by pa_friendly_guy » Tue Feb 18, 2014 3:08 pm
The answer is Yes, the fire will burn down once it is going. My old Rite Way Stove was designed that way with a 2nd combustion chamber to burn the gases in the smoke. You had to burn the unit Hot to make that happen, but it was designed to do just that. That is how they claimed over a 70% burn back in the 1970's. It was a steel stove with cast iron grates so you could burn coal as well, when you open the stove up to add wood you had to 1st crack the ash pit door, then slid open a metal baffle that opened the stove pipe up above in the stove and then, and only then you did the number 3 and opened the stove door. If you tried to open the stove door with out the other 2 first it would flash back at you, or it would puff out the smoke. The idea of burning the gases in the smoke is not a new one. We have come a long way in our designs as to how we do that. The problem with the old Rite Way design was that if you burned it hot enough to get the secondary burn you would warp the steel body and most likely burn out the grates because most people did not clean out the ashes often enough. The theory of a down draft stove is sound, it works well, and you get the advantage of getting the heat from the gases with that secondary burn. Just look at the Rocket Stove design if you need more proof.
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