2017-18 Blaze King Performance Thread PART 2 (Everything BK)

[becasunshine]

Looking for advice:

1300 sq ft house in winnipeg mb where it cam hit -30c. Mostly burn debarked American elm and ash (super dense, not sure if it's green or black ash). A wee bit of pine. Flue is 12 ft straight up. Air intake from outside.

Currently have a non cat stove. Wood pro ts2500. Wanting longer burn times and more stable temps. The box on this thing is designed poorly. With a bed of coal you can get one 10" wide 20" long split in there and that's it. Over night it's usually too warm in the living room (25 or so) but cools off quickly as the night moves on. Mornings require a restart which can be tedious with this thing and it has a tendency to spill lots of smoke whenever you open the door. when it's warmer out you usually do 2 or 3 restarts a day which is a pain.

I think going to a princess would be a good idea. I know ash has a higher but value than elm, how many hours could one get out of a full load of ash? Having to fill the stove only twice a day would be fantastic. the house is also somewhat transient with people coming and going, would maybe a king work for this situation? The larger the box the better IMO. 24 hour or longer burn times would be awesome but probably not realistic.

Well aware of the caveats of a cat stove. I think the positives heavily outweigh any negatives in this situation.

Well, I *always* think that a Princess is a good idea, except for those brief and challenging spells here when I think that a King is a good idea.

I cannot speak to your wood supply; we burn mostly oak because that's mostly what we've got for hard wood.

I can tell you that morning restarts on the Princess are stupid easy. One restart a day is all it takes- and that's assuming that the load burned down overnight such that an actual "restart" is necessary.

Fresh starts are stupid easy as well. This is the easiest stove to start and maintain that I've ever experienced in my life.

Our stove pipe is straight vertical to the ceiling, with two 45' elbows to zig zag around a ceiling joist/roof truss, then a straight chimney through the roof. We live on a spit of land on a peninsula surrounded by water. Our winter winds out here are remarkable- sometimes just because it's Tuesday AND HEY! THE WIND! IT'S 60 MPH! So draft isn't a problem and sometimes we have to crank the stove down just because of the draft.

Our recent Arctic blast was interesting because our real temps were at or near 0'F, wind chill was below 0'F, and of course the wind was howling- we had a winter hurricane, basically. So the challenge was to burn the stove at a high enough temperature to keep the house warm in challenging conditions, but at the same time not go to bed with the stove running flat out with that draft, and simultaneously keep enough wood in it overnight to keep it lit the next morning.

The Princess ran like a charm. Even though we didn't get our longest burn times with that draft and the need to run it more open than we typically do for longer periods of time, and even though we burned in the center of the "normal" range on the thermostat (basically dead center medium) overnight/while asleep, we had enough coals in the bottom of the box to start the stove right back up again in the morning.

Bonus round, the proprietary thermostat kept the Princess stable even in that draft while running at thermostat setting 3 or 3.5 out of 4 (while we were awake.) We had to reload more often but the stove didn't "get away" from us. (I can say much this for sure: the door glass is clean, the chimney's got to be clean and if the CAT is not clean I don't know what will do it after that weather/burn spell.)

We're finally back to stable and calm weather here; it's 36'F with no wind. I haven't shoveled out the firebox in, geez, in two weeks? It's been at least a week and a half, even after that epic burn. The Princess is humming along quietly and merrily on about 1.5 out of 4, basically at the very lowest setting of the "normal" range on the thermostat. The coals in the bottom of the box are burning into fine ash. The house is comfortable.

As far as smoke spilling back into the house, I can't speak to other stoves, this is the first wood stove we've owned/operated in our own house (family members, parents, friends, neighbors had wood stoves when we were kids/teenagers/young adults but this is our first) but no problem with the Princess unless *we* screw up. Open the bypass/take the CAT out of play, and if you are burning on low (and it's not hella windy outside) open up the damper before you open the stove door. Voila! No problem. That's with our stove pipe/chimney/draw. I guess every set up is different.

In fact, when the wind is howling, we have to turn the thermostat down (roughly the equivalent of closing the damper) to reduce the airflow while we reload. Under those conditions, we don't get smoke spillage into the house even with the thermostat turned to low.

As far as reloads per day, during calm winter weather like we have now, it's realistic for us to load once in the morning, once in the evening, and maybe top off before we go to bed. We can roll like that for days, even weeks. If the wind picks up (as it does out here) that will influence our burn times more than anything- even more than the outdoor temperatures.

Every once in a while I wish we'd gotten the King, when conditions out here are particularly challenging. Of course, we could use the gas furnace, BUT THAT WOULD BE DECLARING SURRENDER. HA! LOL. For the vast majority of the burn season, the Princess is enough.

I hope this word salad helps!

 

[jetsam]

Every once in a while I wish we'd gotten the King, when conditions out here are particularly challenging. Of course, we could use the gas furnace, BUT THAT WOULD BE DECLARING SURRENDER. HA! LOL. For the vast majority of the burn season, the Princess is enough.

+1 on all that! I have the same psychological problem that causes me to use all wood NO MATTER WHAT. I also have King Envy after that cold spell.

 

[kf6hap]

As far as wood stoves go, I have always felt the high burn BTU rating is certainly important but the low burn number is the more important. This becomes less as you move north to the very cold climates. Although the BK combustion rate is not totally independent of outside conditions, it is highly isolated. Many other stoves would require a lot of manual adjusting. Or else...

BK apparent automatic outside condition compensation:

1.The colder it gets, the BTUs increase somewhat.
2. Windy conditions increase the BTU output somewhat too.

 

[Calentarse]

You can sign me up for the smoke smell problem as well, @oldbluedeer ; new Sirocco 30.1 this season that replaced my PE.

When sniffing around the hinge side of door, it is apparent that this is where it is coming from. My door gasket seam is right in the middle of the vertical rise of door on the hinge side. I believe this to be a fail on the gasket install from the factory and will likely proceed with replacing it.

I'm burning hardwood that's 14-17%, chimney is 20+ feet of Class A running right through the middle of house from the main floor, and terminating well above peak. Draft is not an issue in this house. Unlike some, my collar welds were clean and smooth - no splatter, and my ICC Ultrablack fit beautifully.

I get the smell if Tstat is set around 3:30-4 with a nicely charred full load of wood. When the stove is cold, I can hear the throttle plate click shut at about 2:30...seemingly anything from 12-2:30 is wasted dial space. Seems strange to have a dial that spins 180, yet only 90 degrees is usable. Is this common with the stats on BK stoves?

Hoping to solve this as well since the stove was not cheap. Lately, the smell hasn't been an issue since I was running the stove a little hard to keep up with the low temps outside.

Your experience is almost identical to mine. I too have the wasted dial space, and if I dial in below 3, the cat will go inactive. On my 2013 BK, no matter where I set the dial the stove wouldn’t let the cat go inactive. I like that setup better, and now that I have way more draft I think it makes the tstat less usable (if that makes sense). Unless they changed the operation of the dial, that’s the only variable that changed between the two stoves for me.

 

[kf6hap]

Unit to unit dial positions DO NOT correlate exactly. 1:00 on one might be 2:30 on another. The numbers were removed as some believed their units were malfunctioning because it did not behave exactly as somebody else's unit. Generally the more efficient the flue (not necessarily the height!) the lower you can dial the thermostat as the stronger draw gets more air through the EPA hole. If it is strong enough, any dial position will maintain an active cat. This includes full CCW / ACW. In practice, I don't know if this actually happens though.

 

[Calentarse]

Unit to unit dial positions DO NOT correlate exactly. 1:00 on one might be 2:30 on another. The numbers were removed as some believed their units were malfunctioning because it did not behave exactly as somebody else's unit. Generally the more efficient the flue (not necessarily the height!) the lower you can dial the thermostat as the stronger draw gets more air through the EPA hole. If it is strong enough, any dial position will maintain an active cat. This includes full CCW / ACW. In practice, I don't know if this actually happens though.

That is the exact opposite explanation of my experience. My old presumably inefficient chimney could be dialed anywhere and never stall. It was 19’ with two 45s. My new is over 25’ with no bends, and I can’t position it lower than 3 or it will go black and stall. So odd...

 

[lsucet]

That is the exact opposite explanation of my experience. My old presumably inefficient chimney could be dialed anywhere and never stall. It was 19’ with two 45s. My new is over 25’ with no bends, and I can’t position it lower than 3 or it will go black and stall. So odd...

I don't know if the ashford is the same but, did you check if your dial is calibrated right? if the same as the princess, it needs to stop right at 6 o'clock. that should be wide open. if it goes pass the 6 o'clock too much it will need calibration.

 

[kf6hap]

That is the exact opposite explanation of my experience. My old presumably inefficient chimney could be dialed anywhere and never stall. It was 19’ with two 45s. My new is over 25’ with no bends, and I can’t position it lower than 3 or it will go black and stall. So odd...

Yes, I agree. That is why I said more efficient. As height is increased draw increases. Above a certain point draw will start to decrease as the flue gasses will become heavy due to heat loss. This "highest draw" height will vary considerably with each installation and somewhat with the outside air temperature.

The thermostat in your new unit might operate differently than the one in the other setup. Unit to unit operational differences exist. The big question is, not being able to stall the cat and actual thermostat position aside, how do you like the low burn?

 

[Calentarse]

I don't know if the ashford is the same but, did you check if your dial is calibrated right? if the same as the princess, it needs to stop right at 6 o'clock. that should be wide open. if it goes pass the 6 o'clock too much it will need calibration.

It stops at 6...

 

[Calentarse]

Yes, I agree. That is why I said more efficient. As height is increased draw increases. Above a certain point draw will start to decrease as the flue gasses will become heavy due to heat loss. This "highest draw" height will vary considerably with each installation and somewhat with the outside air temperature.

The thermostat in your new unit might operate differently than the one in the other setup. Unit to unit operational differences exist. The big question is, not being able to stall the cat and actual thermostat position aside, how do you like the low burn?

Honestly it hasn't been cold enough to really dial it in and I have been too afraid to because I know that's when the smell is at its worst. I'm running it on 4pm now and its 40 out. Could probably still be active after 15 hours with it set this way...

 

[kf6hap]

Have you tried a key damper at the stove to stack connection? Aaronk25 has had good luck with it. I am going to try it in the spring as smell is not a problem for me at this time due to cooler outside air temps. They are cheap, easy to install removable and not much is lost if it does not do what you want. Is not running the stove at 4:00 a little on the high/hot side?

Wide open at startup, damper it down at thermostat turn down. Experiment with settings for best operation. No manometer required.

 

[jetsam]

Unit to unit dial positions DO NOT correlate exactly. 1:00 on one might be 2:30 on another. The numbers were removed as some believed their units were malfunctioning because it did not behave exactly as somebody else's unit. Generally the more efficient the flue (not necessarily the height!) the lower you can dial the thermostat as the stronger draw gets more air through the EPA hole. If it is strong enough, any dial position will maintain an active cat. This includes full CCW / ACW. In practice, I don't know if this actually happens though.

Thou Shalt Not Mention The Great Swoosh Debate Of 2015, Cursed Be Its Name.

 

[Calentarse]

Have you tried a key damper at the stove to stack connection? Aaronk25 has had good luck with it. I am going to try it in the spring as smell is not a problem for me at this time due to cooler outside air temps. They are cheap, easy to install removable and not much is lost if it does not do what you want. Is not running the stove at 4:00 a little on the high/hot side?

Wide open at startup, damper it down at thermostat turn down. Experiment with settings for best operation. No manometer required.

No, 4 is not on the hot side. Heating 2200 sf and house is 72. I’m here with snow days work is canceled for now. I will probably put it around 3 or 330 not being here on normal days in the 40s. House will probably be upper 60s then...if BK tells me to restrict draft then I will consider the key damper. Otherwise I don’t want to introduce any new variables to the mix.

 

[Oskaratk]

Howdy..
I got a Sirocco 30 just before the holidays.

Unfortunately I have smoke smell in the house.
Seems to come from the top or the door - I feel more intense on the left side. Cannot see any area on the door gasket that would not touch the frame

I start a new burn, wait for "in active zone" before I close the bypass. Burn on high for 30min or so. Cat temp is around 2 o'clock.
Then I dampen down, from 6 o'clock to 5 wait .. then 4 ... maybe 3:30 and here comes the smell

Draft is around .06 on high burn, .04 on medium. About .025 (drops to .01) on the low setting.

Stove pipe single wall, 2 7.5 "elbows". approx 18" long, almost straight up 7.5 deg off vertical. 4" past the roof
Surface temp of the pipe 16" above the stove 200 F

I go back and forth switching to double wall pipe.

May I get your input, please ?

Thanks and greetings from the too warm Colorado: www.xbar7.com

Oskar

 

[becasunshine]

+1 on all that! I have the same psychological problem that causes me to use all wood NO MATTER WHAT. I also have King Envy after that cold spell.

Yeah, the gas furnace runs on propane, so... We have a heat pump that kicks in first but IIRC the temperature floor on the heat pump is 40'F. We're on coop electricity, which is IIRC a bit more expensive than the larger provider charges in the metro areas, so we try to use wood whenever it's realistic.

We're actually above 40'F right now. I could use the heat pump side of the HVAC. I'm trying to be patient and let the last of the larger chunks burn down in the stove without turning on the HVAC heat during this reprieve. I have the t-stat wide open and the CAT engaged. I could use a bit more heat in the house but the Princess is still putting heat out, albeit a bit more gently at the moment. I'm stirring the coals intermittently, nudging it along.

I could just shovel the coals out already but that's taking good BTUs and throwing them in the ash can. If I can nudge it along for a few hours, I wring every bit of energy I'm going to get out of this wood, and it ultimately makes shoveling out easier.

 

[black smoke signals]

Sure wood make life for us simple owning a Blazeking if Dealers were required to school techs and sales that install bk stoves to join this forum!

 

[MissMac]

Howdy..
I got a Sirocco 30 just before the holidays.

Unfortunately I have smoke smell in the house.
Seems to come from the top or the door - I feel more intense on the left side. Cannot see any area on the door gasket that would not touch the frame

I start a new burn, wait for "in active zone" before I close the bypass. Burn on high for 30min or so. Cat temp is around 2 o'clock.
Then I dampen down, from 6 o'clock to 5 wait .. then 4 ... maybe 3:30 and here comes the smell

Draft is around .06 on high burn, .04 on medium. About .025 (drops to .01) on the low setting.

Stove pipe single wall, 2 7.5 "elbows". approx 18" long, almost straight up 7.5 deg off vertical. 4" past the roof
Surface temp of the pipe 16" above the stove 200 F

I go back and forth switching to double wall pipe.

May I get your input, please ?

Thanks and greetings from the too warm Colorado: www.xbar7.com

Oskar

Your story sounds familiar. Check your door gasket to see if it’s evenly distributed and you have a good knife edge all around. I had to replace the door gasket in my Sirocco 30.1 brand new out of the box. It helped with my smell issue but didn’t totally resolve it.

 

[Calentarse]

Your story sounds familiar. Check your door gasket to see if it’s evenly distributed and you have a good knife edge all around. I had to replace the door gasket in my Sirocco 30.1 brand new out of the box. It helped with my smell issue but didn’t totally resolve it.

My old BK had the gasket by the hinge that ran along the edge. That how it was when new. Theres a picture of it somewhere on this forum. Replaced the gasket and got it to seat nicely in the middle of the new gasket and it didn't solve the issue. My new Ashford is square in the middle as well and I still got the stink.

 

[Oskaratk]

Your story sounds familiar. Check your door gasket to see if it’s evenly distributed and you have a good knife edge all around. I had to replace the door gasket in my Sirocco 30.1 brand new out of the box. It helped with my smell issue but didn’t totally resolve it.

I just called BlazeKing US and had a informative talk to a tech. The conversion boiled down to create more draft. Running hotter, use double wall pipe. Also, the tech kinda agreed to that the door gasket is not really gas-tight, it does not need to be as there is draft. I am tempted to find out what for example Viessmann, Froehling etc use as materials in the boilers and just try.

Honestly, even when the firebox is full of black smoke - I would expect it does not leak. Not with a stove in this price range and overall good reputation.

Oskar

 

[webby3650]

I just called BlazeKing US and had a informative talk to a tech. The conversion boiled down to create more draft. Running hotter, use double wall pipe. Also, the tech kinda agreed to that the door gasket is not really gas-tight, it does not need to be as there is draft. I am tempted to find out what for example Viessmann, Froehling etc use as materials in the boilers and just try.

Honestly, even when the firebox is full of black smoke - I would expect it does not leak. Not with a stove in this price range and overall good reputation.

Oskar

Was it Charlie by chance?

 

[allan5oh]

Thanks for the replies and information. Sure sounds like a thermostatically controlled blaze king is the way to go. even the princess should work, it's deep enough that it can be loaded quite well. Probably performs a ton better on low than the current non cat stove. btw the useful depth is less than 10" on this current stove. You can only load sideways. what a pain!

Anyways I'm going to go beyond questions and go into theory a bit. My understanding after reading the manuals is you can have a fan kit turn on above a certain stove temp. what if instead I used this thermostatically controlled power to turn on a programmable house thermostat? One capable of PWM output for the fans.

What would happen is once the stove gets warm enough the external thermostat turns on. It would be capable of throttling up and down the fans depending on house temp. If tuned right it should be able to keep the house temp rock stable. That way you're also maximizing burn time every single load.

Now since the damper thermostat compensates for additional BTUs removed the stove temp should stay stable. If it got colder and the fans ran more it would just open the damper more.

I hope I explained it well not always the best at that. Plus I'm getting way ahead of myself.

 

[Rich L]

Wow a king in 1300sq feet. That's a big box. Off the cuff that seems way too big to me.

When have you lived through -21f ?

 

[kf6hap]

Yes, the box is in a negative but somehow the smell can get out. How it gets out is the $64,000 question but how to eliminate it is the million dollar question. A better gasket will fix it. The old asbestos braid gaskets could be extremely dense-almost solid. The fiberglas jobs seem to be too permeable. I think an applied coating will stop it but so far I have not come up with anything that will withstand the temperatures. It also must not poison the cat. All that being said the smell can be largely negated with a proper flue system and a gasket replacement. The new gasket must be placed in a continuous thick bed of RTV to be effective. That in itself is a clue to the real fix. I would coat the gasket with a whole can of never seize, if I knew it would work. The smell would be certain to cause a less than happy wife though as the grease burned off.

 

[begreen]

Howdy..
I got a Sirocco 30 just before the holidays.

Unfortunately I have smoke smell in the house.
Seems to come from the top or the door - I feel more intense on the left side. Cannot see any area on the door gasket that would not touch the frame

I start a new burn, wait for "in active zone" before I close the bypass. Burn on high for 30min or so. Cat temp is around 2 o'clock.
Then I dampen down, from 6 o'clock to 5 wait .. then 4 ... maybe 3:30 and here comes the smell

Draft is around .06 on high burn, .04 on medium. About .025 (drops to .01) on the low setting.

Stove pipe single wall, 2 7.5 "elbows". approx 18" long, almost straight up 7.5 deg off vertical. 4" past the roof
Surface temp of the pipe 16" above the stove 200 F

I go back and forth switching to double wall pipe.

May I get your input, please ?

Thanks and greetings from the too warm Colorado: www.xbar7.com

Oskar

It could be you need more chimney height to compensate for altitude. What is the altitude of your location? What is the total height of the flue system from stove to chimney cap? Double-wall pipe is recommended and will aid draft.

This chart is for a VC cat stove but it will give you an idea of how altitude affects draft.

 

[Ashful]

Yes, the box is in a negative but somehow the smell can get out. How it gets out is the $64,000 question but...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think aaronk has already outlined this for us. Under high draft, it is likely the airwash is creating a localized positive pressure on the back of that door which may cause a leak at the upper corners, even while the firebox is under net negative pressure. It’s only a theory, but it’s the most plausible one I’ve heard so far, with at least a little evidence supporting it.

This airwash system is unique to the 30 boxes, the airwash in the older King and Princess models being somewhat less aggressive (or surmised to be so, as they’re less effective than the 30’s).