Blaze King Siricco 20

[jimehrhard]

This is my first experience with a cat stove. I have burned non-cats since 1980. I am thoroughly impressed with this stove. I'm still learning about how to best operate a cat stove but here are a few thoughts after about a month of burning. 1) This stove gets really long burns! I have been getting 8-12 hours easily without even packing the firebox (Even got on 16 hour burn without a fully loaded box). 2) And I'm not needing to restart fires from scratch. I just throw add the normal logs with some kindling and the fire starts up very easily. 3) Low ash and even heat. We have been burning continuously for almost a month with very little ash and our heat pump has not come on even once. I expected long burns based on the literature but the even heat has been the feature that we have all loved the most. With my non-cats, we would have really hot temps that would die down to a little chilly before a reload. With the Blaze King, the temp in the house varies very little. For example, when we go to bed at night, the temp is about 75 near the stove and 72 farthest way. At 7 am in the morning, it's still 75 near the stove and 72/71 farthest away. And the whole house feels much more comfortable with the consistent temps rather than the rising and falling that our other stoves gave us.

I still have a lot to learn about cat stove, but it seems like the cat is well worth the extra price.

 

[Tron]

I still have a lot to learn about cat stove, but it seems like the cat is well worth the extra price.

It's not only the cat, but the combination of cat and thermostat that achieves this.
But yes, that even heat output is why I love mine, too.

In our old home we had a built-in brick stove that also achieved that by pure mass: the whole thing weighed around five tons.
But it required very good planning: you built a fire, ran it wide open (no other option, really), the fire died down two hours later and about two hours after that you could feel it heating. And it continued to do so through the whole day.
Of course, if you miscalculated, you very easily baked yourself out of the house without any way to stop it, except for opening windows.

 

[jimehrhard]

I had a friend in CT that had a massive "Russian fireplace" under his house that heated the house's concrete mass. It was great - if the weather didn't change. It took about a day to warm up the concrete and a couple of days to get it cooled back down! Changes in weather were a disaster.

 

[Highbeam]

I agree that if you had no cat stoves and could keep a noncat stove with thermal mass like a soapstone stove going that the extra thermal mass is better than no thermal mass but I owned a hearthstone noncat and that thing was slow slow slow to heat up if it got cold and only a bit slower to cool down than a steel stove. The superior combustion system of a cat stove that just runs at a steady output to match what your house looses is far superior. Keeping a house warm is better than trying to play catch up.

 

[Tron]

Changes in weather were a disaster.

Yes, we ran that stove by the weather forecast for the next day: 50 degrees? No stove. Around freezing? One load a day. Below freezing, two loads a day.
Plus, that stove was great to proof pizza dough on ;-)

 

[Murray01]

In our old place I installed a Regency R3 their mid size in the mid 90. A milk crate of wood would last about 6 hours, fast forward to today, different house with a BK Princess circa 1999 and that same milk crate of wood heats a home twice as large for 3X longer. With the Regency there might be enough coals to relight in the morning, with the BK I have to wait till more wood burns down before a reload. Both stove were fed pine. I was sceptical of this catalytic technology at first, now I’m a believer and wouldn’t consider anything else

 

[Tron]

So you switched houses, but the milk crate remained?
;-)

 

[Murray01]

So you switched houses, but the milk crate remained?
;-)

The milk crates moved with us. They are pre metric so LPs fit in them perfectly. When Canada went to metric the metric milk crates are smaller and LP wouldn’t fit. I guess I kept them for sentimental reasons, the LPs are long gone but the milk crates stayed. I can get 35-40lbs of Jack Pine per milk crate, cold weather coming I can add 3-4 splits on top and the Princess will swallow it all. Perfect measurement device.

 

[Tron]

Yes, I figured. I do the same with plastic garden tubs.
Hold pretty much one stove load:

 

[BC_Josh]

I still have a lot to learn about cat stove, but it seems like the cat is well worth the extra price.

I have the same stove as you, and I do really love the dang thang! It is pretty amazing technology. I totally agree on the value of the extra cost for this cat stove VS a non-cat stove. Just for comfort alone and ease of operation.

 

[jimehrhard]

I have the same stove as you, and I do really love the dang thang! It is pretty amazing technology. I totally agree on the value of the extra cost for this cat stove VS a non-cat stove. Just for comfort alone and ease of operation.

Yes, I've been burning wood since the late 70s and this is really the best stove I've had so far. It really is easier to operate and burns much longer than anything else.