BK Ashford 25 (and Sirocco 25)

[Jedi]

@BKVP I still owe you the full load pic. It's just been 30-40F so a small-medium fire is keeping the house warm.

I still have a question with the cat on/off meter. As seen in the pic, the cat is glowing red, yet the meter is inactive. My issue with this is for reloading when in coals, how do I know if the cat is still active or not? The manual says if active, to close the bypass immediately after reloading. If inactive, close after the load has caught fire or the meter reaches active zone. I just want to avoid damaging the cat.

 

[BurningtoBlaze]

Hi Folks,

This thread seems like a good place for my questions since there are a lot of Ashford 25 owners here. I had my insert installed in mid March of 2022, so this is my first full winter with the stove. Overall I enjoy the stove but I am slightly underwhelmed by the performance. My home is a about 1,800 sq. ft. 1950's cape cod with the chimney on an exterior wall. This season I've bought in a cord of kiln dried hardwood (super pricey) because the wood I have is still not dry enough. I measured the performance last night ,with 2 Govee thermometers, and I would describe it as typical performance. From a bed of coals I load the stove about roughly 70% (more on that later) full and wait for the cat to become active, close the bypass, wait about 15 minutes then start turning down thermostat until its at the point pictured below at 10:45PM.

The outdoor temps for the night were high 20's low 30's for the night. At 9:20AM I go to reload with photo attached amount of coals. Both thermostats read similarly with a max temp briefly of 70 degrees before a gradual decline to about 62 degrees. Avg temperature of 65 over the course of about 10.5 hours. This is with only using the wood stove for heat in the house. Is this what I should be expecting in terms of heat output? I only measured in the living with the stove so as you can imagine the kitchen and bedrooms on the first floor only get colder, and last night wasn't super cold.

One thing would be fit more wood in the stove and pack it full which I've seen photos on the forums. I would like to do this but on my reloads from a bed of coals I almost always get smoke into the house. Even though I fully open the thermostat, wait, open the damper, wait, crack a window and the stove door slightly, wait, then slowly open to rake the coals. Once I start placing wood in the stove within probably 10 seconds smoke start coming out which forces me to rush filling the stove and as a result I can't spend time doing wood Tetris, hence I'm saying 70% full. My chimney is at least 20 ft. Just want to know if my results are what I should be expecting, if I am doing something wrong, or if am asking too much of insert. P.S. I don't have a block off plate or insulated with rock wool.. I've seen people recommend this not sure if that's the road I should go down. Photos attached. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

 

[Jedi]

Hi Folks,

This thread seems like a good place for my questions since there are a lot of Ashford 25 owners here. I had my insert installed in mid March of 2022, so this is my first full winter with the stove. Overall I enjoy the stove but I am slightly underwhelmed by the performance. My home is a about 1,800 sq. ft. 1950's cape cod with the chimney on an exterior wall. This season I've bought in a cord of kiln dried hardwood (super pricey) because the wood I have is still not dry enough. I measured the performance last night ,with 2 Govee thermometers, and I would describe it as typical performance. From a bed of coals I load the stove about roughly 70% (more on that later) full and wait for the cat to become active, close the bypass, wait about 15 minutes then start turning down thermostat until its at the point pictured below at 10:45PM.

The outdoor temps for the night were high 20's low 30's for the night. At 9:20AM I go to reload with photo attached amount of coals. Both thermostats read similarly with a max temp briefly of 70 degrees before a gradual decline to about 62 degrees. Avg temperature of 65 over the course of about 10.5 hours. This is with only using the wood stove for heat in the house. Is this what I should be expecting in terms of heat output? I only measured in the living with the stove so as you can imagine the kitchen and bedrooms on the first floor only get colder, and last night wasn't super cold.

One thing would be fit more wood in the stove and pack it full which I've seen photos on the forums. I would like to do this but on my reloads from a bed of coals I almost always get smoke into the house. Even though I fully open the thermostat, wait, open the damper, wait, crack a window and the stove door slightly, wait, then slowly open to rake the coals. Once I start placing wood in the stove within probably 10 seconds smoke start coming out which forces me to rush filling the stove and as a result I can't spend time doing wood Tetris, hence I'm saying 70% full. My chimney is at least 20 ft. Just want to know if my results are what I should be expecting, if I am doing something wrong, or if am asking too much of insert. P.S. I don't have a block off plate or insulated with rock wool.. I've seen people recommend this not sure if that's the road I should go down. Photos attached. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

View attachment 309586 View attachment 309587 View attachment 309588 View attachment 309589 View attachment 309590

My experience is somewhat similar.
During the day my hvac thermostat reads around 73-76. At night I set the A25 for slow long burn and I still have coals in the morning for an easy start, but the house (hvac thermostat) drops to 68-70 depending on the weather outside. It just means the heat output on low can't keep up with the BTU loss of the house.

 

[Jedi]

Load large pieces for a longer burn. Practice wood stove tetris.

Finally got to loading the stove full tetris mode. I know I can still pack it up more, but at that point I didn't want to go looking for pieces to fill those holes. Lit this up (cold start) at 7pm last night, right now at 845am still has a big bed of coals. Im sure it will burn 1 or 2 hours more. I also left the fire wide open throttle the first hour or so. So I'd say about a 14hr burn. Temps last night were mid to high 30s. House was at 73 before going to bed, this morning house was at 70.
Not bad.

 

[BKVP]

View attachment 310456
Finally got to loading the stove full tetris mode. I know I can still pack it up more, but at that point I didn't want to go looking for pieces to fill those holes. Lit this up (cold start) at 7pm last night, right now at 845am still has a big bed of coals. Im sure it will burn 1 or 2 hours more. I also left the fire wide open throttle the first hour or so. So I'd say about a 14hr burn. Temps last night were mid to high 30s. House was at 73 before going to bed, this morning house was at 70.
Not bad.

You need to find some bigger trees! But isn't it fun? Many years ago I wrote up a post on the timeline for my largest, longest burning load. I have a King at home. Anyway, I loaded a giant piece of black walnut. Then two huge pieces of maple. Then I placed four NIELS on top of all of that.

15 minutes later I left the house. We drove 1 hour to Pasco WA airport, flew to SEATAC. Joined our friends in Seattle that evening to watch Seattle lose to the Patriots. Woke up the next morning at flew down to LAX in S. Cal, sat around a few hours and boarded a flight to Sydney AUS. Landed there had excessively long layover due to plane technical issue. The next flight took us to Auckland NZ. We arrive around midnight there, crashed and wen to bed. At 10:00 a.m. New Zealand time, my oldest son called me to say he stopped by the house to check on things and he said "the fire is about out. You want me to add more wood?"

I need to machine some huge pieces of walnut for my week-long trips!

Keep going and experimenting.

BKVP

 

[stoveliker]

These are small pieces, not large. There are two decent pieces at the bottom. This stove does best with 4-6" pieces, in my experience.

Also, kiln dried wood is often not dry enough; they dry it to get rid of bugs (and be allowed to transport it over county lines). Wood that's too wet does eat a lot of the BTUs available to evaporate the water.

Smoke roll-out: how tall is the chimney? When was it last cleaned? If you run with the cat active, do you still see smoke?

 

[Jedi]

I reloaded at 11am when the house temp dropped to 69. So I got about 14hr burn.

@stoveliker I did get smoke rollout during the reload. Draft might not be strong enough ? Its about 47f outside. Chimney is about 20ft insulated. Last cleaned never since it's new, just installed in Feb 1st, so one month today. Wood is all dry, split and stacked 2 years ago.
I see smoke outside during the reload process and while it catches. But after that it clears.

 

[BKVP]

I reloaded at 11am when the house temp dropped to 69. So I got about 14hr burn.

@stoveliker I did get smoke rollout during the reload. Draft might not be strong enough ? Its about 47f outside. Chimney is about 20ft insulated. Last cleaned never since it's new, just installed in Feb 1st, so one month today. Wood is all dry, split and stacked 2 years ago.
I see smoke outside during the reload process and while it catches. But after that it clears.

Turn the thermostat up to high 20 minutes before a reload. Then open the bypass for 5 minutes or so. Crack the door for a couple of minutes and have all your pieces laying out if front of you. Larger pieces on top of the pile before you load because they go in first. Minimizing the time to load will help....

 

[stoveliker]

Yes, smoke roll out indicates insufficient draft.

At 20 ft, I surmise it's the 47 F outside temps that are pushing it. I don't burn when that happens; or, if there's coals left, I let them simmer. I don't reload then - so no opening of the door.

Opening the Tstat (20 mins) before you are reloading (like bkvp says) heats up the flue as much as you can, which will help with draft when you open the door later.

Wood sounds good.

 

[broadhead]

What are you guys getting for your stove top temps on this? I haven't seen much better than 180. Not sure if the lip on top of the Ashford counts as a stove top but that's what I am referring to.

 

[Jedi]

What are you guys getting for your stove top temps on this? I haven't seen much better than 180. Not sure if the lip on top of the Ashford counts as a stove top but that's what I am referring to.

What are you measuring that temp with? Ive never checked the cast iron lip. It gets hot enought to burn though. I sometimes lay firewood thier to get it extra dry. What I have checked is the temp of the blower air. With a medium fire and fan speed at medium low, yesterday I measured 380F air using my multimeter temperature gage, when putting the gage right by the bypass handle air exhaust.

 

[broadhead]

What are you measuring that temp with? Ive never checked the cast iron lip. It gets hot enought to burn though. I sometimes lay firewood thier to get it extra dry. What I have checked it the temp of the blower air. With a medium fire and fan speed at medium low, yesterday I measured 380F air using my multimeter temperature gage, when putting the gagr right by the bypass handle aor exhaust.

I have a laser heat gun I measure various temps around the house with. I shoot the stove/pipe connector and routinely get 350-400. I have a double walled pipe so I rely on the connector for more reliable readings. I have shot the top of the stove behind the surround and have gotten well above 500, can't remember the temps off the top of my head but way lower than the stove top. I do sometimes run a heat powered fan that works fine, and sometimes a pot of water that evaporates regularly to keep some humidity in the air.

 

[Jedi]

The BK thermostats self regulate. So that means that with a hot fire and fan on high, if I turn the fan off, the lower heat demand should cause the thermostat flap to close a little.

With a low/slow fire with fan off, if I turn on the fan, the higher heat demand should cause the thermostat flap to open for more air and more heat.
I don't see my A25 thermostat flap moving in neither of these 2 examples. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[mellow]

Tstat doesn't have input that the fan has been turned on, just goes by heat and what level it is set at as to how open to be. It also doesn't move very quickly.

 

[Jedi]

Tstat doesn't have input that the fan has been turned on, just goes by heat and what level it is set at as to how open to be. It also doesn't move very quickly.

Any other way to test it? It seems to be in the same position from where I set it after the fire starts to once the fire is out

 

[BKVP]

Any other way to test it? It seems to be in the same position from where I set it after the fire starts to once the fire is out

You can get a hot fire going and after 30 minutes, slowly turn down the thermostat while watching the blade with a flashlight. Once it just kisses the horizontal position stop turning the knob.

When the fire is out and room temperature, look at the blade and see if it has opened some.

BKVP

 

[Jedi]

Before and after @BKVP . Not sure what order the pics will upload in. But the one barely open was after turning it down with a hot fire. The slightly open flap pic is the mext morning at room temperature. It did open a little bit. The fire was out with some coals remaining
I had assumed it would open more.