I’d rather not spend that money either but since it saves me 250$ (market value) of wood every year it’s worth the investment.
Maybe for some. bholler reports that for his installation there has not been a great deal of wood saved. He's probably running the stove harder though. I would be too for our house.
Maybe for some? Ha! You have one data point from a guy who arguably never wanted it to work! Maybe time for a poll? Full time burners that have actually made the switch for more than a year?
That's where you save on wood, your climate is perfect for the BK so it's no surprise you love it. Dont get me wrong I wish I still had mine during shoulder season but the bulk of our heating season here is all out most of the time.
Don't forget that one of the spiffs of being boss of the board is that begreen gets free firewood for life..he's not worried about saving a stick here and there.
Seriously though, that's where the savings come in for Highbeam and other low-burners: , If you've let your stove burn way down because you don't want to cook yourself out, you have to burn up some wood to get back up to clean-burn stove temp. Especially if you had a big non-cat like Highbeam did (the 30NC, not the Heritage.) I just think he hadn't found a good, well-sized non-cat for his situation, or he might have been able to make it work better.
I don't think bholler has an agenda, I think he was just reporting what he observed in comparing stoves; The Princess ate up as much wood but didn't put out quite as much heat as fast, when trying to recover room temp after being gone all day. And he did say several times that the BK would undoubtedly work better for him once he tightens up his envelope more..
Actually, I could probably burn a non-cat better here in shoulder season than a lot of folks could at their place. I have an inch of thermal mass on the walls, and if I had to run a non-cat a little hotter and longer for efficiency before letting it burn down, I'd think some of that heat would be stored in the thermal mass, to be released later...a buffer effect to offset the heat swings of the non-cat.
Well the only reason I save wood with my BK is because it is a second stove,
the F600 does the bulk of the heating with the Ashford and the oil furnace
filling in the rest.
I have often tried the Ashford out as the main heat producer and it ate a load of wood
as fast as the F600, with what seemed like less heat output.
Yeah, I think you have to run the BKs low for them to work their best. It just seems intuitively that if you try to burn them high and get big heat into the room, heat can't get through the extra internal shielding as fast as it can with other stove designs. I've tossed that theory out there a few times, but nobody's really said much..
Had a chance to go have a look. I am not seeing any new stuff dripping now that the new cat is in place. In fact the chimney cap has actually become much cleaner than it was before, although I'm not sure how to explain it.
I am seeing a lot of other differences in burning too.
First, the glass is getting dirty again. We had actually noticed this burning season that the glass was always staying pretty clean. I assume this is because the wood only needs to smoulder now to keep the right temps.
Second, in the morning there is a lot of wood left in the stove. Before I had only embers, even on a full load.
No smoke coming out of the stack.
Your cap may have just "dried out" now that less creo is making it up there, and flue temp is probably a bit higher.
I replaced the cat several days ago, and noticed much the same..more wood left due to lower air settings, more heat in the house from the load due to the cat burning what's available more completely.
I don't think I was getting smoke during the burn, but I kept the air open more in an effort to keep the cat burning longer. I didn't look at the stack much, later in the burn, but I think I would have smelled smoke, if there was a lot; The wind blows chimney exhaust to where I enter and exit the house, quite often.
