It's a great stove and I would buy it all over again.
It shines in the shoulders and it heats great in the deep cold.
We are already finding that it shines in the shoulders. Tonight really isn't cool enough in the house to light the stove- but that has everything to do with the fact that we lit the stove last night. Even though the wood was down to embers today, the stove radiated and kept the house warm enough all day long. It's still 72'F in here, hardly cold enough to light a wood stove.
I was just trying to say go by how charred the wood is from a cold start rather then what the cat probe says as when to turn the air down for cruise. I close the by-pass way sooner then half to help heat the cat up faster.
Ahh- I see now! The first couple of times I used the stove, I did wait until the thermometer temp hit high noon in the active cat setting before I engaged the cat- out of an abundance of caution about putting out the fire. That's Old School Wood Stove talking. I remember people reciting incantations and performing strange ritual dances trying to get and keep their old wood stoves started from cold. In fact, that was one reason why everybody's house was 100'F with windows opened and everything smelled like smoke and creosote during the Arab Oil Embargo in the 1970s. No matter if it's 32'F outside, or 12'F outside, or 52'F outside, NEVER EVER LET THE WOOD STOVE GO COMPLETELY COLD. BURN IT ON LOW FOR SIX MONTHS IF NECESSARY BUT NEVER LET IT GO COMPLETELY OUT BECAUSE YOU WILL HAVE TO MAKE A SACRIFICE AND SELL YOUR SOUL TO GET IT RE-LIT. So I waited until that cat was good and ready before I closed the bypass. Of course by this time the heat was rolling off of the stove. A slower start definitely works for me with this stove.
It's amazing how easily this stove lights with dry wood. If closing the bypass heats the cat up faster, causing it to engage faster, I'm all for that. I love it that the wood we purchased in the spring is already so dry. The trees were felled between one and three years ago, and the logs were split immediately before delivery. I questioned the guy from whom we bought this wood to death about the dryness of the wood. He swore to me it would be ready in October and he was telling the truth! On the other hand, this wood is
dry and it burns up quickly. Getting the cat engaged early will help us conserve fuel and wring the most btu's out of it.
The probe is affected by the stove top temp not that it matters but it is. When in a cruise turn the fans on and watch it drop.
We opted not to have fans on the stove. It's in an open area of the house and we don't really have to push the heat anywhere. If you go back in this thread you can see pictures of the stove with the HVAC return above it. (I can't remember who- it may have even been you!- commented on that.) Unlike our experience with our pellet stove in town, the HVAC return and fan really do help move the heat through the house. At least it seems to now. It will be interesting to see if I feel that way when temps are well below freezing outside and the heat is being moved through ductwork in the unheated portions of our house. But for right now that's working well. Anyway, we can't engage the convection fans to do that experiment because we don't have them- but I do understand what you are saying.
After the wood is half gone there really is no gas left for the cat to burn so the reading of the probe is the stove top at that point..that's all.
That makes sense.
Some BK owners don't want to hear that stuff. Like how the t-stat is really lazy and really is more a manual regulator of the intake air then it is a t-stat..but with experience with where to set it ..it works some.
I guess I always equated the thermostat (you are talking about the heat control knob on the back of the stove, right?) as a damper, and I've always understood the damper on any wood burning appliance as being not only an air control, but a heat control as well. More air = hotter fire. I do appreciate the design of the thermostat control though, and I like it that the "normal" range is marked. The visual helps me.
The outside temp seems to regulate the burn good enough anyways.
I don't understand this- please explain. Does it have to do with cold dense air? We don't have an outside air kit hooked to this stove. We have one on the pellet stove and I was adamant about having one on the Blaze King as well to increase efficiency. The stove shop owner talked me out of it, saying that we wouldn't need it. So far he's right (but I still wonder if we'll notice the air coming through the cracks in this new construction house when it's colder outside.) Do you have an outside air kit on your BK?
I have had burns of 40 hours with enough coals to light off a new load in the shoulders .
I could see that but I think our wood is too dry or I'm not turning the t-stat down far enough to get 40 hours out of this stove (yet.)
In the deep cold and wind I always get at least 12 hours without much of a temp drop in my 2500sq.ft. two story hose that is reasonably tight and insulated.
I am so looking forward to this. It gets gawd-awful cold here in the winter, with wind right off of the water. All indicators are that we are going to have another remarkable winter in this area. I could see myself coming here on winter weekends just to curl up by the wood stove. The pellet stove is nice but nothing, nothing compares to the bone warming heat of a wood stove!
You have a King, right? We have a Princess to heat about 2000 sq. ft. I'll bet our winters, even though they can be harsh, are probably not as deep, as long or as cold as yours. The wind does get up to 60 mph right off of the water here in the winter though. Last year it froze the condenser in our gas furnace up solid where the drain exited the crawl space, and took the entire heating system off line. Thank God we arrived here in time to get it unfrozen and back online before we lost pipes. We could have used a wood stove that night for sure. It was 32'F to 33'F (depending on which thermometer one consulted) and the floors, walls and furniture had lost all of their stored heat. It took a full 24 hours for the furnace to raise the house temp to 65'F and honestly, I'm surprised we reached 65'F in 24 hours as cold as everything in the house was. We burned up a lot of expensive propane that weekend. =/ =/
It's a great heater that holds a lot of wood! <:3~
I kinda want to by another thermostat assembly and eliminate the coil. Make it all solid, just to see how much difference it makes.
