BK vs Secondary Combustion Stoves?

[begreen]

If a Cat burner is "smoldering" is it giving out enough heat to 'heat'?

That depends on how cold it is outside. If it's warm outside then the cat is eating a lot of smoke and there is not much visible flame, btu output is low. If it is cold outside then the stove is being fed more air so less smoke is generated and there is more visible flame and btu output is higher.

If a secondary burner is at 1100°, is it warm, hot, or very hot?

No, you control the heat output, just like with the Lange. If the outdoor temps are mild you are not going to be loading the stove to the gills and running it at a high temp. Less wood + less air = less heat

 

[lsucet]

If a Cat burner is "smoldering" is it giving out enough heat to 'heat'? If a secondary burner is at 1100°, is it warm, hot, or very hot?

I know it can be confusing but I recommend to read how both technologies works. The cat still getting, let's say, 1600 degrees but the ways that gets there is different than non cat. You just need 500 degrees to engage the cat.

 

[jetsam]

Ignore all the hoo-hah about how awful cats are. If you do a search, you'll find that the cat haters have posts in other threads about broken baffles, rusted tubes, etc. The ones who don't are people who are burning old smoke dragons, and it sucks to be them anyway. (I grew up with those stoves, and we liked them a lot, but that was only because we had never used an EPA stove!)

Any stove needs parts and maintenance. People who raise a big fuss over one kind of stove being tremendously worse than the other are badly informed, and worse yet they are often emotionally invested in the issue. (So don't try to argue with 'em, but also don't listen to 'em.)

 

[jetsam]

...and I'm also building a stationary rocket stove using of a concrete cassion form, similar to this design but larger in diameter so it's thicker..

I built my first rocket stove last weekend- using 6 cinder blocks, an old mason hammer, and some handfuls of dirt to chink up the cracks- and it was a very good cooktop and started up a lot faster than an open fire. (Also it was flat on top, and I didn't have to go look for rocks to set the pan on to avoid Collapsing Log Syndrome). My backyard cooking may never be the same again.

 

[lsucet]

Going by the OP, I think is normal that he is confused and something don't make sense to him. After all a big percentage of BK owners here didn't believe it neither at some point. I DIDN'T want to believe it neither and when I commented to family members, they just told me, that is impossible.lol. Because is true it sounds unrealistic that something can burn that long. Always is going to be people that will not believe it and they feel that what they have do the job for them and that is what is important. In reality we all right and we all wrong.
We have also seeing BK owners that are not getting those burn times and some complaining that they not getting good heat out of their BK. Why? Who knows. but the point is the you can see/hear those cases too. That is telling you that also is not the perfect stove for everybody. You are doing your homework and that's good.
The salesman was supposed to explain to you why and how you get from one 30 hrs and from the other one 8-10 hrs with multiple reloads and under which weather conditions. There is a lot of information here on the site. Every year is the same and this one is not going to be the last one.

 

[Squirrely]

I built my first rocket stove last weekend- using 6 cinder blocks, an old mason hammer, and some handfuls of dirt to chink up the cracks- and it was a very good cooktop and started up a lot faster than an open fire. (Also it was flat on top, and I didn't have to go look for rocks to set the pan on to avoid Collapsing Log Syndrome). My backyard cooking may never be the same again.

View attachment 199953

Hey, I did a cinder block rocket stove, too.
I watched youtube for design ideas.

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Greg

 

[bholler]

Hey, I did a cinder block rocket stove, too.
I watched youtube for design ideas.

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Greg

Yeah rocket stoves can be lots of fun to mess around with. But due frewuency pf loading needed i really only see them as an emergency thing. Or for cooking. I know sdome heat their houses with them if built in with thermal mass but i dont see it as an option for most.

But yes i have built atleast a dozen through the years just to play around with.

 

[Highbeam]

If a BK and a secondary burner were both loaded with the same dry wood, same amount and burned on low all winter long - does anybody know how each respective chimney would look?

BG - Yep, a propane backup for the backup is a good way to go!

I can tell you from experience, same dry wood, same home, same chimney, chimneys looked the same but for the color. Noncat was brown and crunchy, cat was black and crunchy. Neither are dirty technologies.

 

[Highbeam]

If a Cat burner is "smoldering" is it giving out enough heat to 'heat'? If a secondary burner is at 1100°, is it warm, hot, or very hot?

The fire in a low burning cat stove is only smoldering along to make 500 degree smoke. The active cat is glowing at 1500 or so depending on what that fire is emitting. Whether the output is enough to heat your home to a comfortable level depends on lots of other things but I can tell you that this minimum setting is what i use 95% of the time to heat 1700 sf of 1963 built house in the same region. If it's not enough heat to heat then turn it up. There's a knob for that. It works like an oven and can go very high if needed.

The noncat has a very small range of available outputs and all are hot. Unlike your Lange, you can't snuff the fire since the air controls no longer close and the noncats are not air tight anymore. This was done to keep them burning hot and clean. That's fine if you want a hot stove.

 

[Squirrely]

But due frequency of loading needed I really only see them as an emergency thing.

Because we live out on the edge, everything we do is with emergency preparedness in mind. So we explore every available contingency.

Greg

 

[WoodyIsGoody]

Because we live out on the edge, everything we do is with emergency preparedness in mind. So we explore every available contingency.

Greg

In a zombie apocalypse, you will be over run by millions of people fleeing the inner city. Whatcha gonna do then?

 

[Squirrely]

In a zombie apocalypse, you will be over run by millions of people fleeing the inner city. Whatcha gonna do then?

They'll die in the traffic jam.

We live in a rural canyon with one two lane road. I got that covered.

Greg

 

[begreen]