I have a stove top thermometer on my blazeking princess insert, placed directly in center of stove. When its 10 degrees out I have to keep the stove around 600-700 degrees in order to keep the house room temperature. Is 700 too hot ?
is a BK stove top of 700 degrees too hot?
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It should be ok, though I wouldn't go much higher. Sounds like the thermometer is right over the cat? Is there a cat probe thermometer showing its temp?
Ok thank you, Yes the thermometer is directly above the cat. Unfortunately the cat probe for blazeking does not show temperature , but rather just an 'inactive' and active' zone. when Im burning at 700, the probe is maxed out in the 'active' zone (obviously).
That's the important thing to watch. I would ask Blaze King how running it at max will affect the cat life. It may shorten it.
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It will definitely shorten the life of the cat. That's like running a car with the pedal to the metel all the time. I find it really hard to peg my cat probe, it would do it when it was new. Is this stove new? As the cat ages it becomes less reactive, and more predictable. How long is your liner?
Highbeam
Minister of Fire
I disagree. The cat probe reading is of little to no value other than to tell you when the cat bypass may be engaged. That's why there are no numbers on the dial. The user has very little control of cat temperature. I am on my third year with my current cat element and I can still bury the needle past the active range on that cat meter.
Don't you folks think that the thermostat on the BK is intended to limit the output to a safe stove temperature? My BK will run up to 650 Stove top temp and then stop rising when the stat is set to 3/3.
I don't know, never had a cat stove, that's why I recommended the OP give BK a call. Without an actual temp reading one is guessing. Others have reported that pushing a cat to 1800F for a sustained period of time will shorten its life. If one gets 5 yrs instead of 7 or 10 this may be a contributing factor.
I don't know why you think the cat probe thermometer is so useless? If it's pegged, it's maxed out! It's not good for it to run at these temps for very long. There are no temperatures marked because the actual temp is of no real concern for most customers, it would only scare them. It's very responsive, tells you when the cat becomes active, and how "active" it is, which is determined by the setting on the air control. If it's pegged, turn it down. I don't see how it's useless? It's actually quit nice!
Highbeam
Minister of Fire
First, I never said it was useless. It is very useful for one thing which is determining when to engage the bypass. Second, there is no peg, it can go round and round. Third, the operator's manual which I trust does not give any operating instructions based on that gauge other than how to use it for determing when to engage the bypass. Maybe you found something in the manual that tells us to adjust the stat based on the cat probe?
So again, that cat probe meter is of little or no use other than knowing when to engage the bypass. RTFM.
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So you think leaving it pegged is ok? I sure don't.
Highbeam
Minister of Fire
The owner's manual, written to tell us definitively how to operate this stove, does not tell you to use that meter for anything except engaging the cat. There is no peg anyway.
Gauges and dials are fun. I even added a stove top thermometer to play with. This stove is simple to operate if you just follow directions.
BKVP
Minister of Fire
From New Zealand! First
The thermometers sold to our industry use the same design for movement, a bi metallic spring, as the cat therms. The reason we dropped the numbers is PRECISELY due to this type of confusion.
Take the stove top thermometer, place it in your kitchen oven, set it at 500 and read the thermometer. There can be great, huge and significant swings in accuracy.
Back to the beach!
The thermometers sold to our industry use the same design for movement, a bi metallic spring, as the cat therms. The reason we dropped the numbers is PRECISELY due to this type of confusion.Take the stove top thermometer, place it in your kitchen oven, set it at 500 and read the thermometer. There can be great, huge and significant swings in accuracy.
Back to the beach!
So is it ok to run the stove full blast with the cat probe maxed out? Does it shorten the life?From New Zealand! First
Take the stove top thermometer, place it in your kitchen oven, set it at 500 and read the thermometer. There can be great, huge and significant swings in accuracy.
Back to the beach!
bioman
Feeling the Heat
Of course it will run wide open! It's hard on the cat to do this all the time.
If you need to run the stove as hard as it will go, you need a bigger stove.
If I would've run my Lopi wide open it would've been a puddle of steel on the floor. Who runs a stove wide open on purpose? If you have to run a stove wide open it's not the right stove for the space you're heating. The other side of it is running a stove wide open is not very efficient, wasting lots of heat up the flue.
BKVP
Minister of Fire
BKVP
Minister of Fire
Agreed. Continually wide open means your house insulation needs review. No stove is intended to be run 100%, 100% of the time.
I have a few service calls who run this way and they blow through a cat every 2 years with a good door seal.
Too much draft X wide open = blown out cat! It should not be necessary to run like this.
Woody Stover
Minister of Fire
"Monitor catalytic temperatures:. A catalytic meter will tell you when to engage your combustor, when to turn down your stove, and when your combustor needs to be cleaned or replaced. It signals when to avoid damaging catalyst at temperatures exceeding 1500° Fahrenheit (1050° Celsius)." http://www.woodstovecombustors.com/maintenance.html
Highbeam
Minister of Fire
We need to also remember that there is a difference between running the stove at 100% and running with the cat meter indicating high temperatures. Just tonight my cat meter was at the top of the active range with the stat set at under 50%. Stove top temp at only 450. The cat meter is only for engagement.
Woody Stover
Minister of Fire
On the cats I've run (Dutchwest, Woodstock Fv & Ks, and the Buck) I can control how high the cat goes by the air setting, what kind of wood I've loaded (higher BTU gasses slower) and by how much I've burned in the load. I doubt that the BK is any different but I could be wrong.
Manuals are by no means the be-all and end-all of stove operation, as anyone who has had much experience will tell you. They can hardly be expected to go into much detail on the finer points of running one; Their aim us to just convey the basics, and sometimes they don't even do that very well.
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