If it is real hot air the rising heat from the stove surface will disturb the smoke. A comfortable medium setting. If you have a flue probe, try to hit 400. That will give a good strong draft.
2017-18 Blaze King Performance Thread PART 2 (Everything BK)
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If the cat has lots of slop or keeps falling out then I would consider gasket replacement. It sits pretty vertical and ought to stay put. Some yahoos even run without a gasket!
Bullyboy
Burning Hunk
Ok. I'll try that. Not sure I'm happy about the twinkle I seen in my wife's eyes when I asked her to buy an incense stick. I hope there is a pack of 1 available. Lol.
oldbluedeer
New Member
Thanks! The door gasket looks good to me. No indication of leakage, it is centered where it contacts the front of the stove, and the stove still shuts fairly tight. I haven't done the dollar bill or similar test yet, but if adding more chimney pipe and replacing the ill fitting stove/pipe adapter doesn't resolve it, then I will be looking very closely at the door.
jetsam
Minister of Fire
I boiled mine this year- it was about dead after after 2 years and 9000+ hours. It is better and I feel like I might get a third season out of it (it's heating the house right now, so I got at least part of a third season anyway).
I built a cinder block rocket stove outside and then used the cinder blocks to make a new woodpile when they were done being a stove.
oldbluedeer
New Member
That's good to hear that adding a 2' section improved it a lot for you... Mine's a comin' in the mail
Bullyboy
Burning Hunk
Yup. I think it will definitely help you out. I can't see it hurting, that's for sure. It took us to a point where we are very happy with how she is running, any other issues are mostly because I'm always fiddling. Although I do find myself wondering if 24" helped what would 36" do? Lol.
MissMac
Minister of Fire
here it is after the fire burned out. looks like it just got nudged out a bit
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MissMac
Minister of Fire
ya, mine shut nice and tight too - passed the dollar bill test, but upon further inspection, the rope was very offcentered in the tope corner on the hinge side, so there was really no rope for the door frame to cut into.
Yes, it happens. Push on the metal tabs to reseat it evenly. Probably a one time thing.
Poindexter
Minister of Fire
Its real real hard to say from photographs. I _think_ there is/was one US-EPA approved method for photographic evaluation of stack plumes, the one I think I remember used special film, or a special camera or some such? Whatever that method was, they aren't using it in my local jurisdiction.
If you have complete, perfect combustion your only exhaust products are going to be CO2 (invisible gas) and steam that condenses to become visible water vapor when it gets down to 212dF/ 100C. If you're burning stuff, there is going to be H2O in the exhaust plume, so -part- of what is visible in you stack is definitely water vapor.
I also notice your exhaust plume is attached, that is to say, most likely, that somewhere down inside the mouth of your chimney the gas temp is low enough, under 212/100 for the steam to be condensing as visible water vapor.
Reading attached plumes, to look at the cloud to decide where the steam is gone and all the remaining cloud parts are smoke is really hard. Well, no, that's not it. It's best to have your light source 90 degrees around the chimney from where ever you are standing and not have the plume blowing straight at you. Reading my own stack with attached plume, again, is fairly easy now because I know where to stand.
For US-EPA VEE level 9, the standard used by my local Air Quality helpful neighbors, you have to read the smoke opacity right at the edge of the end of the steam, where the smoke is at it's maximum thickness or darkness. If you read far enough down the plume, it's all zero. The wildfires in Montana this summer, or the ones in California now, interpreted from Ontario Canada have zero percent opacity, am I right? So as far as you can tell all the Angelenos complaining about air quality are full of it, because you can't see the plume in Canada.
Training the eye to track the moving edge of the steam plume and read the smoke opacity just beside the edge of the steam plume takes practice. I can't do it without standing out there in the cold for several minutes, from a still photo or two, I got nothing.
However, reading a detached plume is easy. If your flue gas is exiting your chimney at some temperature above 212/100, the steam plume won't be visible for a few inches or feet away from the stack. Those are easy. If the steam plume is definitely detached from the stack, you can reliably read the opacity of the smoke between the stack opening and the beginning of the steam plume.
I am kinda tentatively willing to guess your pictured plume is "mostly" steam, but seeing attached is kinda concerning, I am not used to my plume being attached at temps above -20dF or so (-29C). At warmer temps I am usually running at mid throttle, my flue gas probe will be showing 300 to 400dF (200-250C) and I'll have gracious plenty space between the top of the stack and the beginning of the steam plume.
In colder weather, below -29C outdoors, I'll be running the stove at or near full throttle, probably stable around 500dF flue gas temp measure 24" above the stove - so maybe about 400C flue gas temp 40 or 50 cm above the stove top - and I will be looking at an attached plume when I go out in the yard.
I know y'all south of me having been having some colder weather. If you took those pictures at -25C, -30C and your stove was running pretty wide open that's probably pretty much steam. If your outdoor temps aren't that cold, you probably should get your moisture meter back out to see how dry your wood really is.
Poindexter
Minister of Fire
I recognize two ragged edges. One is max BTUs per unit time, the other minimum BTUs per unit time.
You could fill your firebox with napalm, set the tstat on high, engage the combustor, light the fuse, close the loading door and run. You would probably hold the record for most BTUs in the shortest amount of time forever, but clearly outside the design parameters of the stove.
The max output of the stove is limited by the cross sectional area of the smallest portion of the air intake, and catalytic capacity. If your wood is too dry, down under 10 or 11% MC, burn rate will still be limited by the airflow through the intake, your combustor will be at max handling and you will see black smoke at your chimney top. Making more smoke than the combustor can process you are.
The "real" ragged edge for max output is getting from a cold stove up through active combustor to the top of the active zone and deck fans running on full output in the shortest amount of time possible. Once you are at max output, you are at max output.
The other side of the same coin is going for the longest possible burn at the lowest possible throttle setting, ie minimum BTUs per unit time. If you wanted too you could light one stick of incense, stick it in the stove...
You somehow managed to close the bypass twice in this regimen. I can't do that on my Ashford. I downloaded the manuals for both the Scirocco 20.1 and the 30.1.
@BKVP , you got either a sentence fragment or fragmented sentence in the Scirocco manuals, pp 26, item 9.
"Even though it is possible for flue gas temperatures to reach 600° within 5 minutes of a fire being started."
It's double spaced at each end, starts with a capital letter, ends with a period, but, mmm, this needs to be clarified. I think I know what your people were trying to get at contextually, but I also know several under-employed English majors.
The "Even though" suggests there will be a dependent clause attached to the condition of "the flue gas temp reaching 600dF," but the dependent clause, probably "it is inadvisable to engage the combustor before the probe indicator reaches the active zone" is missing from the sentence.
I am also a bit concerned about pp27, item 5, hot reloads, the manual tells the new owner to stuff the box full of fresh cord wood, close the loading door, engage the combustor and leave it on high for 20-30 minutes before turning the tstat down. I thought leaving the loading door cracked for a few seconds to get the surfaces of the fresh splits burned down from infinite surface area to relative flatness before engaging the combustor was a good idea. Is this no longer best practice, or too hard to explain?
At both y'all, the draft thing in the Scirocco manual is on page 14 for both the 20.1 and 30.1. The manual specifies 0.05 inches water column draft at max throttle and goes on to say 0.06 inches water column draft is too much and voids the warranty, but I notice the manual for the Sciroccos doesn't not specify where or when on the system the measurement should be made.
The next section, role of the chimney, recommends 15' vertical minimum exhaust pipe.
Not trying to be an A-hole, but given the pages and pages of legalese on the front end of this thing (In Connecticut, woodstoves can only be installed on the second Tuesday of months without an R in their names. If you install a wood stove in California you will have to listen to Sonny tell you stories about being a cop in San Diego for 16 hours, In Indiana be advised small parts can cause choking....) how much trouble would it really be to include reasonable guidelines on where to hook a manometer, and basically make it possible for someone with a spare synapse or two to figure out if they need more pipe to make the draft number without having to call BK HQ or have the blind leading the blind on hearth dot com?
@oldbluedeer , I am sure you are overthinking this. Compared to pre-EPA stoves this is going to be a piece of cake. Also, be advised your draft measurement will vary with outdoor temps. Colder weather, better draft.
In cold weather, fill the box with wood on your hot coals. Leave the door cracked open maybe 20-60 seconds to let all the fine wood hairs on the surfaces of your splits burn off. And the cat hair, and whatever other junk is one there. While the surfaces of your splits are blackening your load is making a LOT of smoke, but once everything is lit all the surfaces of your splits are more or less flat, close the loading door because now your load is charred. Charred and with the loading door closed, as soon as the combustor indicator is in the active zone, engage the combustor. Run it on high 20-30 minutes, and then set the tstat knob for how warm you want your house to be.
If your fuel is under 20% MC and you ran your charred load on high for 30 minutes you shouldn't have to fool around turning the stove in stages unless you are going really low. Once your 30 minutes is up, just turn it down to half in one go. If you want to go lower, come back ten minutes later and turn it on down to 3/32nds swoosh or 1/16 swoosh or whatever. With a good 30 minute burn on high and fuel that started at 20% MC or less turning the Tstat down is not a chore.
The Tstat setting defines how much heat is getting into your house how fast. If you run half a box at full throttle it will last half the time as a full load would have at full throttle.
What I do in warm weather (+50dF) is load half a box, run it all full throttle so I don't have any smoke smell in the house, and then I have a 500# block of metal in the living room giving off heat for hours and hours until the next cold start.
If you set the Tstat at say half throttle, it is going to let about the same amount of air in, and put the same amount of heat out whether you have one stick in there, half a box, or a full box. The smaller load will burn away faster is all.
The optimum thermostat setting is how warm your wife wants to be.
MissMac
Minister of Fire
you betcha! got it nicely tucked back in place this morning, never to happen again. thanks for the advice!
Yes, the wife is the undisputed real thermostat, we are just part of the combustion control feedback loop. Sometimes I question the calibration though. Mentioning NIST seems to make matters worse. Nothing worse than an angry thermostat.
As for the steam or smoke question, it can easily be answered by duct taping a chrome plated crescent wrench to an appropriately long pole and waving it around in the "smoke". If it comes out wet it is steam. No question about the answer. That is how we do it working around steam boilers.
As a technical writer, reader, and generally detail oriented person I can also tell that the manuals are big on effort but small on execution. Some of this is intentional vagueness is to accommodate all of the variable installations, some is just lack of proofreading.
With good kindling and a propane torch for ignition I don’t leave the loading door open much at all. I certainly want it closed ASAP to minimize thermal shock to the cat.
With good kindling and a propane torch for ignition I don’t leave the loading door open much at all. I certainly want it closed ASAP to minimize thermal shock to the cat.
oldbluedeer
New Member
Thanks for taking the time to write this up! My wood is fairly dry, most 12-15%, maybe a few pieces creep up to 16-17%, none at 20% or higher.
If I can see substantial smoke (not steam) when the stove is running with a hot cat and the bypass closed, then I will know that the stove is making more smoke than the cat can process. This may have happened once or twice, for example, at startup after letting the stove burn at highest tstat setting for 30-45 minutes, and then turning down the tstat for the long burn in one go. That is one reason why I turn it down in stages, as it reduces the amount of smoke in the stove at any one time (a tactic, since I am dealing with the smoke smell issue).
I would think the ragged edge on the low side would be turning the tstat down to where the wood continues to burn down, where turning the tstat down any further would cause the fire to die and leave a pile of dead black coals.
I never run the stove that low, not even close. There is always red coaling occurring, easily visible through the stove door glass.
Ah yes, thank you. I had misread the instructions on page 26 of the Sirocco 20.1 manual about having to shut the bypass twice. My mistake... I just read too much into the manual, overthinking it as is not uncommon. I was just trying to hard to follow the manual to the letter, until I learn the workings of the stove. I won't be doing that anymore.
That's pretty much what I do. I usually leave the cracked open for a few minutes, to get some charring started on some of the wood before closing the door. And after closing the bypass, I let her run hot on high for 30 minutes or so, always until the cat meter is past 12, and longer if I am trying to warm up the house quickly.
I pretty much agree with what you are saying here.
Except I've got a hunch that each tstat setting has limits on how much or how little air goes into the stove. In other words, the size of the intake (and the amount of air entering the stove) varies (depending upon the stove temperature) within a given range (depending upon the tstat setting). For example, the size of the air intake when the tstat is set to 3 will never be as big as when the tstat is set to 6, no matter how cold the stove gets.
This is why I asked the original question, as to whether a the minimum tstat setting (below which the fire would eventually die) for a fully loaded stove would be different than for a half loaded stove... I don't run the stove at anywhere near the ragged low end, but getting an answer to that question helps me understand how the stove works.
And my reason for asking the question, is the simple fact that I get noticeable smoke smell in the room when I damper down a fully loaded stove, and none when it is a half loaded stove - with the same tstat setting, for example 4 PM on the tstat dial. Anyways, the extra 2' chimney and Amerivent adapter in the mail may very well fix the smoke smell problem, but I still like understanding how the stove works (at least in theory).
Thanks for the reply..
Once the new one shows up I'm gonna give it a try..
Mine has a lot of thermal cracking (my fault), so I dunno if it'll stay together or not ??
How did you get the thermal cracking so I can avoid it
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I have noticed this too. My guess as to why this is so is with less fuel more air is fed into the firebox. The blanket of fresh air covers the window area keeping stinky smoke from getting near the gasket so no smoke smell is produced. Smoke smell tends to happen when the thermostat is turned down.
It just might be that under certain burning conditions and due to the flow restriction the cat imposes, the firebox just might be operating in a slight positive causing the "smell". This is the one explanation that makes any sense at all to me -at all- about "smoke smell". Just a hypothesis. When I get around to it I will test this explanation.
Inquiring minds gotta'a know, so:
I pulled the ash plug, bored a 3/16" hole, inserted a 4' piece of 3/16" copper tube. Tonight when I fire the stove we will see if the firebox ever goes into the positive. Also I will be able to get a cross cat differential as Magnehelics are two-input differential indicators.
Correction: For anyone who has read my past posts about taking pressure readings via the cat hole, I used 3/16" not 4/1" as earlier stated.
Conditions and readings:
Stack 17' X 6" no bends
Just a hand full of coals.
Flue ~90F
Stove top 100
.03"WC
I pulled the ash plug, bored a 3/16" hole, inserted a 4' piece of 3/16" copper tube. Tonight when I fire the stove we will see if the firebox ever goes into the positive. Also I will be able to get a cross cat differential as Magnehelics are two-input differential indicators.
Correction: For anyone who has read my past posts about taking pressure readings via the cat hole, I used 3/16" not 4/1" as earlier stated.
Conditions and readings:
Stack 17' X 6" no bends
Just a hand full of coals.
Flue ~90F
Stove top 100
.03"WC
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Poindexter
Minister of Fire
Confession, this manometry thing is driving me BANANAs.
Attached image is 3 swallows in a clinically normal human subject during esophageal manometry. It is from the education/demo folder that came with the new in 2011 esophageal manometry gear at my local hospital.
![[Hearth.com] 2017-18 Blaze King Performance Thread PART 2 (Everything BK)](https://www.hearth.com/talk/attachments/3swallows-webp.217782/ "[Hearth.com] 2017-18 Blaze King Performance Thread PART 2 (Everything BK)")
The band at the top, white and purple, shows the presence (purple) or absence (white) of positively charged ions. The patient was swallowing gatorade, and we can see it moving down the esophagus during each swallow.
The lower multicolored bands are the pressure sensors (32 of them) stacked up from pharynx at the top to stomach at the bottom. Left to right, this image is probably 70 to 90 seconds wide.
While I recognize there are no muscular walls in my chimney stack, our current state of the art for chimney manometry is antedeluvian. I will start a new thread when I have useful data to share, likely June 2018. I may have some preliminary data in April.
Attached image is 3 swallows in a clinically normal human subject during esophageal manometry. It is from the education/demo folder that came with the new in 2011 esophageal manometry gear at my local hospital.
The band at the top, white and purple, shows the presence (purple) or absence (white) of positively charged ions. The patient was swallowing gatorade, and we can see it moving down the esophagus during each swallow.
The lower multicolored bands are the pressure sensors (32 of them) stacked up from pharynx at the top to stomach at the bottom. Left to right, this image is probably 70 to 90 seconds wide.
While I recognize there are no muscular walls in my chimney stack, our current state of the art for chimney manometry is antedeluvian. I will start a new thread when I have useful data to share, likely June 2018. I may have some preliminary data in April.
By reloading on a hot coal bed without bi-passing the CAT when opening the door.......duhhhh,...lol
I grew up heating with a wood stove, I read the Manuel several times, I guess that part did'nt sink in ??
First season with the Blaze King so I'm learning to
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AlbergSteve
Minister of Fire
Well, here's my first post. My wife and I are the proud new owners of an Ashford 30.1, and for the most part, love it. We agonized for months (we don't do anything without months of research!) over it and the Alderley T6. She really wanted the cast iron, I wanted a big stove for long burn times. Through numerous twists of fate, ie.,production issues at PE, and at BK, we found an Ashford in stock at a shop in northern BC and had a friend deliver it to the Island(he was coming for a visit anyway).
Although skeptical about catalytic stoves, we were convinced (through much reading of this forum/thread) that the ability to turn the Ashford to a simmer was a big plus, and the price of a cat every three for four years pales in comparison to $600 power bill we got the other day... and all my wood is free!
The room the stove is installed in is only about 350 square feet, but the rest of the house is sprawled over 2400 square feet. We've been burning for seven days now and the "stove room" doesn't get much above 23C, yet the rest of the house stays at a constant 20/21C - even the back bedrooms and bathroom stay at 20C and that's with overnight temperatures of -5C to +6C during the day. So far I've only been burning dry d-fir branches of 1.5 to 3 inches in diameter and have no trouble getting 14 hour burn times - can't wait to get into the big stuff!
Now for the "not so great". We have "smoke smell". It appears, like a few other owners on here, that it's coming from the top left/hinge side of the door. It seems to happen after I turn the stat down, usually to medium, the flames disappear and char is finished. This annoys me greatly. I love the smell of smoke on my salmon, charcuterie, and my bacon, but NOT in my house. I've burned wood for many years and have never had the smell of smoke in the house, even when reloading.
So, this is what I've done so far. I've read all 1308 posts of part 1 and 594 of part 2 of this thread to help me trouble shoot this problem, so I've done all the tests everyone suggests, check draft, add chimney height to 17 feet, paper pull test, I've even turned on all the exhaust fans(about 590 cfm total) in the house and can't get it to back draft.
I shut the stove down yesterday and removed the cast cladding and looked for bad welds like one owner had here. What I did find was one of the bolts that attaches the door "limiter" was too long and was hard against the front inner plate of of the stove, pushing the cast front on the hinge side out a bit. I've cut the end of the bolt off past the nut. I inspected the gasket carefully and it appears that smoke may have been seeping past the gasket on the hinge side - where the knife edge of the firebox presses on the gasket is shiny silver/grey, on the hinge side there is a hint of brown for the length of the gasket on the hinge side. I've also adjusted the door a bit tighter on the latch side, but unfortunately there is no adjustment on the hinge side(unless I grind the mounting bosses off a bit!). Put everything back together. I've run two loads since yesterday and I STILL have the damn smoke smell.
The best solution I've seen so far is replacing the gasket so it doesn't look like the dogs breakfast that it does now, and maybe "upgrade" the gasket like @kf6hap did with the Rutland gasket. But really, should I have to do this on a new stove?
I've got pictures if anyone's interested.
Steve
Although skeptical about catalytic stoves, we were convinced (through much reading of this forum/thread) that the ability to turn the Ashford to a simmer was a big plus, and the price of a cat every three for four years pales in comparison to $600 power bill we got the other day... and all my wood is free!
The room the stove is installed in is only about 350 square feet, but the rest of the house is sprawled over 2400 square feet. We've been burning for seven days now and the "stove room" doesn't get much above 23C, yet the rest of the house stays at a constant 20/21C - even the back bedrooms and bathroom stay at 20C and that's with overnight temperatures of -5C to +6C during the day. So far I've only been burning dry d-fir branches of 1.5 to 3 inches in diameter and have no trouble getting 14 hour burn times - can't wait to get into the big stuff!
Now for the "not so great". We have "smoke smell". It appears, like a few other owners on here, that it's coming from the top left/hinge side of the door. It seems to happen after I turn the stat down, usually to medium, the flames disappear and char is finished. This annoys me greatly. I love the smell of smoke on my salmon, charcuterie, and my bacon, but NOT in my house. I've burned wood for many years and have never had the smell of smoke in the house, even when reloading.
So, this is what I've done so far. I've read all 1308 posts of part 1 and 594 of part 2 of this thread to help me trouble shoot this problem, so I've done all the tests everyone suggests, check draft, add chimney height to 17 feet, paper pull test, I've even turned on all the exhaust fans(about 590 cfm total) in the house and can't get it to back draft.
I shut the stove down yesterday and removed the cast cladding and looked for bad welds like one owner had here. What I did find was one of the bolts that attaches the door "limiter" was too long and was hard against the front inner plate of of the stove, pushing the cast front on the hinge side out a bit. I've cut the end of the bolt off past the nut. I inspected the gasket carefully and it appears that smoke may have been seeping past the gasket on the hinge side - where the knife edge of the firebox presses on the gasket is shiny silver/grey, on the hinge side there is a hint of brown for the length of the gasket on the hinge side. I've also adjusted the door a bit tighter on the latch side, but unfortunately there is no adjustment on the hinge side(unless I grind the mounting bosses off a bit!). Put everything back together. I've run two loads since yesterday and I STILL have the damn smoke smell.
The best solution I've seen so far is replacing the gasket so it doesn't look like the dogs breakfast that it does now, and maybe "upgrade" the gasket like @kf6hap did with the Rutland gasket. But really, should I have to do this on a new stove?
I've got pictures if anyone's interested.
Steve
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