How much creosote on BK princess is too much?

[leddyleds]

Howdy all, we’ve been burning our new BK Princess about 3 months now and we sweep our 24’ straight, 6” chimney every month. We burn white spruce and birch that’s been seasoning 6+ months (the birch up to 2yrs seasoned). When I sweep chimney I get maybe 1-2 cups of creosote, however the firebox is just caked in the stuff. I remove as much as I can but a lot of it is behind panels that I can’t remove (see photos). I take a razor to the glass door monthly and usually can get tons off the door too.

Question is how much buildup in the firebox is too much? I assume this is an outcome of using a catalytic converter, but am I doing something wrong to have this much buildup? Wood still to moist? Sorry I don’t have a moisture meter, but wood is stored in a dry shed with good airflow and I do drop and split wood at least 1yr before I’ll start burning it.

Thanks in advance to any advice!

 

[stoveliker]

This is what happens when you burn low all the time.

Burn high for an hour or two every now and then. It'll burn stuff off.

I do have a 1.25" dua brush on a long flexible metal wire that I use to behind the shields.

 

[kennyp2339]

I'll do a hot burn every other week to help bake off the inside of the stove box, it may not get it all at the first go, but if you do a few maintenance hot burn cycles it will clean things up a bit.

 

[Highbeam]

Don’t be surprised if it takes much more than a couple of hours to dry out those deposits so that they flake off. Softwoods burned slowly can really put some thick gooey junk in the firebox.

 

[Tron]

I have the same "issue", I only burn softwoods on "low". No big deal, really, since I can see no negative effect. I clean it off on the annual fall cleaning with a kind of bottle brush. Can't get all of it, of course, but again, I don't think it's harmful.

 

[Murray01]

We have a BK that was only used in the summer and shoulder season for the last 15 years with little to no maintenance. We are surrounded by Jack Pine so that’s our fuel. We had big time build up, probably worse than yours. Running the stove as hot as you can has helped immensely with reducing buildup in the firebox. We went from not seeing any flame thru the door window to having 70% of the window clear and the 30% that’s not clear. Around the sides of the window is a thin film as opposed to the big flakey stuff that used to accumulate on the glass. This is our first winter here and the past month we’ve had a couple of cold snaps, nighttime lows -25C, daytime highs -17C, firebox has never been cleaner finally being able to run the stove at “normal” or hotter. I see why some BK owners don’t run their stoves until it’s cold, relying on alternative heat sources during the shoulder season.

 

[kborndale]

You can run a bk low just make sure to have a hot fire a few times a week to clean it up. There ability to run low and slow is really the only reason to pay the premium amount of money for one. If you plan to run on high all the time you kinda wasted your money on a BK.

 

[Warm Floor]

Like many 1st year BK owners, I remember that 1st year the inside getting quite gunked up, mainly because the wood I used was not fully seasoned. Once I got into the habit of creating my wood stored well in advance and having only well-seasoned wood to work with, I noticed a reduction in the gunk. It still happens with even seasoned wood, but not to the levels I was experiencing that 1st year. Letting the box get warmed up fully when starting cold fires also gets things off to a better start, gunkwise that is.