any faster the cycle period of high and low output (very noticeable by feel) is greatly reduced and greatly pronounced. To keep from building up an entire bed full of coals when it's under about 25°F I have to basically let it burn almost to the point of extinguishment/exhaustion before re-loading or it will build up a box full of coals in short order with roughly 1/3-1/4 of it's usual heat output and no more room for fresh fuel. Running the draft/throttle higher to burn the coals more efficiently only exacerbates the problem. Once the secondaries quit, I usually open the door to let the coals burn down, to avoid shoveling out burning coals just to make room for more wood. This makes for a cranky wife. We're heating about 2400sqft and have been slowly insulating and increasing the efficiency of the house as funds have allowed. When it's below 30° the propane central heat is cycling on/of set at 67-68°. When the secondaries are going the output is nice. As soon as they shut down, it feels like the output is cut by 50%.

For reference, we're burning Locust, Oak, Maple, Hedge, Ash and a bit of Cedar (as starter/shoulder season wood). We have constant North or South winds in KS so my stacks are all N/S to take advantage of the wicking process. I do need to get a hydrometer to have definitive numbers, but, when I get a load of wood to refill the house, the bark readily falls off and the logs light usually within 20-30 seconds. There are no other devices connected to the stack and it is 2.5 stories tall with 4x 45° elbows in it, professionally installed and inspected.

Pros:
It is fairly miserly with wood. - Not as much as my buddies VC Defiant CAT stove, but more so than most of thee non-epa fireboxes.
It burns VERY cleanly - We had the chimney cleaned after 3 years of burning and the total amount of articulate filled up about 1/4 of the small, skinny coffee cans (whatever volume they are).
There is virtually no visible smoke outside of light-ups/re-lights.
When the secondaries are lit, it heats amazingly well.
Cons:
It's rated for a 20" log but 16-18" is about ideal. I'd rather burn 24" logs. (less bucking/splitting).
If I feed it like an old stove (reloading when the previous load has settled down to a flat coal bed) over about 6 hrs, it will build up a bed of coals deep enough to almost make it impossible to put more wood in, without either letting them burn down to ash, OR carrying a large bucket of live coals out of the house to make room for more wood.
Starting it (cold stove) with Hedge is almost impossible without leaving the door open until a good coal bed has formed.
When the secondaries go out, the heat output sucks.
I seem to have to replace the door gaskets yearly and the glass gaskets every 2 years.

Do I regret buying an EPA stove? No
Have I regained my initial expenditure back in heat savings over propane? YES!
Would I buy anther PE stove? NO. It would be a Jotul Black bear or a VC Defiant as a zone heater or a OWB for a whole-house solution.
For heat output with regards to consistency, duration and total volume, I'd be better off with a double barrel stove, even using it as a zone heater, but I don't want to go through that much fuel, so I'll deal with the things that piss me off about my elitist stove until I can afford to replace it with a VC or Jotul unit.

That sounds similar to the issues Spidey had with his PE on the coals. I've never had that issue with my Quadrafire and none of the other people I've helped install stoves with have had that issue either. Some of my friends burn hardwood (Apple, locust, some maple etc) the rest of us burn red fir and larch.

I've never replaced the gaskets on mine and it's on year 10. I do a dollar bill test a couple times a year to verify a good seal.
 
So I guess a smoke dragon is a decent choice if you just want a little ambiance in the den....
Smoke dragon... no glass door.... no view of the fire... no ambiance...
Don't make such a big deal out of my ambiance comment... I can't count how many times I've been told (on this board) how much I'm missing without a glass door and fire view. :rolleyes: I can't tell you how many times it's been posted by someone here they wouldn't give up the glass door fire view (ambiance) for any sort of stove. Heck, Del_ went on about it for over a year... on, and on, and on, and on, and on about it. Then, after I got a glass door elitist stove... he became an installation pro and could even diagnose a bad install from hundreds of miles away while lookin' at his keyboard. He must know magic...

...and it is 90 in the basement...
Lord, I really hate that...
Happily, it's 70° in the basement... 70° in the living room... 70° in the kitchen... 70° in the dining room... 70° in the bath room... 70° in all the bed rooms... and even 70° in the den :D
I'd be totally pizzed-off and miserable if it was 90° in the basement... that's where my hang-out is... that's where my guns and ammunition reloading area is... that's where the beer cooler is... that's where I'm sitting (barefoot) now‼
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Some of my friends burn hardwood (Apple, locust, some maple etc) the rest of us burn red fir and larch.
I'm burning a lot of Silver Maple and ash out in the shop in my elitist stove right now... last weekend temps were in the 30s and even low 40's. Burning that kind of wood in mild(ish) weather I can almost get through the day without shoveling out coals to make room for a reload... almost get through a day, if I keep stirrin' (fiddlin' with) the fire. Forget burning oak... ya' just waste ½ of it when ya' throw out the coals.

The problem ain't just limited to PE stoves... I hear the same complaint from everyone I know with an elitist stove with a firebrick floor. Some have more problems than others... but all say it gets much worse as temperatures drop. Maybe my stove is too small like some try to say, maybe everyone I know has a stove too small (or maybe it's just friggin' cold here). But what the he!! does stove size have to do with a bed of coals not burning up... and worse, not heating?? I mean... c'mon... my grandfather heated his entire general store with a little pot-bellied stove. Poor heating performance is poor heating performance... excuses are excuses.

I don't believe it's stove size, I don't believe it's bad installs. I believe it's real simple, the design can't keep up with demand when heat loss is high... the greater the demand and heat loss, the worse the performance (after secondary shuts down). That's the common thread I see, no matter the stove size. I get told about insulation, new windows, tighten up the drafts, and whatnot... yeah OK, I agree that's a good idea. But seriously?? I haf'ta improve my home to "fix" my stove... c'mon, that's just an excuse. What if I wanna' use the thing to heat my old barn??
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So… more heat from half the wood??
Let’s figure there’s 7000 BTUs in a pound of wood…

Let’s say, in 12 hours, I burn 100 pounds of it in my (supposedly) 55% efficient smoke dragon…
7000 × 100 × .55 ÷ 12 = 32083 BTU’s per hour (average).

Now let’s say, in 12 hours, you burn half that much wood in your (supposedly) 85% efficient elitist stove…
7000 × 50 × .85 ÷ 12 = 24791 BTU’s per hour (average).

Heck, even if we say the smoke dragon is only 50% efficient and the elitist stove is 90% efficient… it still comes up short…
7000 × 100 × .50 ÷ 12 = 29167 BTU’s per hour (average) for the smoke dragon.
7000 × 50 × .90 ÷ 12 = 26250 BTU’s per hour (average) for the elitist stove.

More likely the “real world” efficiency numbers are closer to 60% and 80%...
7000 × 100 × .60 ÷ 12 = 35000 BTU’s per hour (average) for the smoke dragon.
7000 × 50 × .80 ÷ 12 = 23333 BTU’s per hour (average) for the elitist stove.

More heat from half the wood??
Must be magic.
I don't believe in magic, so I don't believe claims of more heat from half the wood... actually I call BS‼

Now if the claim was the same amount of heat from 20% or 25% less wood I might buy that... maybe.
*


Here is the reason you get more heat out of the efficient stove than the smoke dragon. By having an insulated fire box that builds and holds more heat you can turn down your input air to really low levels and still keep the smoke gases burning. Being able to lower the input air down to those extra low levels is actually meaning the air flow thru the stove is far less. With slower movement thru the stove the heat in the stove has more residual time to radiate out the stove top and the front of the stove which is how the newer stoves radiate heat. With a smoke dragon you dont have the heat built up in the stove as high and you have to keep the input air open more to keep the fire burning. You can open the air more to get a more efficient burn maybe up to that 55% your talking about for a smoke dragon but when you do that your air flows thru the stove are increased and more of the heat gets flushed up the flue. Those efficiency numbers are combustion efficiency numbers and are not efficiency numbers of how much heat gets out into the house. One of the main advantages of the newer epa stoves is you can turn it down to a low burn rate and still operate at high efficiency with no smoke out the flue. A smoke dragon dampered down for an all night burn is not burning at 55% efficiency as the more smoke and the more dense the smoke out the flue from a dampered down smoke dragon stove is a visual display of poor efficiency. :buttkick:
 
Happily, it's 70° in the basement... 70° in the living room... 70° in the kitchen... 70° in the dining room... 70° in the bath room... 70° in all the bed rooms... and even 70° in the den
Yes, and this is the crux of the problem - fossil fuel heating system expectations. A heating oil/gas heating system has a very high instantaneous heat output rate, and can be modulated from zero to full by varying the on time. They also have very effective heat exchangers from burner to air or water to distribute the heat throughout the house.

Wood stoves don't do well in any of those things. All of them have a heat output that varies over time, and cannot be throttled down very far without combustion issues. It's tough to match the BTU/hr of a fossil fuel burner system. Heat exchangers are problematic, especially on your jury-rigged "Stovace". With no heat energy storage and the requirement to move the heat from where the stove is to where you want the heat, your only strategy to achieve constant temps over time and space is to run the stove at a sufficiently high output rate continually, burn to ashes and reload and repeat. The PE Spectrum probably only barely matched the energy output rate you needed during max secondary burn, and then during the post-secondary it didn't put out the heat you needed. The burn cycle is described in the manual for the stove.

Given the air you were blowing over it and having removed the firebrick, I suspect you were also cooling off the firebox and terminating secondary burn even earlier while not actually getting an effective heat exchange anyway - especially at the cooler temperatures post secondary. This likely generated even more ash than usual, which you could not wait to burn off, so you threw the ashes out along with the energy contained within them. So you didn't realize a reduction in wood use either.

This is why I have said the stove was too small for your expectations, and part of that is that your expectations require a large stove burning at a high constant rate. An actual well designed wood furnace can do what you want, but no one has worked out how to do efficient or clean burning when heavily throttled, and heat exchangers can still be problematic given the dirty combustion compared to oil/gas.

Many of us who heat successfully with these stoves are not burdened with your expectations of temperatures that never vary in time or location, and place them in parts of the dwelling that we actually want heated. Further, some of us have some thermal storage to reduce the temperature variations. There isn't any mystery or magic here, not about what was wrong with your installation nor about how to use one of these stoves effectively.
 
I'm burning a lot of Silver Maple and ash out in the shop in my elitist stove right now... last weekend temps were in the 30s and even low 40's. Burning that kind of wood in mild(ish) weather I can almost get through the day without shoveling out coals to make room for a reload... almost get through a day, if I keep stirrin' (fiddlin' with) the fire. Forget burning oak... ya' just waste ½ of it when ya' throw out the coals.

The problem ain't just limited to PE stoves... I hear the same complaint from everyone I know with an elitist stove with a firebrick floor. Some have more problems than others... but all say it gets much worse as temperatures drop. Maybe my stove is too small like some try to say, maybe everyone I know has a stove too small (or maybe it's just friggin' cold here). But what the he!! does stove size have to do with a bed of coals not burning up... and worse, not heating?? I mean... c'mon... my grandfather heated his entire general store with a little pot-bellied stove. Poor heating performance is poor heating performance... excuses are excuses.

I don't believe it's stove size, I don't believe it's bad installs. I believe it's real simple, the design can't keep up with demand when heat loss is high... the greater the demand and heat loss, the worse the performance (after secondary shuts down). That's the common thread I see, no matter the stove size. I get told about insulation, new windows, tighten up the drafts, and whatnot... yeah OK, I agree that's a good idea. But seriously?? I haf'ta improve my home to "fix" my stove... c'mon, that's just an excuse. What if I wanna' use the thing to heat my old barn??
*
I have a cheap as stoves go Englander nc 30,and I don't have any of these problems . every 8 hours or so I just open the air control up ,stir the coals a little ,load the stove up,shut the air almost all the way closed in about 15 minutes then repeat .I burn 2+year old red and white oak and I only empty my ashes about once a week.
 
I have a cheap as stoves go Englander nc 30,and I don't have any of these problems . every 8 hours or so I just open the air control up ,stir the coals a little ,load the stove up,shut the air almost all the way closed in about 15 minutes then repeat .I burn 2+year old red and white oak and I only empty my ashes about once a week.

I helped a friend install a NC30 and he loves it. His wife isn't a fan of the looks but likes the heat it puts out. He's living in a ~2500 square foot split level and heats the whole place with it. His experience is similar to yours Steve, his first year burning he had some not fully dry wood and had a few issues until I traded him a cord of unseasoned wood for a cord of seasoned wood and a case of beer.
 
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