My comparisons of: (Lopi Revere vs. Freedom) vs. (PE Super) vs. (BK Princess) ***Fan Noise & Door Wa

Okay, I THINK I looked at "post 18". But I'll be honest - I have no idea if I am looking at the right one. However, I will be more than happy to answer any more questions about the Lopi product line, assuming I have the knowledge necessary to provide the answer.

So, in case I missed the question(s), please ask again!

I have Both, and use both, all winter long. My revere has been loved and enjoyed for 7 years now, and my BK is on it's second season. thanks to much help from N.of 60 and other BK owners here, I quickly learned the ins and outs of my BK, and can tell you from experience that the lopi is a mere childs toy compared to the BK. the revere can warm a room, cook you out of a room, and quickly cool off. the same armload of wood in ther BK lasts HRS longer. IT heats the house. if you load large splits of hardwood E/W on a good coal bed, you can see 20hr burns. you don't have to fiddle with the BK to get desired room temps. SET it and FORGET it. like setting your heat pump to 70 and leaving it. all you do is add a couple of splits every 6 to seven hours. wanna see flames? crank her up, turn the fan off, and open some windows. wanna heat your home, set thermostat, don't worry about pretty fire, and walk away. do I care that it looks like a big mac box, maybe, but ask me how my winter utility bill dropped 385$ in one month when i no longer needed to use my heat pump. no need to get technical, i did all that reading last fall when i was deciding which stove to get. looks are severely overated. The BK does one thing, not sit on your hearth looking pretty, It heats your home. Been burning my whole life, and would own nothing else now, after only one season.

In psot 18 you asked me...

"Are you talking about the “large” size “Summit” stove that has what they call extended burn technology (EBT)? The mid sized “Super” doesn’t have that. The Super only has the “ONE” lever in the front to control air intake which is why it seems less able to fine tuned when compared to the Lopi/BK stoves."

Not the summit, the next size smaller super has earned the long burn record for non-cats of the (regular) size for sure. The EBT is a feature that only seems to cause trouble and even our onsite mod BeGreen disabled that feature on his summit. Almost all modern stoves have a single lever with regards to intake air supply. The cat stove has an additional bypass damper that engages or disengages the cat and the lopis have a similar bypass lever that is used similarly in an on/off fashion during startup and when opening the door to refuel. The number of levers has nothing to do with fine tuning but with operational complexity. The BK has a bypass lever plus a single air control but what's cool is that the single air control has an automatic thermostat. I need to adjust my stove much more often than one that has an auto stat.

I owned a Lopi freedom bay model before my current heritage. It had the bypass lever and it was a noisy sliding plate that screeched each morning when I opened it to reload or restart the fire. I grew to hate that bypass device. Stove always worked great for a noisy blowered insert.


Great post fattyfat, that sums it up. There's a time and place for the ultimate in functional utility with a willingness to compromise in regards to looks and then there is the time and place for a fine looking stove with compromises in function to get it.

NOBODY can deny the superiority of the BK with regards to functional utility amongst ALL current stove offerings, unfortunately it's as ugly as sin.

I had been asked if I was afraid max heat output would not be high enough on my BK. I am not afraid of that, no. As well as it's heated my house on the lowest setting on below freezing nights, I think it is going to easily heat my house on a mid/high setting in the dead of winter. This is just my opinion though, I have not done it yet (though a host of others say it's max heat output is impressive).

I will agree with others in saying there is nothing else like the BK line right now. No one else combines a big firebox, a cat, and a thermostat. It's a sweet, practical combination. Were it not for the horrid price fixing and terrible dealers and dealer mark-ups on the East Coast, they would have a much larger share of the market. I can't believe I'd never heard of them until I found this site despite having been around stoves and stove people for 15 years. I had been quoted a price of $3,500 for the same stove I saw for $1,800 online. That is insane.

53flyer said:

fattyfat1 said:

I have Both, and use both, all winter long. My revere has been loved and enjoyed for 7 years now, and my BK is on it's second season. thanks to much help from N.of 60 and other BK owners here, I quickly learned the ins and outs of my BK, and can tell you from experience that the lopi is a mere childs toy compared to the BK. the revere can warm a room, cook you out of a room, and quickly cool off. the same armload of wood in ther BK lasts HRS longer. IT heats the house.

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1. Thanks for your 1st hand comparison. I wonder how much closer they'd be if you had a Freedom (2.9cuft) since it has a firebox size that's closer to the Princess (2.85) than the Revere (2.2cuft)? Still no comparison.....

if you load large splits of hardwood E/W on a good coal bed, you can see 20hr burns. you don't have to fiddle with the BK to get desired room temps. SET it and FORGET it. like setting your heat pump to 70 and leaving it. all you do is add a couple of splits every 6 to seven hours. wanna see flames? crank her up, turn the fan off, and open some windows. wanna heat your home, set thermostat, don't worry about pretty fire, and walk away. do I care that it looks like a big mac box, maybe, but ask me how my winter utility bill dropped 385$ in one month when i no longer needed to use my heat pump. no need to get technical, i did all that reading last fall when i was deciding which stove to get. looks are severely overated. The BK does one thing, not sit on your hearth looking pretty, It heats your home. Been burning my whole life, and would own nothing else now, after only one season.

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1. I've seen the brochure that refers to 20hr burns but have you actually had that long of a burn time? I don't exactly understand why you'd add wood every 6-7hrs if you could go much longer than that? Do you usually set it to low or med when you set it and forget it?
2. Wow, I thought heat pumps cost much less to run but I must be way off in what they cost. I've got a few follow up's I'd really like to ask you and one other Q I'll post by itself.
3. Your right, it does look kind of like a Big Mac box lol

Thanks

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it has a huge firebox, two armloads to fill. don't usually need that much wood to heat my house, and we rarely get below freezing in SW WA. maybe 30 days a winter. I enjoy tending fire, so i'll rake coals and reload way more often than i need to. same wood is consumed. small fires if you want flame instead of mega stove stuffing. to get long burn times (20hrs) you have to have a good coal bed, then PACK the stove with wood. ALL THE WAY FULL. you will get NO flame, just smolder. turn down to low, and walk away. there will be coals left @ 20 hrs, not a ton of heat, but a new fire starts strait away. been burning since early october, and i'm still on our first fire. with no winter trips, my "one" fire will last till march yes, med or low, always, or i am opening doors and windows

53flyer said:

So you never have the bypass open 20-30% iot get a different heat output? That's sort of what a Lopi dealer hinted at.

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No. Its only purpose is to keep the smoke out of the room. If you left it open even a little bit you'd be bypassing the secondary combustion, i.e. wasting heat.

I can't imagine owning another stove without one.

Highbeam-

1. Wow, if the Super actually gets the 10hr burn times I've heard of from a 2.1cuft (listed at 1.97 on chimneysweep's website) that would indicate it would burn 14-15hrs if it had the 2.85cuft size of the Princess. That would seemingly make them both very close irt burn time per unit of wood (assuming similar test conditions) and that's something I wouldn't have expected. I've also seen the EBT controversy which is why I was looking at the Super instead.
2. I've read about the BK thermostat but does it actually cause "physical movement" of the single air control that changes the amount of air flow into the combustion chamber on an ongoing (meaning constantly monitored basis)? I didn't see a thermostat pic in the brochure but it "sounds" sort of like the EBT of the Summit.

I owned a Lopi freedom bay model before my current heritage. It had the bypass lever and it was a noisy sliding plate that screeched each morning when I opened it to reload or restart the fire. I grew to hate that bypass device. Stove always worked great for a noisy blowered insert....NOBODY can deny the superiority of the BK with regards to functional utility amongst ALL current stove offerings, unfortunately it's as ugly as sin.

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Are you thinking about a BK in the future or are the looks a deal breaker?[/quote]

You can't link the size of a non-cat firebox with its burn time. It just doesn't work with non-cats since most have an uncontrolled secondary air system. Doubling the firebox size does not equal double the burn time. If you're talking about cat stoves then you can almost make a relationship between firebox and burn time since these stoves are controlled combustion.

The BK thermostat physically opens and shuts the primary air control for the stove. It is a much simpler and more logical device than the EBT. If you're familiar with the an electric choke on a carburetor then that is pretty much how a bimettalic coil opens and closes the primary air butterfly to the stove. The stat has 6 settings that determine the preload on that coil just like you can "tune" the electric choke on a carb by preloading the coil spring.

The wife hates the looks of the BK, I showed her the brochure and she nearly gagged. She has been spoiled by the great looks of a soapstone in the living room. I would absolutely love to fit a BK in my current or a future home. Unfortunately I live in a rambler with a central stove location where the current stove works great. I would have to replace the nice stone stove with the ugly BK and the wife would not be happy.

Highbeam said:

I would have to replace the nice stone stove with the ugly BK and the wife would not be happy.

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Perhaps it'd be more palatable painted in one of the jazzier StoveBright colors ?

I am lucky, being a bachelor No, but seriously folks ... I am lucky, because my house
style is very contemporary, so the ugliness of the BK is partially offset by the fact that
its more contemporary look (as compared to the old Dutchwest, a soapstone, whatever)
is more consistent with the look of my house.

I think any color other than black would make it even worse. I like the big classic king with the holes on the bottom and everything, very 70's retro. I tried to sell the stove on the burn time and you bet that would be a benefit but the looks got a big boooooooo.

Looks are of course subjective and some people will love the unique lines of this machine.

FATTY1
[/quote] it has a huge firebox, two armloads to fill. don't usually need that much wood to heat my house, and we rarely get below freezing in SW WA. maybe 30 days a winter. I enjoy tending fire, so i'll rake coals and reload way more often than i need to. same wood is consumed. small fires if you want flame instead of mega stove stuffing. to get long burn times (20hrs) you have to have a good coal bed, then PACK the stove with wood. ALL THE WAY FULL. you will get NO flame, just smolder. turn down to low, and walk away. there will be coals left @ 20 hrs, not a ton of heat, but a new fire starts strait away. been burning since early october, and i'm still on our first fire. with no winter trips, my "one" fire will last till march yes, med or low, always, or i am opening doors and windows[/quote]



Can you give me some tech advise to get a 20 hour burn time with the insert? The best I have done so far is around 13/14 hours. Are you loading E/W and filling her to the max? Please advise.

Lanning said:

FATTY1

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it has a huge firebox, two armloads to fill. don't usually need that much wood to heat my house, and we rarely get below freezing in SW WA. maybe 30 days a winter. I enjoy tending fire, so i'll rake coals and reload way more often than i need to. same wood is consumed. small fires if you want flame instead of mega stove stuffing. to get long burn times (20hrs) you have to have a good coal bed, then PACK the stove with wood. ALL THE WAY FULL. you will get NO flame, just smolder. turn down to low, and walk away. there will be coals left @ 20 hrs, not a ton of heat, but a new fire starts strait away. been burning since early october, and i'm still on our first fire. with no winter trips, my "one" fire will last till march yes, med or low, always, or i am opening doors and windows[/quote]



Can you give me some tech advise to get a 20 hour burn time with the insert? The best I have done so far is around 13/14 hours. Are you loading E/W and filling her to the max? Please advise.[/quote]

yes, has to be E/W loading, after raking coals to the front. PACK that sucker with LARGE splits of HARDWOOD (madrone, maple is what I have) softwoods won't cut it, I can get up to 13 or 14 hrs on fir and alder, but that is really pushing it, and probably not as seasoned as i would like.

fattyfat
I have been saving my hard wood for colder weather. I split a truck load of Ash today. I am starting to make them bigger for the longer burn times. Most of my seasoned wood was split smaller for my old insert. Thanks for the advise,

Lanning I have been playing with larger splits and really like how this stove uses them..... I too split much smaller for my last stove but on some advice from my wood scrounging buddy have been leaving them larger.... its a win win less swings w/fiskars more burn out of the dougfir I am still maxed out at probably 14hrs effective burn but that is really hard to complain about
still 10hrs longer than my last stove lol

fattyfat1 said:

yes, has to be E/W loading, after raking coals to the front. PACK that sucker with LARGE splits of HARDWOOD ...

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I've lost track of what NS vs EW means. But I read in some thread that you can put
more wood in with the way they go in where you need shorter wood - one end at the
rear of the stove one end at the door (isn't that "NW" ??) So I tried it last night and
now I believe the 60lb load is not a joke, and the thing had plenty of burn left (and an
active catalyst) after 12-13 hours. Pretty impressive.

Not all of my wood is this short - being cut when I had a Dutchwest. No problem,
I just save the shorter logs for the overnight load, and use the longer ones in an
EW (?) configuration during the day.

53flyer said:

Can someone please address these 2 specific questions that I still don't think have been answered (unless I missed them). Thank you very much.

This concerns heat output irt catalyst stoves:

1. My main concern is irt available heat output. Given that BTU requirements for a house go up when its 20-30 deg compared to 40-50, at some point the stove/insert would have to put out more than the BTUs/hr generated on the low settings required to get max burn times. I've read about the impressive max heat output of many of these stoves but I’ve also heard the cat can be damaged at high temps so I don’t know how long the stove could actually be run at those "higher" temps. Before anyone says "all stoves can be hurt by excessive temps": I’m not talking about any temps that would damage a stove in general (cat or non)… I’m strictly talking about the cat because I understand that most of the heat is concentrated at the cat’s location in the fire box and that prolonged (whatever “prolonged” means) exposure to excessive (whatever “excessive” means) heat can cause damage (like a dished out center?).

2. For long time BK burners out there (especially inserts): What’s the max level you feel you could set and forget the stove at and just let the thermostat do its thing? Can you set it at med, med/hi, or hi and just let it run? If so, what type of burn times do you see then?

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the cat is generating the heat. once it "fires" off, the smoke and gasses from wood combustion pass through the honeycomb and burn. the wood can just smolder, but the cat is "lit", and remains burning off the gasses and smoke until it's temp cools. do not worry about damaging the cat with overfire. if your fire is that hot, you should be present to snuff any problems if they arise.

yes you can feel comfortable setting it on high. I am comfortable doing that. with that said, All fires SHOULD have someone at least "around" to watch it. fire in your home is an inherently dangerous way to heat your home. will i stuff my stove, turn it to low, and go to work. yes. will i stuff my stove, set it to high and leave. HELL NO. if you are burning on highest settings, you need to be around to "babysit" I'm not saying you have to watch it like a hawk, but you need to be able to get to the stove to shut it down when it gets too hot. I will let mine go on high for hours, but i also check on her every 45 minutes or so. these stoves shut down pretty fast, and the fan cools the stove even more. I have yet to worry about damaging the cat, because it is made of ceramic. if your stove gets hot enough to damage the cat, you probably shouldn't have a woodstove in your home, and Darwin's goona get ya. NEVER leave real cooker unatended. your burn times will be considerably less if you run on high all the time. N of 60 burns softwood and lives where it is REALLY cold. he would have great input on running this unit set @ higher temps. you should pm him if he doesn't speak up.

53flyer said:

Can someone please address these 2 specific questions that I still don't think have been answered (unless I missed them). Thank you very much.

This concerns heat output irt catalyst stoves:

1. My main concern is irt available heat output. Given that BTU requirements for a house go up when its 20-30 deg compared to 40-50, at some point the stove/insert would have to put out more than the BTUs/hr generated on the low settings required to get max burn times. I've read about the impressive max heat output of many of these stoves but I’ve also heard the cat can be damaged at high temps so I don’t know how long the stove could actually be run at those "higher" temps. Before anyone says "all stoves can be hurt by excessive temps": I’m not talking about any temps that would damage a stove in general (cat or non)… I’m strictly talking about the cat because I understand that most of the heat is concentrated at the cat’s location in the fire box and that prolonged (whatever “prolonged” means) exposure to excessive (whatever “excessive” means) heat can cause damage (like a dished out center?).

2. For long time BK burners out there (especially inserts): What’s the max level you feel you could set and forget the stove at and just let the thermostat do its thing? Can you set it at med, med/hi, or hi and just let it run? If so, what type of burn times do you see then?

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It all depends. Lets its -20, coldest day of the year. Its a Saturday morning and you want to raise the temp because during the evening you had it on a low temp setting. You reload and turn it up to high. Temps go up in the house in a short time, then you can turn it down, why would you want to just keep burning on high all day, its a waste of wood and your time reloading. Then you can reload and turn it down to medium setting. Then go to the gym for a work out, and you shut her down a little more and leave the house. When you get back your cat is still engaged and you can reload or just keep an eye on it. It all works out at my house just fine. But I am learning and improving.

I have set the t-stat at the lowest level and had coals and the cat still engaged after 13 to 14 hours. 1,500 square house @ 35 degrees outside. But I know I can improve this number with bigger splits of hard wood. It seems to be more of an art than science learning how to operate a stove well and get the most usable heat.

Besides wasting wood or loosing efficiency if you burn on high there is a chance you will draw the flames up into the cat which will cause damage (flame impingement) There is a metal screen or guard to protect the cat from this but if you see a steady flame sucking into the cat you should back off.

I fully load the stove every time right to the top. You can run the cat thermometer all the way up with very little flame. I don't even think twice about leaving the stove unattended for 12 hours with a good burn. Very different from my old stove.