Basics of Vermont castings stove operation -- stoking fire
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- Опубліковано 21 сер 2024
- Hope this is helpful! Never light or stoke a fire without express permission from owners and other people in the airspace who will have to deal with the heat and with the smoke if you do something wrong. Enjoy!
- Навчання та стиль
BTW, I posted this video to send to my friend who would be using the stove later that day while I was gone and I recognize it is not professional at all, so not only am I okay with the few downvotes this video has received, if you are reading this, you have my full permission and blessing to give it a thumbs down if you want to. I didn’t do this video with the intent of helping more than just a couple of friends. If it has helped you, that’s terrific but it already served the purpose for which it was originally posted and if it’s a waste of time and I should take it down, that doesn’t break my heart.
Also, leave a friendly message if you’d like letting me know what you don’t like about it or just telling me to get off UA-cam. A message really does far more than a vote.
Great job! We recently got a VC Encore! Thanks!
You got a sweet set up with the Vermont casting Wood Burning Stove, leather low profile couches, and log cabin home. Keep up the good work
Thank you! It's a huge blessing!
I am housesitting at a house that had this exact same stove and I just needed to know which knob turned up the air so thank you for this! Simple and straight forward.
Thanks for your comment! Glad it worked out!
Nice stove, I have a Vermont Casting Acclaim I have used for 30 years and love it!
They are great stoves! Dad is a small dealer and several of our friends are outfitted with them. We have four wood stoves and three gas stoves on display here at the Indian Ridge Lodge, and I have never seen better stoves. I made this video for some friends who were going to be checking into a room while we were out shopping or something and couldn't be there to stoke it for them. That said, I'd be really careful who tends the fire while you aren't there. 😳😬
@@kaimaxfield6484 Where is the Indian Lodge, sounds nice?
jbchess1 the Indian Ridge Lodge is near a small town in Central Utah called Indianola. Here's the address and a link to the location on Google maps.
Indian Ridge Lodge
6782 E Indian Ridge Dr., Fairview, UT 84629
(435) 427-3212
goo.gl/maps/PX9Q9omnuL95v79bA
Love our Defiant. Yesterday, I cooked a delicious loaf of bread on the griddle, all w/o electricity of course. The two best features (besides the build quality) is the top load and the bottom ash clean-out. Everything a wood stove needs to be and beautiful, besides.
Thanks for your comment! I agree. Great features indeed. I hope you enjoy your Defiant for many years to come!
I have a older VT castings vigilant stove i purchased last fall. When I’m getting it up to temperature and then after I stoke it up it back puffs out smoke. Sometimes just light smoke puffs and other times violent smoke puffs with it popping up the griddle top and it slamming back down. lol. Funny but not. It has great draw up the chimney. The wood is good and dry. Can anyone send some information or tips on what’s going on? Thanks
I would also like to know. Sometimes when I housesit for a different person, the stove also puffs smoke out past the closed lid.
You know, the strange thing is that I have had similar issues with our defiant that we bought new, and occasionally I do with my intrepid (also very new). I have some ideas to try but it would be interesting to have a conversation with one of Vermont Casting's engineers about the physics. If your stove has a catalyst, start by checking to see if that's plugged or needs to be cleaned.
As near as I can tell, the stove reaches a point where it's hot enough that the fuel begins to vaporize and burn, but the consumed gases are restricted and aren't dispelled from the stove, so they quench the flames. (I've only had it happen when the damper is closed, but perhaps an external damper or plug could cause this.) The stove is still hot enough for combustion, but insufficient movement of air means it will take time for oxygen and unburned gases to replace the smoke. At some point, enough gases have vented, and enough oxygen has been replaced to create perfect conditions for a burn, and then if there is enough concentration of vaporized combustibles, there will be a very fast ignition of these fuels, similar to what coal dust can do in a mine, or what propane can do in a home. Thankfully, the amount of fuel vapor is small and well-contained, and the stove has a top lid that can relieve the pressure in case it would ever be forceful enough to crack the glass. I've never seen it be forceful enough to launch embers into the room, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen...
I don't know but hotter flames may require less oxygen, and they definitely put off less smoke (in general). In addition, a hotter stove will through-put a greater volume of air. It will also be less likely to deposit creosote on the walls of the stovepipe.
Regardless of the science, I've observed that running the stoves hotter will alleviate this situation. That said, if creosote has been building on your stovepipe, running the stove much hotter may substantially increase your already existing danger that the creosote will catch fire and create a blaze that your chimney was never designed to handle, and could burn your house down. Therefore, I recommend checking your stovepipe’s spark arresting cap on top for creosote and taking it off to look down your stovepipe at least once a year and if you have any question whether it’s through-putting air properly before burning your stove hotter than normal.
According to the installation and owner’s manual for the Vermont Castings’ Encore (link below), about 650 degrees Fahrenheit is the recommended high temperature for operating. If you want to push it just a little and try running it between about 600-700 degrees Fahrenheit, you probably will stop having these issues. I’ve gotten these stoves to around 900 degrees several times, which I don’t recommend at all, but they do seem to withstand it okay. I have seen one of these have a problem, but nobody knows how hot it actually got before it had a problem. If the stove isn’t yours, be sure and check with the homeowner/stove-owner before running it any hotter than about 650 (or whatever they told you to run it at).
The other thing I’ve noticed is that there seems to be a range that the stove “explodes” more at, and if I run the stove below this range the issue goes away. This comes with another host of issues, though, as a cooler burn deposits increased creosote, and produces far more particulates. If you can easily keep the pipe clean, and it’s easy to monitor for creosote so you don’t burn your house down, you could experiment with this, but this would be mostly if your stove is way oversized for your space or you have extremely limited fuel supplies or whatever. If you plug your pipe, then you won’t be able to conduct normal burns, and if you do, it could create a very hazardous chimney fire.
Anyway, I hope this was interesting to read and will be helpful for you. I obviously didn’t get around to answering this very quickly, perhaps it’s irrelevant now but I hope it’s good information for someone still.
Enjoy using one of the best brands of stove ever made!
downloads.hearthnhome.com/installManuals/30005295%20Encore%20FlexBurn_23.pdf
@sammylove14, I just got around to answering this question; you might want to check that out.
I'm guessing that the Vermont Castings stove top thermometer that you're using reads differently than other stove top thermometers? For instance, the Rutland thermometer we use on our Defiant shows the 'Burn Zone' to be between ~300F to 600F. Temps above 600F are in the 'Over-Firing' zone. Also, at 450F our stove is putting out so much heat the rooms become unbearably warm. The VC thermometer must be reading out temps inside the firebox, not on top of it like the Rutland. I know it's perched on the top, outside the stove, but must be calibrated to the approximate inside temperature. Otherwise, 700F would be damaging your stove and the room its in would be over 85F.
The thermostats might be calibrated differently but we have two different brands and they are calibrated fairly closely. The Inferno from condra.com puts the “best zone” as being between 350 degrees and 600 degrees Fahrenheit if I’m reading it correctly but really, if we burn our stoves below 500-550 minimum, the smoke really gets a lot more creosote in it, which is not only a maintenance issue, but a fire hazard in many cases. To really get the wood burning well, I like to keep the stoves above 600 degrees when possible. However, if you already have a big creosote buildup, it’s very important to deal with that before continuing to burn in your stove, especially at higher temperatures.
We have four of these stoves in our lodge and others in other buildings, and yes, if the stove is oversized for the space, it will definitely cook you out! Sometimes when guests ask for a fire in the basement stove, we think, “You don’t know what you’re asking for and if we can’t talk you out of this, you will probably regret it.” They don’t understand that you can’t just build a “small” fire; it probably takes at least an hour to get the stove up to temperature and stabilized and then it will take several hours to cool down, so if it’s 65 in the room, it may be 80 or more within a few hours.
That said, if you are safely achieving the results you are after and you are being careful, that’s great! The big thing is knowing your stove and your thermometer. If you keep having creosote build up inside the stove pipe or on the cap, consider (after cleaning your chimney) keeping your stove a little hotter (50-100 degrees) and burning less frequently (or opening a window), and also try burning cleaner fuels, less paper products, etc.
@@kaimaxfield6484 Here's an experiment I ran on our stove: I put one probe of my ThermPro© thermometer inside the firebox of our defiant and one probe outside laying on top of the griddle. When the outside probe read 350 degrees F, the Rutland (next to it) was also reading around 350F+ (not digital so kinda hard to tell exactly). Meanwhile, the probe inside the firebox was reading 550F before it maxed out the ThermPro's readout. (It's a BBQ thermometer and does not read out higher than 550F). ThermPro guarantees it's product to be accurate to within 1.8 F+-. So, the inside of the firebox was about 1-½ times as hot as the outside top of the griddle. That being the case, the Rutland thermometer is correct when it reads temperature (outside top) and correlates that to what's going on inside where the wood is burning. When the griddle is at 350F the inside firebox is around 550F+. That's well within the temperature range where stoves should run to prevent creosote buildup and will activate the catalyst. It's just confusing the way Rutland chose to configure their thermometers, tho it IS reading the griddle temps accurately. Rutland griddle 300F = 450F inside box. Rutland griddle 350F = 550F inside box. I'm guessing when the Rutland reads 600F griddle, the inside of the box is over 900F and stove damage begins.
Thanks for all that information! Good to know!
Hi, thanks for your video. Could you please tell me what temperature you close the damper at? The manual says close it at 450 but when we do that the temperature drops too fast below optimum burn temperatures, no matter how established our coal bed is. (Our stover thermometer shows400-800 as the optimum range). Also, will the catalyst still work if the temperature is under 400? We just got our stove and we are having a tricky time getting it to burn slow and long. Thanks !
In my opinion and from my observations (testing more than 6 of these over many years), based on your specific install you will want to run your stove at much different temperatures. For example, one of our Encores has an 8" stove pipe and it will draft super well at low temperatures. Our defiant, on the other hand, will not burn properly even closing the damper at close to 500 degrees, and neither will the Intrepid that I am stoking as I write this. Another encore we have will burn okay around 500 degrees but will build up a lot of creosote at that temperature. I recommend trying to keep the temperature kind of low (450 degrees absolute minimum) if you can still keep a consistent temperature. If you can't keep the stove up to temperature at 450-500 with the damper closed, first check to see if the stove pipe is filled with creosote (or if you go straight into a masonry chimney without a liner that could be a problem). Also, make sure your air inlet is fully open when you close the damper. With a proper installation, (do not take this as professional advice), consider working up to a maximum of 600 degrees before closing your damper and see if that helps. There are two or three of our stoves that we regularly keep around 600 degrees but then be very careful if you do that it doesn't keep increasing in heat very far beyond that. If you have creosote in your stove pipe, that's very dangerous and you should definitely not try to burn your stove hotter to compensate because it is super flammable and burns very hot. A chimney fire can compromise or destroy your chimney and burn your house down so if there's any question make sure you check your pipe and chimney cap to make sure they aren't partially plugged.
The damper is on right side the air control on right front the left control is cadalist ingage lever.
The left one is the damper
Thanks for your comment. I've never heard it called that, but it sure enough does engage the catalyst. Everyone I've talked to calls the catalyst engagement lever a "damper", and the instructions I found say the damper handle is on the left side but thanks for broadening my perspective on this subject and contributing some additional terminology to the conversation.
User's manual:
"...Attach the Damper Handle
Use the 1/4"-20 x 3" screw to attach the damper handle to
the damper stub on the left side..."
Page 19 in following document:
downloads.hearthnhome.com/installManuals/30005295%20Encore%20FlexBurn_23.pdf