2014-2015 Blaze King Performance thread (Everything BK)

Chimney is about 15 feet i think but never actually measured, its centered right in the middle of the house so no exterior to wick heat away, 6 inch insulated flex, block off plate. Ranch with about 1,550 SF upstairs and a fully finished basement. All the furnace air return vents are in the stove room or hall right next to it. I leave the blower on the furnace on but the burners shut off, and have all the upstairs air vents blocked off with the down stairs vents wide open. It hasn't been super cold yet, down in the teens once but it was easily able to keep the house (including basement) in the 70's, and would go about 8 hour reloads with sub par wood from last year. Won't know for sure how its going to do till it gets down to single digits for a few days straight and i start burning the good hard wood. Its in the 30's here now and I am doing two loads a day without issue though. Keeping 72-77 in the stove room.

Thanks Ninja. Looks like it would work for me , if I can ever convince my wife that we need one. I have a one story ranch, about 1200 sq ft. Inside chimney. My current insert heats our house just fine, but I would love to get overnight burns. Well I can dream.

I wonder if they could actually make the king as a insert with a 6 inch pipe?

Im loving my stove, my area lost power for no reason the other day for about 10 hrs and i was so happy my king was kicking.!

Highbeam said:

One of my best wood heating decisions ever was to demolish a masonry chimney and go freestander. It had a Lopi freedom insert and a liner too. Didn't cost much to demo, the new class A pipe was more expensive.

Click to expand...

Do you have before and after pictures? I have a dual chimney. The princess is upstairs and the pellet insert is downstairs. If it gets down into the single digits the pellet stove goes on to supplement. I would love to see how to remove the chimney and put a free stander in...

Poindexter said:

My understanding of chimney sweepings is shiny black is the least desirable stuff, and sheets of shiny black is the worst way to find it.

I bet there is a guide on this site already somewhere, perhaps begreen or grisu has a link to it in their favorites folder.

Click to expand...

Found it. https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/creosote_from_wood_burning_causes_and_solutions

claybe said:

Do you have before and after pictures? I have a dual chimney. The princess is upstairs and the pellet insert is downstairs. If it gets down into the single digits the pellet stove goes on to supplement. I would love to see how to remove the chimney and put a free stander in...

Click to expand...

Not really, you just make all the brick disappear right down to below the floor. Frame and sheet over the old fireplace face hole. Patch the roof. Replace the subfloor and then finish. The masonry does not support the building, there are headers. It's like removing a door.

Highbeam said:

Not really, you just make all the brick disappear right down to below the floor. Frame and sheet over the old fireplace face hole. Patch the roof. Replace the subfloor and then finish. The masonry does not support the building, there are headers. It's like removing a door.

Click to expand...

Did you just put the pipe straight out the roof and ignored the chimney? Or did you do 2 90s to the old chimney hole?

claybe said:

Did you just put the pipe straight out the roof and ignored the chimney? Or did you do 2 90s to the old chimney hole?

Click to expand...

He removed the brick chimney, he has a Class A chimney straight up.

I was at the stove shop today.. I'm pretty sure they are still cleaning the drool off the King free standers..

I never really looked close at them when I was getting my insert just because I was not looking at the free standing stoves at all at the time.

NinjaTech said:

I was at the stove shop today.. I'm pretty sure they are still cleaning the drool off the King free standers..

I never really looked close at them when I was getting my insert just because I was not looking at the free standing stoves at all at the time.

Click to expand...

The king is in fact very bad ass! It's 28 deg outside I have 1000sq ft down and 1800 up. Got my gas furnace set at 66 it's 80 in stove room and 76 upstairs, this is at 23 hours on a load I last looked at 22 hours ago. Plenty a coals for restart. Pretty sweet!

Just a quick update, Since I've installed the princess last week, I have been using splits between 2 x 4" thick buy 16 -18" long, it was perfect for my old stove but to small in diameter for this one,length is fine though for n s loading. I have larger splits of oak for later in the season so I don't mind burning the smaller stuff as of now, anyway I did have some large 4x6" & 5x6" by 16 -18" long of ash laying in the garage wood rack, I did a full load last night and man oh man, I will be splitting everything large from no one, the stove loved it and so did I. Just another happy customer.

claybe said:

Did you just put the pipe straight out the roof and ignored the chimney? Or did you do 2 90s to the old chimney hole?

Click to expand...

No, I completely removed every bit of masonry fireplace/chimney from above the foundation. The only way you would know there ever was a chimney there is by looking at the roof framing carefully or if you crawled under the house in the crawlspace. The new class A pipe exits the roof a couple of feet away from the previous brick chimney.

kennyp2339 said:

Just a quick update, Since I've installed the princess last week, I have been using splits between 2 x 4" thick buy 16 -18" long, it was perfect for my old stove but to small in diameter for this one,length is fine though for n s loading. I have larger splits of oak for later in the season so I don't mind burning the smaller stuff as of now, anyway I did have some large 4x6" & 5x6" by 16 -18" long of ash laying in the garage wood rack, I did a full load last night and man oh man, I will be splitting everything large from no one, the stove loved it and so did I. Just another happy customer.

Click to expand...

Why is it too small for the Princess? While not ideal the stove controls the burn so well size isn't a huge factor.

I find it can burn large or small splits just fine. I will say when I bought this stove back in 2010 I started splitting stuff on the larger side, I'm finding now since this is the first year I'm burning those larger splits that they may be a little too large. It's harder to fill the firebox with all large stuff, a mix of small/medium/large is needed. I find my ideal size to be 4x6 or somewhere close to that with small stuff to use as fillers. I have a couple cords of larger oak squares waiting for a year or so out in the 8x8 range. I may split those down a little if I find some time. My splitting technique is always evolving/changing.

rdust said:

Why is it too small for the Princess? While not ideal the stove controls the burn so well size isn't a huge factor.

I find it can burn large or small splits just fine. I will say when I bought this stove back in 2010 I started splitting stuff on the larger side, I'm finding now since this is the first year I'm burning those larger splits that they may be a little too large. It's harder to fill the firebox with all large stuff, a mix of small/medium/large is needed. I find my ideal size to be 4x6 or somewhere close to that with small stuff to use as fillers. I have a couple cords of larger oak squares waiting for a year or so out in the 8x8 range. I may split those down a little if I find some time. My splitting technique is always evolving/changing.

Click to expand...

Same for me. I shoot for a split size that allows at least a dozen splits in the princess firebox. That means 3-5" splits for me. Yes, I too have evolved over the years. I don't split a mix of sizes but my average split size has dropped to 3-5 for next year's wood that was split this summer.

Looking for a little advise on my BK Princess. The stove has run great since new this year. Following alot of good advice here, i am very happy with my shoulder season burns.
Now that we are starting to see colder weather i have picked up an issue with to much coaling. Single didgets last night had me running the stove at about 500 F stove top.
That is about 1.75 on the stat. This morning, after about a 10 hour burn my burn pot was 3/4 full with decent size coals.
This has happened before, just not as bad. I can usually get at least 3 more hours of good heat by raking. The problem is when on shift i don't have 3 hours to do this.
I am using Ash, dead fall that wasn't split until mid summer. MM reads 18/20% on a fresh split.
I do seem to have more issue with 6" rounds than i do splits. Also some of my splits are pretty big. Fit maybe 4 in the box.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I am finding if I put in a couple or three really big splits I can run a small fire on the kissing surfaces without running myself out of the house in the shoulders.

For really cold weather I want lots of small splits, lots and lots of burning surface area, maybe one gnarly chunk in the back to keep coals a bit longer.

Are you guys getting hot fires or just really long fires out of big splits?

I burn my BKK on high for about an hour a day; serious heat quickly and it knocks down the coals considerably. Sometimes I'll put a small split on top just to help the process.
Shoulder burns: the BKK & I have come to an understanding (!)... 《ha》 what works for me is SMALL hot fires & let it go out or a Fat split at idle.

Finally won a game of wood Tetris. Took a picture with my phone and my wife asked me from the other room what I was doing.

"Just taking a picture of my wood"[emoji56]

Badger, that pic is what I strive for, and often fail.

I have several small rounds and keep an arm load by the stove just to fill in the gaps.

First time I've achieved it this dense in my 3 season career. Maybe I'll get another in the 2016-17 season

Poindexter said:

I

Are you guys getting hot fires or just really long fires out of big splits?

Click to expand...

I'm finding I can get both, the big splits and rounds just take a while longer but then again I don't live in Alaska.

Been experimenting with with running the blower at different speeds and letting the thermostat adjust draft accordingly, instead of turning up the thermostat.

turbojoe said:

Looking for a little advise on my BK Princess. The stove has run great since new this year. Following alot of good advice here, i am very happy with my shoulder season burns.
Now that we are starting to see colder weather i have picked up an issue with to much coaling. Single didgets last night had me running the stove at about 500 F stove top.
That is about 1.75 on the stat. This morning, after about a 10 hour burn my burn pot was 3/4 full with decent size coals.
This has happened before, just not as bad. I can usually get at least 3 more hours of good heat by raking. The problem is when on shift i don't have 3 hours to do this.
I am using Ash, dead fall that wasn't split until mid summer. MM reads 18/20% on a fresh split.
I do seem to have more issue with 6" rounds than i do splits. Also some of my splits are pretty big. Fit maybe 4 in the box.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...

Smaller splits or fill the stove less. I still have a tendency to miss how much I need on the overnight load. My wife gets up hours before me though so she rakes everything to the front/middle and burns them down for me. On days where she doesn't get them burnt down I spread them out and load on top of them.

Yeah badger that is an impressive stove stuffing. I'm getting more lazy with loading but seeing that is inspiring.

Just reloaded my stove somewhere around 24 hours, outside temp dropped today to 15. Upstairs 71, stove room 74, stove top 200. A handful of coals and one small cold split on the side.

Here's tonights unimpressive load of cottonwood and birch

rdust said:

Smaller splits or fill the stove less. I still have a tendency to miss how much I need on the overnight load. My wife gets up hours before me though so she rakes everything to the front/middle and burns them down for me. On days where she doesn't get them burnt down I spread them out and load on top of them.

Click to expand...

Thanks rdust, after seeing Badgers photo, it looks like i am using to large of splits. I am lucky to get 4 or 5 in it.
I have never loaded mine up that full, how long do you have to char that much wood to get it lit off ??

Here's a pic at 20 minutes of full blast right before I choke it down for the long haul. Stove top 550 cat 1500.