2021-2022 BK everything thread

[stoveliker]

Just shove it back in. I’ve had them try to walk out before too. Usually only a little ways though.

That's what I did indeed, carefully looking what was happening with the gasket. All seems fine after that.
I think this walking may be related to the clanking of the bypass valve.

Not a big deal.

 

[shoot-straight]

Yep. Was 60 this am, let stove go out, sooteater, ash clean out, brush cat- back in action as temps drop all day.

 

[shoot-straight]

Same here, that's why I chose the Chinook. But I doubt that the differences between Chinook/Ashford and the Princess are really big. I heard that the ash belly is bigger on the Princess, but besides that the thermal parameters are the same.

The ashford win in every category regarding looks- but I think the princess wins in the usable heat sept. The cast iron covers on the ashford do "buffer" the heat so to speak.

I'd love to try an ideal steel. I just don't like their looks .

 

[Ashful]

The ashford win in every category regarding looks- but I think the princess wins in the usable heat sept. The cast iron covers on the ashford do "buffer" the heat so to speak.

I'd love to try an ideal steel. I just don't like their looks .

Net efficiencies are pretty close, so for similar BTU loaded into each box and set to a similar burn time, they should be putting out the same heat. But the Ashford will definitely have a lower perceived temperature from all sides but the glass, due to the convective jacket. Same heat into the room, but less by radiation, so you don't feel the searing.

It's a good theory, anyway. Wonder what BKVP has to say about it.

 

[Dieselhead]

The cold Kenny mentioned above is coming in now

Kenny is my weatherman. What he posts I get 24hr later.👌🏻

 

[Dieselhead]

Nice calm before the storm cleanout this am. A couple uglies for the day shift to light this load off tonight. Stay warm y’all.

 

[Dieselhead]

My cleanout shovel. It’s a flat shovel I had with a busted handle that I welded some sides on. Not patent pending 👌🏻

 

[OH_Varmntr]

Called my BK dealer last week to order a Princess 29 and he said I'd be looking at May. No worries. Transfers me to another guy to get my info and he says he's expecting one any day now. Calls me back the next morning and said guess what showed up?

So I went and picked up my new Princess 29 this morning. Installed an insulated liner, the insert, and she is putting out a pretty little glow now.

 

[Montanalocal]

Looking for input from anyone who has had a princess and a non-cat stove. The princess is a great stove but just a little undersized for me, I'm often running it wide open or waking up to a 55 degree house. I'm considering a PE Alderlea T6, Englander NC30, or Drolet HT300. I'm open to other options also. Currently I can get a good 8 hour burn with the princess when the temps are around 0. Once it dips below zero the stove struggles. Can I expect something better from a non cat stove? The princess will be missed in the shoulder season.

Hi

The bottom line seems to be you can not get enough heat out of your Princess to heat your house when it is cold.

I had a similar problem, and I found a way to fix that.

I started out with a Lopi Liberty replacing an old Earth Stove a few years ago. It did heat my home, which is over 3,000 sq. ft., is a log home, so no thick insulation, and a lot of big glass on two stories.

However, I simply could not put up with the Lopi. The big firebox is a fib, as the air tubes intrude down into the firebox, and the door is very close to the bottom, so you can not build up much of any coal and ash base. I was refilling it twice per night. I might add, I only have Ponderosa pine to burn, which is quite punky, and very uneven splits due to huge knots.

Anyway, I traded it in for a Blaze King KE40. Vastly better in every which way. Nice deep firebox that I can accumulate coals and ash, and get in over twice as much wood as the Lopi. And the thermostat control is of course absolutely great.

However, there was one issue. It would not heat my house. I could not extract heat fast enough to replace the losses when cold. The main reason was the very wimpy fan on the BK. It puts out about one third the air volume of the Lopi.

So I came up with the solution that now very adequately heats my house. I added some external fans. I have one that sits above the stove and blows directly down onto the top of the stove where the catalytic hot spot is. Then I have two more fans directing the heat generated and taking it up the stairs to the upper floor where our living area is.

The key is removing the heat from the stove. If it does not get removed fast enough, the thermostat will not tell the stove to generate heat fast enough. The thermostat will only tell the stove to open up when it cools off, which it will not do if the stove and the air around it remain very warm. This warm air right around the stove will not get into the rest of the house if it is not moved there by some means, and the wimpy fan on the BK is not up to the job.

Again, the key is to have a strong fan blowing directly on the stove. This forces the stove to generate heat faster, and also distributes the heat to other parts of the house.

I think that experimenting with a fan on your Princess will make you happy.

 

[sprawlnstall]

Very interesting, I’ll be trying this today. I’m surprised to hear the fan on a princess and king is less than that of a lopi. My fan seems loud and does a good job heating the house up. A secondary fan should help.

 

[Alpine1]

Theoretically, it should be easier to move cold air towards the stove rather than remove hot air around it. Cold air is denser (and heavier) and doesn’t tend to move up unlike hot air. In my old house, I had better results by pushing cold air outside the rooms I wanted to heat, rather than trying to force hot air in.

 

[OH_Varmntr]

Theoretically, it should be easier to move cold air towards the stove rather than remove hot air around it. Cold air is denser (and heavier) and doesn’t tend to move up unlike hot air. In my old house, I had better results by pushing cold air outside the rooms I wanted to heat, rather than trying to force hot air in.

I've found that to be the case as well. Our back 2 rooms where our stove sits would get 80-84f and blowing the hot air into the other rooms of the house didn't work well.

We simply placed the fans on the floor and pointed them towards the stove and the back 2 rooms dropped to mid 72-74f and the other rooms warmed up significantly.

I was surprised to say the least but it makes sense now.

 

[spudman99]

Simple question:

When I reload my Princess Insert, the thermostat is set on high. After 10 min or so I turn the stat from its noon high setting to around 3pm (6pm is fully closed). Nothing really happens to the intensity of the fire or flame show (fan is on high) even after 10 more minutes. At this point the combuster gauge is at 5pm and the top of the insert reads 600deg. If I bump the stat to say 4pm, I hear the flapper click close and the fire dies down immediately. It will then cruise for several hours in this state.

Do I have a sticky flapper? I did lube it at the beginning of the season, this is my 3rd year. No operational issues with the stove, just a question about operation. Should the stat and hence the flapper be more responsive in the 12-3pm range?

 

[OH_Varmntr]

Simple question:

When I reload my Princess Insert, the thermostat is set on high. After 10 min or so I turn the stat from its noon high setting to around 3pm (6pm is fully closed). Nothing really happens to the intensity of the fire or flame show (fan is on high) even after 10 more minutes. At this point the combuster gauge is at 5pm and the top of the insert reads 600deg. If I bump the stat to say 4pm, I hear the flapper click close and the fire dies down immediately. It will then cruise for several hours in this state.

Do I have a sticky flapper? I did lube it at the beginning of the season, this is my 3rd year. No operational issues with the stove, just a question about operation. Should the stat and hence the flapper be more responsive in the 12-3pm range?

That's the nature of a thermostatically controlled damper. With it set at 3pm, the thermostat is still calling for heat, which is why you haven't heard it close the damper. When moved to the 4pm position it satisfies the thermostat and closes the damper. Given more time, it will close the damper at the 3pm position as well.

 

[OH_Varmntr]

The first couple of burns in my new Princess insert have been outstanding. I was skeptical at first because everyone likes to inflate burn times and such.

Temps have been in the low teens during the day down to single digits during the nights with humidity in the 60-70% range. Yesterday morning I loaded the insert at 0745 and reloaded it at 2210 last night (14 hours 25 minutes). The thermostat was set at the position as indicated by the manual being the tested low burn position. The combustor gauge was within the first third of the active zone and the fresh load lit right off.

My wife was skeptical when I told her we'd be able to burn 12+ hours on a load but now she believes me. 😄

 

[stoveliker]

That's the nature of a thermostatically controlled damper. With it set at 3pm, the thermostat is still calling for heat, which is why you haven't heard it close the damper. When moved to the 4pm position it satisfies the thermostat and closes the damper. Given more time, it will close the damper at the 3pm position as well.

Unless your thermostat is the reverse of mine, I think your directions are incorrect.

Moving from 3 to 4 o'clock on my Tstat (with swoosh minimum at 1 and max at 6) opens it up more.

I do think something is amiss with the Tstat of @spudman99

 

[OH_Varmntr]

Unless your thermostat is the reverse of mine, I think your directions are incorrect.

Moving from 3 to 4 o'clock on my Tstat (with swoosh minimum at 1 and max at 6) opens it up more.

I do think something is amiss with the Tstat of @spudman99

Princess 29 insert.

 

[stoveliker]

That is the reverse of mine

 

[Highbeam]

That is the reverse of mine

Yeah, the princess inserts are backwards. They use a funky chain setup too and are in front. Just a different mechanism to do the same thing.

 

[stoveliker]

Depends on your frame of reference. Maybe mine is backwards 🤔

 

[Highbeam]

Depends on your frame of reference. Maybe mine is backwards 🤔

How very woke of you. LOL

 

[CreoSophist]

But would you say it is fair to say that the BTU output of blaze king stoves that are controlled by a thermostat are not as effected by load density and wood species as many others? Of course burn time will be effected drastically but ammout and density of fuel.

I have found in my experience heat output in the noncats I have used was controlled as much by wood species and how I loaded the stove as the air control. But with the bk the heat output doesn't change much with those factors. Just burn time

Our non cat Lopi insert puts out more heat with the air choked down that it does wide open. You basically control the heat output by how much wood you load, and use the air control to fine tune for an efficient burn, so I would agree with your experience.

I shut it down until the yellow flame disappears and it's running fully on secondary burn, with the primary air only feeding the coals. Increasing the air setting beyond this point cools the stove off.

 

[stoveliker]

My cat has been this toasty for 3.5 hrs now. I still find the secondary flames in front of the cat funny to look at (for 3 secs before my face starts overheating...).

Edit: I have a thermocouple mounted in the middle of the convection vent on the top front of the stove. It reads 650 F...

 

[Campcook]

I am the proud owner of a new-to-me Blaze King Princess. This is my first time using a Cat stove and I'm figuring it out, but boy what a learning curve. My first fire I was just experimenting with a few logs. The cat probe got into the active zone and I shut it down but the cat never glowed and the stove didn't really get up to temp. I also turned the blower on and the stove didn't like that. The probe dropped out of the active zone and things seemed to be cooling down. The fire was out in about 3 hours. A little disappointing but not a huge deal.

The second fire, I really loaded it up and got things running quickly. I closed the bypass as soon as the probe read active but the stove soon got to 900 degree stove top temp and got that over-fired-stove smell. I backed things off (and got the fire extinguisher ready) and the temp settled down to about 600. I dropped the tstat down to about 2 and got a 12 hour burn. Much better than the last time, but still not as long as I'm looking for from this legendary long burner.

This morning, I loaded things up again, got the fire going, closed the bypass and then dropped the tstat much sooner than I did last night. The stove is running well with the tstat at 2 but the flames were a little to active for what I would think would get me that long burn. I know a lot of people on this forum run their BKs at 1.5 so I tried that. I got some reburn flames on the roof of the firebox for a while but those went out and now I just have white logs. No fire, no coals, nothing.

My question is, am I doing something wrong? The cat is glowing bright red and the probe is well into the active zone (about half) but falling. The tstat is set to about 1.75. If I jump it up to 2 I'll get some flames back but the stove has only been running for about 4 hours and I've already burned half the wood in the firebox.

The blower is on. I've never had a stove with a blower before - do stoves not really like them?

General info:
-BK Princess circa 2012. Dollar test shows the door gasket is good
-Wood is a mix of hardwoods and around 20%, though I admit some of the wood is a little higher and there's a hissing when these pieces make their way into the stove
-Insulated liner running up through an old chimney three stories tall, maybe 30'? That's just a guess. The stove drafts well, as did the one I swapped out for the BK.
-The Tstat nob is a little funky. It will rotate almost 180* past the lowest setting before it finally stops. Not sure if this is normal or might need attention.
-The previous owner installed a new steel Cat last year. Visual inspection shows no plugs and it looks pretty good.

Any advice from all you BK masters would be very much appreciated!

 

[shoot-straight]

Its been discussed many times on here. Running the fans consumes your wood faster. Its because the air from the fan cools the stat- making it "think" its cooler than it is. So it opens up, lets more air in, and you see flames.

The rate at which this happens depends on fan speed and other variables. If the fan is on high on my ashford, my burn time is significantly reduced off what it would be without (at the same setting with same wood). But its shedding more BTUs into the house in the process. So its not lost heat.