Thinking of switching to blaze king wood stove

[hilly]

Is the basement insulated?

 

[kennyp2339]

You may want to buy some cheap single wall 7" pipe (2) 3ft sections and experiment with extending your flue height to see if draft improves, the 7" class a at the existing height might be the cause of the issue with not getting the stove hot enough, those new PE's are work horses, pretty easy breathers.
Another test you can do in the meantime is get your fire situated, dial your air down to your normal setting then open the door, see if you get any smoke roll back into your house, that could be indicative to sluggish draft.

 

[Ashful]

Concrete walls and floors can soak up damn near every last Btu of energy radiated from your stove. If that stove has a very high convective factor, such as iron-clad steel stoves with a convective jacket, then it's going to behave much better in a basement. But if it's just brick on a single wall steel or iron jacket, you're probably just experiencing the enormous heat sink we call "earth".

So, as @hilly said, "is the basement insulated"?

 

[BrianVA]

I will also add that if you're testing moisture content in the cold, add 4-5% to your result, maybe more. Most moisture meters are calibrated at 70 deg F. Based on my own quasi-scientific testing , I've determined that I generally need to add about 4% to the measured result when testing in the cold. If I'm of the mindset to get a truly accurate result, I bring one of the bigger splits inside for 24 hours, then take it out and immediately split and test.

 

[Coastalboat]

My basement is insulated and I store my wood in my basement during the winter so it’s always at room temperature.

It seams like the heat is going straight up the chimney to me and I was wondering myself if the 7” is giving me some issue but it’s an expensive test and work to replace the chimney on a gamble. This morning when I reloaded with wood and kept the draft open till I was around 500 I could smell the paint burning on my inside pipes

How would you go about measuring the draft?

 

[stoveliker]

Dwyer Mark 2

 

[stoveliker]

Concrete walls and floors can soak up damn near every last Btu of energy radiated from your stove. If that stove has a very high convective factor, such as iron-clad steel stoves with a convective jacket, then it's going to behave much better in a basement. But if it's just brick on a single wall steel or iron jacket, you're probably just experiencing the enormous heat sink we call "earth".

So, as @hilly said, "is the basement insulated"?

Yes, correct and fair. But a previous stove here worked well. ( Though I'm not sure how the heat outputs compare.)

 

[Coastalboat]

So I filled the stove this evening and got the temps up to 600 and shut the stove down completely and just cracked it a tiny bit and now 3 hrs later there’s very little heat out put but open the door of the stove a the heat just strikes you in the face, hard to put your hand near it. It’s like the heat is being stripped of the stove

 

[stoveliker]

Despite the other remarks, if your moisture content is good, I cycle back to my early remark: your symptoms are consistent with too much draft, pulling most heat up the chimney.

I'd get a draft gauge (see above) and a flue probe. You can use the latter in the hole of the former. (I forgot if you already have a damper; the draft gauge should be below the damper, and the flue probe 18" above the stove (and above the damper). So maybe you end up with an extra hole - fill it with a stainless screw when done. So consider a hole on the backside so you won't see the screw.

 

[Coastalboat]

Where can I get a draft gauge or how can I go about measuring the draft?

 

[Ashful]

Where can I get a draft gauge or how can I go about measuring the draft?

Magnehelic, pick 'em up used on ebay. Or any other gauge with graduations that'll let you see 0.01" WC increments. The magnehelic I use has a 0.25" WC full range, perfectly fine for seeing .05" nominal target.

 

[Coastalboat]

Would one of these serve the same purpose?

 

[Ashful]

Yes, correct and fair. But a previous stove here worked well. ( Though I'm not sure how the heat outputs compare.)

You sure you're not mixing up threads stoveliker?

Would one of these serve the same purpose?

View attachment 291263

Too coarse, 2 psi is 55" WC. So even if it has 0.3% full range accuracy, that's still ±0.17" EOM. You're looking for something that can read .01" WC increments, or thereabouts.

This is the one I use, but there may be cheaper options:

Amazon product ASIN B00NI4JUMY
For the record, I agree this is always a good thing to check, but I'm not convinced it's the only problem. Heating a whole house from a basement is a lot to ask from any stove. Dialing in your draft will surely help, but with a 90° tee into 19 feet of pipe, I doubt your draft is over the moon. I suspect the long-term cure will be another larger stove, or better placement of the stove within the house, but I'd be very happy to be wrong on this.

 

[stoveliker]

You sure you're not mixing up threads stoveliker?

You are correct. My bad and my apologies.