2017-18 Blaze King Performance Thread (Everything BK)

[Heftiger]

Up here in Washington we had snow falling this morning while on my way to work.

Lopi Rockport

Yuck! You better get that ashford installed stat!

 

[Heftiger]

Cat active, bypass closed, and no smoke from the chimney. That’s less than 40 mins from cold start. And all I did was pack it full and put a super cedar in it. Gotta love a BK!


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[Highbeam]

Well got an email back and they are shipping a new one out. Still might try and see if I can pop that out later and keep as a spare. So I highly recommend woodland direct after this experience.

Up here in Washington we had snow falling this morning while on my way to work.

Snowing pretty hard here too at the moment. Grass is white.

 

[begreen]

36F, cold and damp here. There's a nice, easy going fire in the T6. House is cozy.

 

[Ashful]

Cat active, bypass closed, and no smoke from the chimney. That’s less than 40 mins from cold start. And all I did was pack it full and put a super cedar in it. Gotta love a BK!

What species are you burning? I have to admit, I’ve never tried this, but I’ve always doubted it would work with oak.

I usually have enough building projects going on to keep me well-supplied with lumber scraps for kindling, so I’ve never bothered saving small branchwood or splitting scraps. However, this year I’m coming up short, and was planning to start cutting up pallets for the kindling. It would be nice to just skip it altogether, if I could.

 

[Heftiger]

What species are you burning? I have to admit, I’ve never tried this, but I’ve always doubted it would work with oak.

I usually have enough building projects going on to keep me well-supplied with lumber scraps for kindling, so I’ve never bothered saving small branchwood or splitting scraps. However, this year I’m coming up short, and was planning to start cutting up pallets for the kindling. It would be nice to just skip it altogether, if I could.

Lodgepole Pine. Not much hardwood around here. At least I gain something for giving up those super long burn times.


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[Tegbert]

Lodgepole Pine. Not much hardwood around here. At least I gain something for giving up those super long burn times.


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What are your burn times with that pine?


Lopi Rockport

 

[Heftiger]

What are your burn times with that pine?


Lopi Rockport

With the Ashford, 12 hours at a low-medium burn rate. Only about 8 when I’m pushing it with the fan on.

With the King we could usually push it to 24 hrs.


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[begreen]

Not to single anyone out but there is an account setting in Tapatalk to not post any annoying advertising as a signature.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/tapatalk-mobile-app-for-hearth-com.89979/page-2#post-2112709

If you want to have a signature line that includes your stove, there is an option for this in your Hearth.com account settings.

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[Heftiger]

Fixed to make begreen happy.
BK Ashford

 

[moresnow]

What species are you burning? I have to admit, I’ve never tried this, but I’ve always doubted it would work with oak.

I usually have enough building projects going on to keep me well-supplied with lumber scraps for kindling, so I’ve never bothered saving small branchwood or splitting scraps. However, this year I’m coming up short, and was planning to start cutting up pallets for the kindling. It would be nice to just skip it altogether, if I could.

Ashful, surprised you have not jumped on the Super Cedar craze! I am absolutely sold. Stove packed with splits. 1/4 of a S.C. tucked between splits and away we go. No muss no fuss with kindling/paper or any other starter. I order mine online. Through Walgreen's as that store is local to me.

On another note my BK 20 series has been running loads of pine alone for 12 hr shifts. Hard to believe. Helps tremendously to leave the fan off. Or on the lowest setting. Impressive either way.

 

[Ashful]

Ashful, surprised you have not jumped on the Super Cedar craze! I am absolutely sold. Stove packed with splits. 1/4 of a S.C. tucked between splits and away we go. No muss no fuss with kindling/paper or any other starter. I order mine online. Through Walgreen's as that store is local to me.

I use SuperCedars, but still load kindling atop them. Kindling = pine, fir, hemlock. Wood = oak, ash, and hickory.

 

[kennyp2339]

I use SuperCedars, but still load kindling atop them. Kindling = pine, fir, hemlock. Wood = oak, ash, and hickory.

I kinda like the prep work of taking a few splits and hitting them with the hatchet to make kindling, I also like crumpling news paper and setting up the fire box for a good lite off. I blew my mind the other night using the mapps gas torch to light the stove up, had an active cat within 20 min. Going to stick with that routine, plus in a few weeks we will all probably be burning 24/7 anyway.

 

[kennyp2339]

I’m entering my 4th season of burning my BK princess, since owning the unit I have adjust the door once and recently replaced the cat under warranty, my stove has preformed very well and I’m expecting many more great years with it. This week I viewed some pictures pertaining to smoke smells coming from the door of the unit, I actually found it troubling because BK prides themselves on the engineering, testing and craftsmanship of their stoves.
I am posting my pic of my original door gasket, as you will be able to see the gasket has held up remarkably well, it is still factory white on the outside, again all I did was a door adjustment last season.

 

[kf6hap]

Mine don't stay factory white. I believe it is only the ashford that has the smoke smell problem.

 

[Heftiger]

I’ll take a picture of my door seal on tonight’s reload and post it.


Fixed to make begreen happy.
BK Ashford 30.1

 

[begreen]

I’ll take a picture of my door seal on tonight’s reload and post it.


Fixed to make begreen happy.
BK Ashford 30.1

Set the tapatalk signature line to None. I know you're proud of the new stove, but we don't need to see the stove model twice in every post.

 

[Heftiger]

Begreen. Can you PM me a screenshot of what you’re seeing? I wasn’t aware you were seeing both sigs.


Fixed to make begreen happy.
BK Ashford 30.1

 

[moresnow]

Um? Kennyp. How often did you run the stove over the last 4 years? Wondering what I am doing wrong. My gasket is. And has been. Black for a looong time!

FWIW. My Scirocco has the creo smell on a rather regular basis. Not enough to make the wife mad.

 

[coutufr]

Year three of burning an Ashford 30.1. And the third year of the smoke smell. Only on the hinge side of the door. It's like that if its 50 degrees outside or zero.

Isn’t it more a creosote smell than a smoke smell? This is my second year with that stove with over 20 feet of indoor chimney. If I put my nose close to the top of the stove at the front of it, I smell that odor every time. My guess is that the door gasket having creosote on it, with the heat from the stove and the air intake configuration inside, it diffuses a faint creosote smell. This is not smoke as far I understand it but your situation may be different

 

[coutufr]

My Ashford has that smell too, it's faint enough that I ignore it. But, I'm worried if my wife picks up on it that it will make her very dissatisfied.
It's a mildly unpleasant, unique to BK smell (creosote), or at least it's not that somewhat pleasant wood smoke smell I smell in other wood burners houses. I'm very confident in my chimney (completely vertical 16' ICC Excel and Ultrablack doublewall with no funny business going on anywhere).

I ignored it initially after install since I thought it was just the paint curing, but after a couple weeks of hot fires I realize that it is different and not going away.

There doesn't appear to be any gasket for the thermometer, does it just rely on the draft to maintain negative pressure at the probe hole?
Door gasket is poorly aligned (from the factory on the hinge side), perhaps this is contributing. The gasket is mostly inside the fire box with only the outer 20-30% on the outside of the seal edge (instead of being 50/50 like the rest of the door).

I tested the hole of the thermometer and found a strong negative pressure bringing air inside the stove. No odor and no smoke. My guess is that it is something to do with the door gasket.

 

[Heftiger]

Hot reload after 12 hour load of lodgepole. This is from a cold start. House started at 67, maintained 74 in the house today. It averaged 40’s outside all day.

As promised; photo of door gasket. This is the second year on this gasket. No smoke/creo smell.

 

[coutufr]

I am wondering if having wood humidity in the 15 - 17% range and making an initially high temperature burn could solve the smell problem

 

[Heftiger]

I am wondering if having wood humidity in the 15 - 17% range and making an initially high temperature burn could solve the smell problem

What are you burning now? What setting on the t-stat?

I’ll be honest, my wood isn’t the best this year. We moved in 2015 and I gave up my wood supply with the house because the new house had pellet. Now I’m rebuilding the supply. But I am burning pine; so poorly seasoned pine might still burn better than a mediocre hardwood. Nonetheless, I know the smell you’re talking about. We had the same issue year 1. I wish I kept pictures of the old gasket so you could compare it to yours.

When you applied your gasket, what did you use as an adhesive? Maybe it’s seeping through and around the back of the gasket?

Where did you put the join? I made sure to put it away from the hinge end since I noticed a problem there before the replacement.

 

[kennyp2339]

Um? Kennyp. How often did you run the stove over the last 4 years? Wondering what I am doing wrong. My gasket is. And has been. Black for a looong time!

FWIW. My Scirocco has the creo smell on a rather regular basis. Not enough to make the wife mad.

I typically run my stove 5 months 24/7 usually start in the beginning of November and run through the end of April. Start up and end times vary with temps.