A New Design for Gardeners - Hollyhock Leaves

Some of the most beautiful designs in the world are patterns from nature, whether they are simple repetitions or complex fractals.  In this design, Lorin Day and Kristie Haupt take a simple hollyhock leaf and convert it into a slightly abstract, repeating geometry sure to please gardeners.

Click image to enlarge

New Stove Design for Chris Neufeld

Here’s a design for Chris Neufeld of Blaze King.  Chris is a good friend, and we think of Blaze King more as an ally in advocating for high efficiency stoves than as a competitor.   Chris is an avid outdoorsman, who hunts and fishes every chance he gets.  We tried to combine the two (hunting and fishing) with a salmon-hunting bear, inspired by the image on the Alaska quarter (Chris also loves to visit Alaska).

Join us in Washington DC - Hoodies and T's for Owners

We’ll have t-shirts and hoodies with our new logo available for our existing customers at the event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (November 15-18).  Just stop by our contest stove and we'll get you fitted up!
For more information about the Wood Stove Decathlon, please click here.

Tees & Hoodies with our New Logo!
Click to enlarge

A New Name for the Steel Stove & a New Logo!

We have a new (and hopefully final!) name for our design contest stove:

A Couple New Designs: Frog Prince & Bird of Paradise

Here are a couple of new designs - the Frog Prince and the Bird of Paradise.  We’ll have a few more in the days to come - some more traditional, and some completely “outside the box”.  Click on the images to enlarge!

Under the Hood 10: RECORD EPA Efficiency

Preliminary EPA Results:

Over the last two weeks we have tested our Design Contest Stove at an independent lab outside of Montreal to (1) the current EPA standard, (2) the proposed EPA standard, and (3) the most recently published (September 24, 2013) ANSI Cordwood Standard.  The test lab is accredited by EPA and CSA (Canadian Standards Association), and the results will be submitted to US EPA for approval shortly.

Under the Hood 9: Air Control/Burn Rate Control

The Air Control Damper is simple, intuitive, and conveniently located on the radius of the ash lip.  You can easily slide it open and closed with your foot!  As you move the air control damper, a link moves the damper plate across two openings; one for primary air and one for secondary air.  The ratio of primary air to secondary air has been determined in development. The damper plate is calibrated so that both primary and secondary dampers open and close with a single control, at a pre-determined ratio.  A third damper  automatically opens an air passageway that feeds the catalyst only (see Under the Hood 4).

TOP VIEW
The Air Control is intuitive and convenient
and travels along the radius of the ash lip.

BOTTOM VIEW

The Air Control adjusts both the Primary and Secondary Air. 

(Air openings for referenceonly; not to scale)

Under the Hood 8: Rethinking the Leg

For the Design Challenge Stove, we wanted our leg height to be adjustable for fireplace installations; the stove sides to be customizable (with or without stone, or owner requested artwork).  Plus, we needed a place to put a Thermoelectric generator, a place to hang accessories, and a way to attach strain gages.  Plus it had to be structurally sound.  Quite a list.

Under the Hood 7: Catalyst Heat Radiator: another old idea in a new setting

On the Design Challenge Stove, we position the operating catalyst right under the cooktop, tilted slightly toward the front of the stove (it slides back when not in use).

Design Challenge Odds and Ends & Video

We haven’t posted much this week because we’ve been so busy!  It’s getting cold and we have to take care of our customers (who all wait until the first frost to order stoves, ask for advice, or order parts).

We are scheduled to send our Design Challenge stove out for EPA testing at the end of next week, so we’ve been doing final tweaks to the combustion design and sending the stove through our internal testing regime most of this week - continuing into next week.  We should have EPA test results around October 16-17, and will publish the results here.  We expect quite good results.
 There’s a short video below of part of today’s high burn test.

The picture below shows the test cutting of the Fleur-de-Lis for the Kopp family.

Trial cut for the Fleur-de-Lis

Trial cut painted gold

We also cut a detachable Fleur-de-Lis pattern that allows for easy changes of color, and future changes of design.  You can see it below on one of our test stoves.  A lot of our employees are designing their own stoves, and we’ll start posting some of those designs next week.  We also hope some of our prospective beta testers will contact us with their ideas!

Detachable Fleur-de-Lis pattern on the end of the stove allows
for color changes and design changes.  (pardon the obvious mismatching colors in this test stove)

We’re having fun with this stove!  More to come next week.  Have a pleasant weekend!