Blaze king problems. Short burns

[jetsam]

For a given heat output (say 20,000btu/hr) running the fans will be more efficient that running without. You'll have less heat wasted up the flue and behind the stove with the fans running.
BUT!, with the fans running you must run the thermostat at a lower setting for the same specific heat output. If you leave the stat setting the same, and turn on the fans you will get more heat, and maybe more efficiency, but you'll chew through your load at a much faster rate.

This doesn't just scale linearly across all settings.

As the fan increases, at some point the heat loss to the cat/firebox becomes so much that the cat stops working, and you take a very large performance hit from that point onward.

How much is too much? Whatever makes the cat go inactive is too much. You'll get a feel for it. With my setup, medium fan requires high thermostat settings if it's going to run unattended for any length of time. At medium fan, I'm probably not looking at anything above a 4-5 hour burn. 8-10 is low fan territory, and 11-24 is no fan territory. High fan is only used when I'm home and trying to make up for lost ground.

 

[Jesse83]

Just wanted to thank you guys for your tips. Last night was the first night I got a 12 hr maybe even longer burn. What I did was loaded it up and waited about 1 min before activating the cat. The early activating seamed to make a huge difference. I think my thermostat is also messed up because running my fan on low-medium and thermostat on the lowest setting will give me the longest burn time. If the fan is off the stove gets too hot and burns the wood too fast.
But I'm happy. Loaded it all the way up in the morning and once more before bed.

 

[Rickb]

You might want to contact Blaze king. They can walk you though testing some things and should be able to help you.

 

[lsucet]

Just wanted to thank you guys for your tips. Last night was the first night I got a 12 hr maybe even longer burn. What I did was loaded it up and waited about 1 min before activating the cat. The early activating seamed to make a huge difference. I think my thermostat is also messed up because running my fan on low-medium and thermostat on the lowest setting will give me the longest burn time. If the fan is off the stove gets too hot and burns the wood too fast.
But I'm happy. Loaded it all the way up in the morning and once more before bed.

Good to hear that. You will have to experiment what work for you according your setup. What work for you maybe don't work for me on a different location and setup regardless if we have something in common, SAME STOVE.
Everything has its learning curve. Give you some time. Congratulations with your achievement.

 

[lsucet]

You might want to contact Blaze king. They can walk you though testing some things and should be able to help you.

That's a good recommendation cause something still not right with his statement but at least he's getting there.

 

[aaronk25]

Yep every install is different, the princess I’m on a 10 hour burn now with t-stat at 3pm position and fans on high. Still 1/3 left in back of box but I know the wood is about to crumble so I’d say this load would go about 12-14 hours effectively. Gonna burn down some coals so I threw in a six pack of eco blocks (wood sawdust blocks) $2.39 for 20lbs. Kinda lazy tonight so tossed it in with the light plastic bundle film which holds in the saw dust mess, but left the cat in bypass mode for a couple mins to make sure to not contaminate the cat during the initial fire blaze.

It will run for another 10 hours at same settings and hardly any coals at all in the am.


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[Rickb]

Yep every install is different, the princess I’m on a 10 hour burn now with t-stat at 3pm position and fans on high. Still 1/3 left in back of box but I know the wood is about to crumble so I’d say this load would go about 12-14 hours effectively. Gonna burn down some coals so I threw in a six pack of eco blocks (wood sawdust blocks) $2.39 for 20lbs. Kinda lazy tonight so tossed it in with the light plastic bundle film which holds in the saw dust mess, but left the cat in bypass mode for a couple mins to make sure to not contaminate the cat during the initial fire blaze.

It will run for another 10 hours at same settings and hardly any coals at all in the am.


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I wouldn't do this even with the cat in bypass......... I would not think plastic smoke is good for the combustor.

 

[Tar12]

I wouldn't do this even with the cat in bypass......... I would not think plastic smoke is good for the combustor.

I totally agree with you...plastic is not good in any wood burner let alone a cat stove..

 

[Tar12]

Just wanted to thank you guys for your tips. Last night was the first night I got a 12 hr maybe even longer burn. What I did was loaded it up and waited about 1 min before activating the cat. The early activating seamed to make a huge difference. I think my thermostat is also messed up because running my fan on low-medium and thermostat on the lowest setting will give me the longest burn time. If the fan is off the stove gets too hot and burns the wood too fast.
But I'm happy. Loaded it all the way up in the morning and once more before bed.

I am glad you are getting longer burn times....you are getting closer BUT your longest burn times should come with no fan....what do you mean by your stove gets to hot with out fans? What numbers are you talking about that makes the stove to hot? Your stove should be hot once the cat is engaged and your cat temp should rise and plane out and cruise for the duration of the burn cycle THIS is what gives the longest burn times...at what cat temp are you engaging the bypass? At what point do you turn on your fans?

 

[jetsam]

I think my thermostat is also messed up because running my fan on low-medium and thermostat on the lowest setting will give me the longest burn time. If the fan is off the stove gets too hot and burns the wood too fast.

The thermostat opens and closes the intake air flapper based on firebox temperature. Maybe your flapper chain is stuck, or there's a chunk of something in there that stops it from closing- or maybe the thermostat is not shutting down correctly. None of this really lines up with your original post which said the stove had low heat output, though.

It's also possible that you have an anti-Arrhenius combustion chamber- I expect there's a lot of physicists and engineers who would give anything to come have a look at your stove in this case.

I would start by pulling the right side cover and looking to see if the flapper closes when you turn the thermostat down all the way. (No idea if this voids warranties or whatever, so maybe call BK tech support if you want to be cautious about that.)

 

[shoot-straight]

With these temps I've been running my ashford at 3:30 with oak, getting 6 hrs- fans on high. If I put the fans on my timer, with hour on, hour off, it goes to 10hrs. Need warmer temps to do that though.

 

[aaronk25]

I totally agree with you...plastic is not good in any wood burner let alone a cat stove..

A super thin layer of stretch film, so thin it almost disengrates when picking the bundle up? Oh come on get out of here... that’s what you got out of my post?

We’re not burning plastic block you know....




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[Highbeam]

I even worry about the spray paint dots on my wood I use to mark the 16” cuts with the mingo marker! No trash goes in the bk.

I burn the occasional bit of plastic and other trash in the firepit outside or the nc30.

The cat is so important, magical, and amazing that I want to protect it.

 

[Tar12]

A super thin layer of stretch film, so thin it almost disengrates when picking the bundle up? Oh come on get out of here... that’s what you got out of my post?

We’re not burning plastic block you know....




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Yep....thats what I picked up on...everything I have read has warned about burning anything but wood in a cat stove...my post was just meant as a heads up...do as you wish..I personally will not burn anything that has the potential to shorten the cats life.

 

[twd000]

That makes sense. I guess my thinking is that for an interior masonry chimney, most of any heat into the masonry gets re-radiated back into the house eventually. Of course, some is lost to the outside, but I don't know how to quantify how much.

I'll try running with the fans on and a lower tstat setting this weekend through the cold snap and see how I make out.

So I ran my Princess Insert with fans on low all weekend. Hard to say definitively whether I got more net BTUs into the house, but I did notice that the stove-top temperature seems to peak-and-valley more than it did without the fans. I attribute this to burning the load from front-to-back, which I assume is due to the cooler firebox. It seems to off-gas the wood near the front first, which gets the stovetop above 550 degF and really dumps heat into the room. About halfway through the burn cycle, I peek into the firebox and see coals in the rear of the box, and ashes near the front. I haven't touched the thermostat. The heat output fels much lower for the second half of the burn cycle, as it just has coals near the rear of the box to provide BTUs. The temperature output seemed much "flatter" when I was burning without the fans on, and the wood>coal>ash transition seemed to occur uniformly throughout the firebox, rather than processing from front to back as it does with the fans on and a cooler firebox.