2018-19 Blaze King Performance Thread Part 1 (Everything BK)

[kf6hap]

Does the cat ever glow? It looks like the cat is not activating. Either it is not hot enough to become active or the catalytic coating is defective.

 

[webby3650]

Since that’s an after market cat probe, are you sure it’s the right length for the stove?

 

[Boxer]

Do you Blaze King owners burn every reload on high for 20 to 30 minutes? First year with this thing and I just feel like I’m shortening overall burn time doing this.

 

[SuperJ]

I look at my flue probe, I like to run it up to over 600 on reloads. If I have less than ideal wood, it takes longer to get there. Seems to sit closer to 400-500 while it dries things out, With good dry wood it climbs pretty quickly. I like to go outside and peak at what's coming out of my chimney, if I see a lot of steam I'll leave it on high a little longer, or turn it down in smaller steps.

Also, I do this with my bypass closed, the only time my bypass is open is when the door is open or flue temps are below 400. Running it on high for 20-30 minutes with the bypass open doesn't make sense especially with a steel cat, wastes fuel, and dirties up the chimney without the cat scrubbing it.

I think the catalytic reaction generates some water vapor, since I seem to get steam off mostly coals sometimes.

 

[kf6hap]

Char the load for better operation. 15-30 minutes. Charring prepares the wood for a long burn.

 

[lsucet]

Burning pine here, depending how full I load or how tight plus going by how the fire looks I average between 15 to 30 minutes. I don't see any differences on burn time cause I charr the wood good. I feel it works better keeping the glass more clean and run hotter for hrs after dial down. Also I think has better emission that way.

 

[Ryan723]

Replaced my aging original OEM cat with a new SteelCat from FireCat yesterday. AMAZING increase in efficiency and burn time.

Service from a web order from FireCat was great and it arrived within a few days.

I had 4 full years on the Ashford's first cat and ~14500 hours by my math. The last year had full-load burns going from the previous 20-24hrs down to <10 hrs.

Here is the original combustor and the replacement:


The cell sizes are a bit different:


I gasket'd it up nicely and the re-install was easy after a quick sweep of the flue and vacuuming out of everything.

The restart was easy and the new cat lit off super quickly. It was burning nicely and i turned it down to just under the 3 o'clock t-stat position.

Instead of a few embers, I woke up to a nearly full firebox:


I am VERY happy to get my long burns back. Makes me think I should have done the cat some time last year. A lesson to remember.

Here is the past 24 hours with the load lasting ~20 hours. The drops in the stovetop temps were due to my turning on/up the fan i use to blow across the stovetop and circulate air around the house and cooling off the sensor.




Here is a plot of the cat and stovetop of the last 7 days. You can see how much longer this burn went than the previous reload cycles.


If you're on the fence about a cat replacement....just do it!

 

[Niko]

Since that’s an after market cat probe, are you sure it’s the right length for the stove?

Yea I had it with my ceramic also.

 

[Highbeam]

Replaced my aging original OEM cat with a new SteelCat from FireCat yesterday. AMAZING increase in efficiency and burn time.

Service from a web order from FireCat was great and it arrived within a few days.

I had 4 full years on the Ashford's first cat and ~14500 hours by my math. The last year had full-load burns going from the previous 20-24hrs down to <10 hrs.

Here is the original combustor and the replacement:
View attachment 233791

The cell sizes are a bit different:
View attachment 233792

I gasket'd it up nicely and the re-install was easy after a quick sweep of the flue and vacuuming out of everything.

The restart was easy and the new cat lit off super quickly. It was burning nicely and i turned it down to just under the 3 o'clock t-stat position.

Instead of a few embers, I woke up to a nearly full firebox:
View attachment 233795

I am VERY happy to get my long burns back. Makes me think I should have done the cat some time last year. A lesson to remember.

Here is the past 24 hours with the load lasting ~20 hours. The drops in the stovetop temps were due to my turning on/up the fan i use to blow across the stovetop and circulate air around the house and cooling off the sensor.

View attachment 233794


Here is a plot of the cat and stovetop of the last 7 days. You can see how much longer this burn went than the previous reload cycles.
View attachment 233793

If you're on the fence about a cat replacement....just do it!

Every time I replaced a worn out cat I wished I had done it sooner. These things really drop off in performance after the 10-12k hours that they’re rated for. They are not terribly expensive and your efficiency, performance, and even emissions will be back to awesome.

 

[Ashful]

Yea I had it with my ceramic also.

Just to paraphrase the problem, so we can all be on the same page, you ran a Princess for several years with a ceramic cat. No issues, all behaved as expected.

Then recently, you switched to a new SteelCat in the same stove, no other changes were made to the stove, piping, or thermometers at this time. Now your flue is running 300F hotter than it was before, and in fact, hotter than the cat probe.

Correct?

Can you give specific numbers, both before and after? You have thrown out a lot of numbers already, but it hasn’t been clear which of these numbers were before or after the cat swap.

 

[jetsam]

Do you Blaze King owners burn every reload on high for 20 to 30 minutes? First year with this thing and I just feel like I’m shortening overall burn time doing this.

Not me. I think most do.

It's really not a bad idea for several reasons. You are drying the wood, getting the whole load aflame, and clearing off whatever creosote is in the firebox.

In the winter, wood goes in, door shuts, thermostat goes to wherever it needs to go, bypass closes, elapsed time a minute or less. In shoulder season when the stove has been running very low, I let it warm up a bit before turning it down again.

If you are not sure, do what the manual says! I have found that the guys who wrote the BK manuals have reasons for what they say, and are trying to help new users burn safely and successfully.

 

[ratsrepus]

depends on how hot the coals are, if I reload when the cat is active and there is a hot bed of coals I will close the bypass and run on hi for until i see the cat start to climb, then I start throttling down the air. On a low coal or cold start ILL leave the bypass open and crank her for 15 minutes of so, Something like that

 

[Ashful]

Do you Blaze King owners burn every reload on high for 20 to 30 minutes? First year with this thing and I just feel like I’m shortening overall burn time doing this.

Yes, I burn every single load for 20 minutes on high, after closing the bypass. I just had to turn one of my Ashfords up to max at 29 hours into the burn, to burn it down enough to reload before bed, so I don't think it's shortening the burn times by any amount that's affecting me.

I'd be more concerned about stalling the cat on super low burns, if I didn't bake the moisture out with that initial 20 minutes on high.

 

[chazcarr]

Hi Everyone! I am finally back in the burn game and this time I went with the Blaze King Princess insert.
Installed Monday and the 2 warm up fires are completed. This thing off gassed like crazy! I had to open windows from the massive smell. You could see the smoke coming off from the curing process. Wish I had done that outside.
Here she is for the install:

OK, finally time to do a real fire. It went pretty well, but I do have some questions.
First of all it lit up and burned so easily, my old Regency 2400 always struggled to get a draft going but not this beast.

Time to activate the cat and see what happens. I was actually pretty nervous here I'll admit.
Here is a few minutes after activating the cat:

Starting to get red, and seems fine. Outside smoke is still visible, but is it steam? I cannot really tell.
I turned the stat to med for about 20 minutes and then to one click above low.
Everything seem fine, and I engaged the fan. I will also admit that as of right now I am not comfortable with controlling the fan. The Regency had an automatic on/off fan and I relied on that a lot.
OK I check back in about 30 minutes and see this:

Uhh, is that OK? Reading through this thread I see that the thoughts on this are divided.
The cat looks like this:

I watch it carefully for about an hour and turn the fan up to medium range.
There is still some smoke/steam coming from the chimney.
After an hour or so the gauge goes back into the active zone and the cat looks like this:

There is no visible flame in the box, but this cat stays active for about 4 more hours with fan on medium-low setting.
House was warming up nicely.
One more question now, I fell asleep, cat activated, and the fire burned out. Is that going to ruin my cat?
I am sure I will have lots more questions so thank you in advance to anyone who helps me out.
One last thing to mention is I am burning red pine at the moment. My other splits are not ready yet and I don't want to shock the cat putting in wet wood.

 

[jetsam]

You didn't ruin your cat. The manufacturer recommends not running it that hot, but as a fellow PI owner, I don't know how to avoid it (aside from always running the stove low until the cat is broken in; I've never heard from anyone who actually tried that. @Ashful ?) Cats are really active at first. Then they eventually get old and lazy and kind of just lie there glaring at you while the mice run past, and you know it's about time for a new cat.

I'm on my second cat in my PI, and both have been hotter than that without suffering obvious damage.

The stove will stink again every time you hit a new high temp, so you probably have one or two lesser stinkwaves coming. Once you've had it up to 700 stovetop, it's done stinking because that's about where the thermostat ends the party.

 

[jetsam]

That raises an interesting question. @BKVP - did the 10 year old cat in your King always get burned on low when it was brand new, or did it get some hot fires early on?

 

[webby3650]

Hi Everyone! I am finally back in the burn game and this time I went with the Blaze King Princess insert.
Installed Monday and the 2 warm up fires are completed. This thing off gassed like crazy! I had to open windows from the massive smell. You could see the smoke coming off from the curing process. Wish I had done that outside.
Here she is for the install:
View attachment 233851 View attachment 233852 View attachment 233853
OK, finally time to do a real fire. It went pretty well, but I do have some questions.
First of all it lit up and burned so easily, my old Regency 2400 always struggled to get a draft going but not this beast.
View attachment 233854
Time to activate the cat and see what happens. I was actually pretty nervous here I'll admit.
Here is a few minutes after activating the cat:
View attachment 233855
Starting to get red, and seems fine. Outside smoke is still visible, but is it steam? I cannot really tell.
I turned the stat to med for about 20 minutes and then to one click above low.
Everything seem fine, and I engaged the fan. I will also admit that as of right now I am not comfortable with controlling the fan. The Regency had an automatic on/off fan and I relied on that a lot.
OK I check back in about 30 minutes and see this:
View attachment 233858
Uhh, is that OK? Reading through this thread I see that the thoughts on this are divided.
The cat looks like this:
View attachment 233857
I watch it carefully for about an hour and turn the fan up to medium range.
There is still some smoke/steam coming from the chimney.
After an hour or so the gauge goes back into the active zone and the cat looks like this:
View attachment 233856
There is no visible flame in the box, but this cat stays active for about 4 more hours with fan on medium-low setting.
House was warming up nicely.
One more question now, I fell asleep, cat activated, and the fire burned out. Is that going to ruin my cat?
I am sure I will have lots more questions so thank you in advance to anyone who helps me out.
One last thing to mention is I am burning red pine at the moment. My other splits are not ready yet and I don't want to shock the cat putting in wet wood.

It’s steam. This will be visible at times and fluctuate with the moisture content in the wood as well as outside temperatures. It’s normal.

Letting the cat go inactive at the end of a burn will not hurt the cat.
When the cat is new it will spike like this. It’s normal, I sure haven’t been able to prevent it. It will settle down in a short amount of time.

 

[ratsrepus]

Every time I replaced a worn out cat I wished I had done it sooner. These things really drop off in performance after the 10-12k hours that they’re rated for. They are not terribly expensive and your efficiency, performance, and even emissions will be back to awesome.

Two years is all I plan to run the combustors on my stoves, the princess after this season, the ashford next year

 

[webby3650]

Two years is all I plan to run the combustors on my stoves, the princess after this season, the ashford next year

Really? Why?
I’m on season 4 I think and have just started to notice a little drop in performance. I’ll just make a few adjustments, I don’t feel it needs replaced yet.

 

[chazcarr]

It’s steam. This will be visible at times and fluctuate with the moisture content in the wood as well as outside temperatures. It’s normal.

Letting the cat go inactive at the end of a burn will not hurt the cat.
When the cat is new it will spike like this. It’s normal, I sure haven’t been able to prevent it. It will settle down in a short amount of time.

Thanks webby and @jetsam , I figured as much from reading these threads for years, but it is always nice to get reassurance.

 

[chazcarr]

You didn't ruin your cat. The manufacturer recommends not running it that hot, but as a fellow PI owner, I don't know how to avoid it (aside from always running the stove low until the cat is broken in; I've never heard from anyone who actually tried that. @Ashful ?) Cats are really active at first. Then they eventually get old and lazy and kind of just lie there glaring at you while the mice run past, and you know it's about time for a new cat.

I'm on my second cat in my PI, and both have been hotter than that without suffering obvious damage.

The stove will stink again every time you hit a new high temp, so you probably have one or two lesser stinkwaves coming. Once you've had it up to 700 stovetop, it's done stinking because that's about where the thermostat ends the party.

Do you have a stovetop gauge placed somewhere on your PI? I have one I'd like to put but am not sure of the best location.

 

[kennyp2339]

Two years is all I plan to run the combustors on my stoves, the princess after this season, the ashford next year

Mileage will vary, I also only intend on getting 3 seasons out of my cat, figuring I'm 24/7 from November to when it warms up (mid April)

 

[Ashful]

You didn't ruin your cat. The manufacturer recommends not running it that hot, but as a fellow PI owner, I don't know how to avoid it (aside from always running the stove low until the cat is broken in; I've never heard from anyone who actually tried that. @Ashful ?)

That’s a little hot, but controlling cat temperature is a difficult thing to do. You can bump up the air control, which will momentarily lower the combustor temperature by burning off more volatiles in the initial combustion (i.e. in the firebox), but then the entire load gets going stronger and it becomes even more difficult to lower it back down to where you want to run. You could raise the air control and leave it there, but that’s not why you bought a stove known for its low end capability.

So, my approach has always been, don’t bother with it. I just let it do what it’s going to do, as long as I’m not completely toasting combustors. Yes, they degrade a little faster when they hit those sort of temperatures, but I’m not going to worry about it. I think I got 4 good seasons out of each of my combustors, which is just fine for me.

 

[jetsam]

Do you have a stovetop gauge placed somewhere on your PI? I have one I'd like to put but am not sure of the best location.

I don't. I have an infrared thermometer that I use when I am curious. The hottest spot is the stovetop right in front of cat probe.

There is no good place on the PI to put a stovetop thermometer because the fan blows directly over the whole stovetop.

I suggest an infrared thermometer. You don't need it to safely run a BK if the gaskets are in good order, but it is fun and educational and can be used for a lot more than watching stovetops.

I commonly use mine for seeing how hot the dogs get before it's time to move away from the stove. I think 215 is the standing surface temperature record, currently held by The Dingo.

 

[BKVP]

That raises an interesting question. @BKVP - did the 10 year old cat in your King always get burned on low when it was brand new, or did it get some hot fires early on?

I used various burn rates from day 1.