BK King Install

sam81 said:

Hi Hack, I'm kind of in the same boat as you are, either I go with the princess or with the king on a 6inch chimney 27 feet tall basement install...Can you tell us how do the king and princess compare in your setup. How hard are you pushing the king to meet your needs? What burn times are you getting with the king compared to what you were getting with the princess to meet your needs?? I need to choose a new "set it and forget it" stove for my basement install because right now I have the "Ultimte JA roby" stove...while it does heat, it is not very efficient and going to the basement to adjust the air is getting kinda old for me... The ja roby ultimate is like 4cf....and I pushed it hard and had no problems whatsoever...therefore,I'm guessing I wont have any issue with the king 4.3 cf...(well the only issue being code compliance...) Let me know, thanks.

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I would go with the King all day every day. The difference in my situation was night and day.

My basement install required me to run the Princess with active flames (2 setting) to produce the heat we needed. Even then it wasn't as much heat as we'd like but didn't want to run the stove too hard. By doing this I wasn't getting 12 hrs of heat per load with pine. I would load the stove at 8am, wife would throw some splits on early evening and I would load it again around 10 - 11pm. By that time it would still be plenty of coals but the stove would be cooled down to around 250. Not enough heat considering my basement install and inadequate insulation.

Now with the King, we have more usable heat than we need and still have the ability of turning it down to very low settings. I don't have to push the king nearly as hard to get the heat we want. I'm able to set the thermostat and come back 12 hrs later with the stove still cruising away with wood still in the box.

I am now ahead of the power curve in BTU's when before I was behind and always playing catch up.

I must admit that I have to cover 1/3 the door opening during reload with a metal cover I made to prevent spillage. Other than that, performance is great.

I have 3 feet of single wall connecting to 18' of 6" class A (straight up).

And I live in a cold climate.

sam81 said:

Hack, thanks for the info. In the end, what are you going to do, you going to install that 8" (for code compliance) or return it? (knowing that IF something ever happened, you wouldn't be covered and all...)

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I haven't made up my mind yet. I initially went with the Princess and 6" chimney last December because I didn't have the clearances to install the 8" chimney. A month or so ago I decided to tear out the old masonry chimney that was located directly behind my Princess install. The chimney was in disrepair with missing flue tiles and wasn't large enough for a 8" liner. With it torn out, the existing chase is now big enough for the 8" chimney.

This isn't my dream home and I'd like to move out this summer and use this as a rental property. In that scenario I would rather leave the 6" up because I will be taking the king with me

Long story short, if this was my dream home and I couldn't figure out how to install an 8" chimney, I would still run the King. If I could install the 8", I would.

Having had both stoves, I see no reason other than code to get the Princess over the King. You can always turn it down or load it with less wood..

Every install is different and I'd hate for someone to buy the king and have it not work with their setup. I'm just relaying my experiences so far. It has been relatively cold since I've been running this stove so draft has benefited. Ask me during shoulder season if it's still working!

BrowningBAR said:

Interesting. I envisioned it being horizontal and not vertical.

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I'm sure there are better designs/solutions. If I keep the 6" i'll fab up a nicer piece. This was an experiment I threw together late one night

Dieselhead said:

any word out there how the Kings run on a 7" double wall?

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How tall? Any 90's? Any current draft issues? I'm guessing you'd be in a similar situation as I am. The stove would probably perform fine but you'd need to overcome smoke spillage issues during reload.