Blaze king King issues need help

[BlazekingKING]

A couple of thoughts on why your stat settings have to be so high to keep an active cat.

1) Have you verified that the knob is on tight and right? When you turn the knob all the way up it should stop spinning and be pointing straight to the floor. Check that and tell us what you find.
2) Your wet wood. A normal catalyst will only be able to burn smoke, and stay active, when it is being fed 500 degree smoke. If your fire is a cold, hissing, slobbery, mess then the only way it will make 500 degree smoke is if you feed it significant air which is only done at higher stat settings. We've all sat around a campfire made with wet wood. It doesn't make much heat until it gets big.
3) As catalytic combustors get old and wear out, or lose effectiveness from poison, they stop working at low temperatures. Like they need to be at 700 vs. 500 to create the reaction. New cats in new BKs have a 10 year warranty but I still expect no more than 5 years before replacement to keep things working nicely. We don't really know how old your cat is or whether it was partially poisoned.
4) Your fire. We haven't seen your wood or the way you load this thing. The king can be filled to the top with small splits of wood. In your shoes I would be splitting small, like 3-5 inches across the longest dimension, and loading loosely to the top. Load straight in so that when you look in the window you see the butt ends of the splits, we call this north/south loading.
5) Your weakfish draft. Since your chimney is less than ideal it doesn't suck as much air through the little opening in the stat. To overcome this, you need a more open stat to get the same amount of air to the stove. Setting 2 is right in the middle so you still have lots of effective range either way. It's not a bad place to run the stove. When your stove was new it was only required to have 12 feet of chimney. You meet the minimum spec so don't worry about this. Just know that you're on the bottom end so you will probably never be able to run below the gold "normal" range which I believe ends at 1.75 or so.

I have checked the knob and it does stop straight down. We do load front to back like you said. And We just resplit our wood smaller to help it dry.

 

[BlazekingKING]

A couple of thoughts on why your stat settings have to be so high to keep an active cat.

1) Have you verified that the knob is on tight and right? When you turn the knob all the way up it should stop spinning and be pointing straight to the floor. Check that and tell us what you find.
2) Your wet wood. A normal catalyst will only be able to burn smoke, and stay active, when it is being fed 500 degree smoke. If your fire is a cold, hissing, slobbery, mess then the only way it will make 500 degree smoke is if you feed it significant air which is only done at higher stat settings. We've all sat around a campfire made with wet wood. It doesn't make much heat until it gets big.
3) As catalytic combustors get old and wear out, or lose effectiveness from poison, they stop working at low temperatures. Like they need to be at 700 vs. 500 to create the reaction. New cats in new BKs have a 10 year warranty but I still expect no more than 5 years before replacement to keep things working nicely. We don't really know how old your cat is or whether it was partially poisoned.
4) Your fire. We haven't seen your wood or the way you load this thing. The king can be filled to the top with small splits of wood. In your shoes I would be splitting small, like 3-5 inches across the longest dimension, and loading loosely to the top. Load straight in so that when you look in the window you see the butt ends of the splits, we call this north/south loading.
5) Your weakfish draft. Since your chimney is less than ideal it doesn't suck as much air through the little opening in the stat. To overcome this, you need a more open stat to get the same amount of air to the stove. Setting 2 is right in the middle so you still have lots of effective range either way. It's not a bad place to run the stove. When your stove was new it was only required to have 12 feet of chimney. You meet the minimum spec so don't worry about this. Just know that you're on the bottom end so you will probably never be able to run below the gold "normal" range which I believe ends at 1.75 or so.

I have checked the knob and it does stop straight down. We do load front to back like you said. And We just resplit our wood smaller to help it dry.

 

[BlazekingKING]

 

[Highbeam]

View attachment 174384

Looks good, that's after being split down farther? The back row on the right looks much bigger. When you split it, does the inside look just as dry?

From the outside it looks good and I can't imagine that fuel forming visible drips on the glass. Load her full and keep the cat active.

 

[BlazekingKING]

Looks good, that's after being split down farther? The back row on the right looks much bigger. When you split it, does the inside look just as dry?

From the outside it looks good and I can't imagine that fuel forming visible drips on the glass. Load her full and keep the cat active.

Some of it is new wood that was dead standing and some of it is what we already had! Some of it looks slightly and felt damp/cold. Some of it was spilt further and some of it was just cut up in hopes that it is dryer.

 

[Woody Stover]

If your fire is a cold, hissing, slobbery, mess

Good point, and I don't think this has been mentioned yet, but that's a great way to check how wet your wood is; When you have a good coal bed, throw several splits on, leave the bypass open and get some flame going in the box. Then after the splits get burning, open the door a little; If you hear hissing or worse yet, see water bubbling out the ends of the splits, your wood is too wet.

that's after being split down farther? The back row on the right looks much bigger.

Some of it looks slightly and felt damp/cold.

That's another indicator; If you split one and press it against your cheek or lips, and it feels cool, that indicates moisture evaporating, and it's too wet. If that's the case, I would definitely split a little smaller. You can split a bit bigger later, when you can leave it in the stack a couple years before you need it.

 

[tarzan]

Has any of the things you have done so far made any noticable difference? Smaller splits, cleaning chimney and cap etc.

 

[BlazekingKING]

Has any of the things you have done so far made any noticable difference? Smaller splits, cleaning chimney and cap etc.

I believe we have done something right we woke up this morning and still had a little bit of wood in the bottom of the stove and that never happens

 

[Woody Stover]

I believe we have done something right we woke up this morning and still had a little bit of wood in the bottom of the stove and that never happens

Just a theory, but if you got some dryer wood in on that load you may have had more heat in the box, the thermostat didn't open as much, and less air stretched your burn time.

 

[BlazekingKING]

Just a theory, but if you got some dryer wood in on that load you may have had more heat in the box, the thermostat didn't open as much, and less air stretched your burn time.

We have changed so many things at once I'm not sure what caused it but we did adjust the bypass door so it stays sealed, we adjusted our cat thermometer (so now we know it is truly in active, before when it was inactive it would go down way below the line) , we got the flame shield back on, we got what I hope is dryer wood, we cleaned the chimney/cap and we changed the 90 to 2-45s instead! All thanks to you guys!

 

[Woody Stover]

due to the way my house is set up the heat doesn't travel to the far rooms such as the kitchen and living room

Try a small fan on the floor, on low, blowing the denser cool air toward the stove room. The idea here is that hot air rises off the stove, cool air flows into the room to replace the rising warm air, and warm air is pushed out the top of the doorway to the next room. The small fan on the floor enhances this "convection loop." You can put the fan on the floor blowing in, just outside the door, or further away in another room or hallway, blowing toward the stove room. You'll have to experiment to see what works best. Also, how is the insulation in the attic, or are there more rooms up there?

 

[tarzan]

How many square feet are you heating.? A two story home can present its own unique challenges.

 

[BlazekingKING]

Try a small fan on the floor, on low, blowing the denser cool air toward the stove room. The idea here is that hot air rises off the stove, cool air flows into the room to replace the rising warm air, and warm air is pushed out the top of the doorway to the next room. The small fan on the floor enhances this "convection loop." You can put the fan on the floor blowing in, just outside the door, or further away in another room or hallway, blowing toward the stove room. You'll have to experiment to see what works best. Also, how is the insulation in the attic, or are there more rooms up there?

There are more rooms upstairs,which get quite warm

 

[BlazekingKING]

How many square feet are you heating.? A two story home can present its own unique challenges.

I'm not sure how many square feet but it is a old farm house it has a full basement which we have seeled off as best we can do that we aren't getting a draft from there and then the main level with has a family room, two small bedrooms, good sized kitchen/laundry, living room, and a bathroom. Then two bedrooms and a bathroom in the upstairs

 

[Woody Stover]

There are more rooms upstairs,which get quite warm

If the upstairs is used just for sleeping, you can put a curtain across the doorway to keep more heat downstairs (unless you already have a door there.)

 

[BlazekingKING]

If the upstairs is used just for sleeping, you can put a curtain across the doorway to keep more heat downstairs (unless you already have a door there.)

We have Curtians on both of the doorways upstairs.

 

[Ashful]

... and normal people wonder why we love these old farm houses.

 

[weatherguy]

Are you keeping your wood outside until it's time to burn? When my wood was so so I used to put a rack in the stove room and I would put the next load spread out near the stove to heat and help dry it out, not sure if it worked but my stove always burned well.

 

[jetsam]

Are you keeping your wood outside until it's time to burn? When my wood was so so I used to put a rack in the stove room and I would put the next load spread out near the stove to heat and help dry it out, not sure if it worked but my stove always burned well.

I am burning substandard wood this year too.

Here's what I've learned about that (mostly from this forum):

1) Use dry wood if you can, but if you can't, don't think that you can't burn wood.

2) You have lower flue temps than your peers. This means more creosote. Inspect and/or sweep your chimney every week to start; do it less often if it's clean every time you look. Inspect and sweep the cap every day if your cap has mesh on it. Consider taking the mesh off in burning season. Also, can you insulate your flue? Block off your chimney? Both will help.

3) Use your wetter wood to reload hot fires; save the drier wood to get a cool stove back in action. Try to reload hot as much as possible.

4) If you have a ceramic cat, respect its thermal boundaries; don't pop open the door, let air rush in at a 1000 degree differential temperature, throw on frozen wood and pop the cat back on to eat a load of steam that's 1100 degrees cooler than it is. Let it cool down before opening the door, and let bad wood warm up before you put the cat back in.

5) Don't expect the same performance that other people get with your stove. You're spending a lot of BTUs to evaporate water. The guy with dry wood is going to burn longer and hotter.

6) If your stove stops working right check the chimney cap first. A couple warm days and slow burns could be all it takes to plug it, and 5 minutes with a screwdriver and a wire brush is all it takes to fix it.

7) Keep the wood you have as dry as possible. Do all your piles have sheds or tarps? Can you put a few days of wood in the garage or basement? Can you keep the next load next to the stove?

 

[BlazekingKING]

Are you keeping your wood outside until it's time to burn? When my wood was so so I used to put a rack in the stove room and I would put the next load spread out near the stove to heat and help dry it out, not sure if it worked but my stove always burned well.

I have a wood rack that I keep next to my stove in the house, and with my Stove running more efficiently the wood will get much more time inside to dry even more. My wood is outside under a carport or it is in a shed.

 

[BlazekingKING]

I am burning substandard wood this year too.

Here's what I've learned about that (mostly from this forum):

1) Use dry wood if you can, but if you can't, don't think that you can't burn wood.

2) You have lower flue temps than your peers. This means more creosote. Inspect and/or sweep your chimney every week to start; do it less often if it's clean every time you look. Inspect and sweep the cap every day if your cap has mesh on it. Consider taking the mesh off in burning season. Also, can you insulate your flue? Block off your chimney? Both will help.

3) Use your wetter wood to reload hot fires; save the drier wood to get a cool stove back in action. Try to reload hot as much as possible.

4) If you have a ceramic cat, respect its thermal boundaries; don't pop open the door, let air rush in at a 1000 degree differential temperature, throw on frozen wood and pop the cat back on to eat a load of steam that's 1100 degrees cooler than it is. Let it cool down before opening the door, and let bad wood warm up before you put the cat back in.

5) Don't expect the same performance that other people get with your stove. You're spending a lot of BTUs to evaporate water. The guy with dry wood is going to burn longer and hotter.

6) If your stove stops working right check the chimney cap first. A couple warm days and slow burns could be all it takes to plug it, and 5 minutes with a screwdriver and a wire brush is all it takes to fix it.

7) Keep the wood you have as dry as possible. Do all your piles have sheds or tarps? Can you put a few days of wood in the garage or basement? Can you keep the next load next to the stove?

I Have a decent sized wood rack that I stack full next to my stove and I try to refill it everyday to keep my wood drying even more... I will definitely keep am eye on the rain cap and clean my chimney often as well for now. All my piles of wood outside have a shed or are in the carport right before it comes inside. I will look into insulated my chimney as well. I got my fire full last night and did all the steps of letting it run at 3for 30minutes and then turned it down to a 2 and went to bed woke up this morning with a semi warm house and wood in the stove still granted it is not getting really cold right now, but we have never seen our stove perform like this

 

[BlazekingKING]

I Have a decent sized wood rack that I stack full next to my stove and I try to refill it everyday to keep my wood drying even more... I will definitely keep am eye on the rain cap and clean my chimney often as well for now. All my piles of wood outside have a shed or are in the carport right before it comes inside. I will look into insulated my chimney as well. I got my fire full last night and did all the steps of letting it run at 3for 30minutes and then turned it down to a 2 and went to bed woke up this morning with a semi warm house and wood in the stove still granted it is not getting really cold right now, but we have never seen our stove perform like this

And we have a metal cat

 

[Woody Stover]

woke up this morning with a semi warm house and wood in the stove still granted it is not getting really cold right now, but we have never seen our stove perform like this

I don't guess you'll get a chance to check that bypass gasket until it warms up and you can let the stove go out? Is it still making that metal-on-metal sound when you close it?

 

[BlazekingKING]

I don't guess you'll get a chance to check that bypass gasket until it warms up and you can let the stove go out? Is it still making that metal-on-metal sound when you close it?

We let the stove go out the other day and we checked it and it was not sealing tight at all and we adjusted the door and it doesn't make that metal on metal sound anymore we may still need to get that gasket replaced but it was definitely not a good seal at all.

 

[Highbeam]

We let the stove go out the other day and we checked it and it was not sealing tight at all and we adjusted the door and it doesn't make that metal on metal sound anymore we may still need to get that gasket replaced but it was definitely not a good seal at all.

When you just flop the bypass over you shouldn't hear a metal sound, more of a thump, but when you push the bypass handle all the way past the cam over point and it locks in place you can sometimes hear a more metallic sound. Like a click. Don't worry about the sound. Worry more about the quality of the seal.