There's probably more than two people thinking about buying this stove for next year that probably wouldn't mind hearing from us that were the first on our block to buy one. Now that January is behind us we ought to have some idea what we think about these fool things. I'll start, hope you will chime in.
Short version, I love this stove. My last stove was a EPA phase I non-cat. Before that I have run a bunch of smoke dragons over the years. The learning curve into my first cat stove wasn't too bad. If space aliens tractor beam my Ashford 30 into the mother ship tonight while I am sleeping I'll be waiting outside the door of my local BK dealer first thing in the morning for a replacement.
Compared to lesser units the stack output temp is lower, making the stove more sensitive to inadequate draft. I hear this is common to all catalytic stoves. I am on 13 feet and some inches of stack, mine settles down pretty nice around freezing. Above freezing it is a little fussy about getting good draft firmly established before engaging the cat. Given that my local ambient temperature averages +32dF year round, I am all good. If you are in Fairbanks with me, 13+ feet is gonna be OK. If you live somewhere more temperate the BK manual calls for I think 15' minimum stack height and that is probably a good idea.
Mine loves dry wood. This year I have been burning spruce at 12% MC, and most of my birch came in at 16% MC. In general folks running wood at 20%MC and dryer (according to the BK performance thread, results not tabulated by model) aren't having any trouble. There is a post in the BK performance thread by BKVP (I think Chris is the VP of marketing for BK), saying that 22%MC and under per electronic gizmo is OK.
I very seldom disagree with Chris. I did run one box full of birch at 20% early in the season. It was indeed "OK". I haven't voluntarily or knowingly run any 20% since then. I run 92 octane gas in my hot rod, I run Varget in my hunting rifle all three run way better than OK. If you are running 20% MC wood in your Ashford 30 you are going to be "OK" but the stove, my rifle and my hot rod are all capable of excellence. You won't know the difference until you try it yourself. The Ashford manual specifies 13% MC and I can see the difference.
I am not sure if I can say crap on a family website like this, but standing offer to any registered user on hearth.com, you may bring a checked bag of your 20%MC crap wood to my house and we'll do back to back burns of your wood and mine.
The main differences with dryer wood are how fast I can re-engage the cat on hot reloads, and how low I can turn the thermostat in shoulder weather without stalling the cat.
The break in smell is pretty bad. One user here even did his first couple burns of the stove out in the driveway before he even brought it in the house. I smelled the first burn (in May 2014) with the windows open. I smelled the second one in June. My wife could smell the third one in later June, though I couldn't. In September 2014 I loaded the box full of dry birch and ran it on bypass until my stack temp hit 1200dF. Set the smoke alarms off that night, but I haven't had any break-in trouble or curing enamel smell since.
Having followed the break-in procedure in the manual my enamel looks factory new. I have run the stove at wide open throttle, 3/3 on the Tstat with the cat well up towards the "overfired" zone for weeks at a time through the depths of interior Alaska winter. In the -40s dF I have very very good draft even with my short stack, I can burn a box full of spruce down to tiny coals in about four hours, and the enamel looks great. No need to baby this stove, feel free to go wide open throttle.
Get the darn fan kit if you are heating more than 600sqft. I have a convection loop setup with a box fan blowing cold air along the floor from the bedrooms towards the stove. With the fan kit on the stove running my convection loop works. If someone turns the fan kit on the stove off my convection loop stalls and the bedrooms cool off noticeably.
If you are a regulated burner in an EPA non-attainment area, my best time from cold stove to engaged cat is 19 minutes. I think I can cut that down some, but the real measure, stack opacity, is tricky because I can't monitor my fire with the loading door open and see my stack plume at the same time. My guns are dialed in, my GTO has enough trophies, I am concentrating on hotrodding my Ashford30 now and I feel pretty good about cutting my cold start times by perhaps another five minutes or so. I might try putting a mirror out on my deck so I can see the stack in the mirror from near the hearth...
My BK dealer claims I might burn as much as 20-30% less wood with this stove compared to my phase I non-cat. I do believe it, but I have some confounds. One, my longest haired daughter with the most hair products moved out this fall right as I lit the Ashford 30 for the heating season. I can see her absence every time I open the water bill, and will have to do some math to allow for oil furnace hot water she didn't use. Also, I bought 450 bio-logs to supplement my cordwood this winter. I have been tracking my cordwood usage, but not my bio-log usage. Once, at the end of the season I will go through my eXcel spreadsheet and total up the whole thing. FWIW my trailing 30 year average of heating degree days for January is 2327. In Jan 14 with the polar vortex in Minneapolis and my phase I non cat rolling I had 1774 HDD. In Jan 15 I had 2207 HDD, all base 65. So I got some math to do at the end of the season, but day in and day out I am carrying less wood to the stove than I did last year, and 20-30% sounds about right.
My wife has nothing negative to say about the stove, just checked.
Out of the depths of winter I am running 12 hour burn cycles loaded NS, have to scoop out ashes about once a week and have a bunch of free time to do something other than fool with the stove that I have never had before. In really cold weather I run a quick burn of spruce while I am home in the evening with long burns of birch overnight and while I am away at work. If we get some really really cold weather I might end up on a four burns per day cycle for a few days.
I will plan to contribute to a later thread, "first complete heating season with Ashford 30" sometime in late April or early May. I will update my spread sheet to include the bio-logs but leave out daughter #2 and so on to see where I stand, and include an eXcel screenshot, but I don't think my opinion of the stove is going to change much.
It's a great unit.
Short version, I love this stove. My last stove was a EPA phase I non-cat. Before that I have run a bunch of smoke dragons over the years. The learning curve into my first cat stove wasn't too bad. If space aliens tractor beam my Ashford 30 into the mother ship tonight while I am sleeping I'll be waiting outside the door of my local BK dealer first thing in the morning for a replacement.
Compared to lesser units the stack output temp is lower, making the stove more sensitive to inadequate draft. I hear this is common to all catalytic stoves. I am on 13 feet and some inches of stack, mine settles down pretty nice around freezing. Above freezing it is a little fussy about getting good draft firmly established before engaging the cat. Given that my local ambient temperature averages +32dF year round, I am all good. If you are in Fairbanks with me, 13+ feet is gonna be OK. If you live somewhere more temperate the BK manual calls for I think 15' minimum stack height and that is probably a good idea.
Mine loves dry wood. This year I have been burning spruce at 12% MC, and most of my birch came in at 16% MC. In general folks running wood at 20%MC and dryer (according to the BK performance thread, results not tabulated by model) aren't having any trouble. There is a post in the BK performance thread by BKVP (I think Chris is the VP of marketing for BK), saying that 22%MC and under per electronic gizmo is OK.
I very seldom disagree with Chris. I did run one box full of birch at 20% early in the season. It was indeed "OK". I haven't voluntarily or knowingly run any 20% since then. I run 92 octane gas in my hot rod, I run Varget in my hunting rifle all three run way better than OK. If you are running 20% MC wood in your Ashford 30 you are going to be "OK" but the stove, my rifle and my hot rod are all capable of excellence. You won't know the difference until you try it yourself. The Ashford manual specifies 13% MC and I can see the difference.
I am not sure if I can say crap on a family website like this, but standing offer to any registered user on hearth.com, you may bring a checked bag of your 20%MC crap wood to my house and we'll do back to back burns of your wood and mine.
The main differences with dryer wood are how fast I can re-engage the cat on hot reloads, and how low I can turn the thermostat in shoulder weather without stalling the cat.
The break in smell is pretty bad. One user here even did his first couple burns of the stove out in the driveway before he even brought it in the house. I smelled the first burn (in May 2014) with the windows open. I smelled the second one in June. My wife could smell the third one in later June, though I couldn't. In September 2014 I loaded the box full of dry birch and ran it on bypass until my stack temp hit 1200dF. Set the smoke alarms off that night, but I haven't had any break-in trouble or curing enamel smell since.
Having followed the break-in procedure in the manual my enamel looks factory new. I have run the stove at wide open throttle, 3/3 on the Tstat with the cat well up towards the "overfired" zone for weeks at a time through the depths of interior Alaska winter. In the -40s dF I have very very good draft even with my short stack, I can burn a box full of spruce down to tiny coals in about four hours, and the enamel looks great. No need to baby this stove, feel free to go wide open throttle.
Get the darn fan kit if you are heating more than 600sqft. I have a convection loop setup with a box fan blowing cold air along the floor from the bedrooms towards the stove. With the fan kit on the stove running my convection loop works. If someone turns the fan kit on the stove off my convection loop stalls and the bedrooms cool off noticeably.
If you are a regulated burner in an EPA non-attainment area, my best time from cold stove to engaged cat is 19 minutes. I think I can cut that down some, but the real measure, stack opacity, is tricky because I can't monitor my fire with the loading door open and see my stack plume at the same time. My guns are dialed in, my GTO has enough trophies, I am concentrating on hotrodding my Ashford30 now and I feel pretty good about cutting my cold start times by perhaps another five minutes or so. I might try putting a mirror out on my deck so I can see the stack in the mirror from near the hearth...
My BK dealer claims I might burn as much as 20-30% less wood with this stove compared to my phase I non-cat. I do believe it, but I have some confounds. One, my longest haired daughter with the most hair products moved out this fall right as I lit the Ashford 30 for the heating season. I can see her absence every time I open the water bill, and will have to do some math to allow for oil furnace hot water she didn't use. Also, I bought 450 bio-logs to supplement my cordwood this winter. I have been tracking my cordwood usage, but not my bio-log usage. Once, at the end of the season I will go through my eXcel spreadsheet and total up the whole thing. FWIW my trailing 30 year average of heating degree days for January is 2327. In Jan 14 with the polar vortex in Minneapolis and my phase I non cat rolling I had 1774 HDD. In Jan 15 I had 2207 HDD, all base 65. So I got some math to do at the end of the season, but day in and day out I am carrying less wood to the stove than I did last year, and 20-30% sounds about right.
My wife has nothing negative to say about the stove, just checked.
Out of the depths of winter I am running 12 hour burn cycles loaded NS, have to scoop out ashes about once a week and have a bunch of free time to do something other than fool with the stove that I have never had before. In really cold weather I run a quick burn of spruce while I am home in the evening with long burns of birch overnight and while I am away at work. If we get some really really cold weather I might end up on a four burns per day cycle for a few days.
I will plan to contribute to a later thread, "first complete heating season with Ashford 30" sometime in late April or early May. I will update my spread sheet to include the bio-logs but leave out daughter #2 and so on to see where I stand, and include an eXcel screenshot, but I don't think my opinion of the stove is going to change much.
It's a great unit.
As one normally would, take steps to get the best draft possible to.minimize this phenomenon. Install double wall pipe and hope for the best.
