Discovered Blaze King thermostat works with hair dryer, but not heat from stove???????

Ok I'm at a total loss now. Out of desperation, I turned the hair dryer on the coil with the damper open 1/4", and it shut INSTANTLY. Opened it up another 1/4" and bang, same thing instantly again. Couple minutes later I checked, and the coil had cooled off and the damper was open again.

For those of you who haven't seen my other posts, I've had this whole mechanism apart and the damper "floats" on it's rod as if it's on ball bearings - VERY VERY easy to turn. Nothing is in a bind. The damper simply does not move on it's own when burning wood but turns effortlessly when I crank the rod down (after the temp climbs out of control). I have replaced a leaky door gasket which changed my problem from a wild up and down fluctuation to one that is stable for longer periods of time.

During a burn cycle, the coil refuses to do this and I have to mess with the damper by hand. WHY?!

Craig

Do you mean this post? Yes, mine has that. Do you run yours with the coil cover off and the lid removed from the damper? The coil cover is simply a piece of expanded metal but maybe it helps radiate heat back to the thermostat. I'm thinking that the cover wouldn't help much anyway because it's so hot back there when running the stove that it's hard to get in and take a look. Would a cover make that much difference?

No, no oustide air kit. This setup (not this particular stove but the exact same model) worked fine for many years in this house with no OAK. I have not been able to get the thermostat working correctly since buying this stove used a week ago. The damper just refuses to move when there's a fire but easily closes if I push on it with a screwdriver (which I have to do so it won't get any hotter).

Thanks for the replies so far. LLigetfa, I have been wondering about an air leak since fixing the door gasket changed my problem from wild up and down fluctuations to one that is slightly easier to manage. However, don't you think that if I had an air leak, once the stove got up to 650-700 the coil would finally react and at least start to close the damper? I swear, the air flapper/damper doesn't move a fraction of an inch while burning wood.

I'm getting 3-5 hours on small red oak splits piled 2 high (3 across bottom, 3 more on top). These are around 14" long at the absolute most (cut for a small box stove in my shop) and have been down about a year. Some sizzle a little bit near the beginning but not much at all. The wood has been cut, split, and stacked in a pile with a tarp over the top and the weather side with plenty of air space between logs. Also, there is no difference if I have a small amount of wood in it or 3 layers with a raging fire. Last night I put in a bunch of wood, cracked the damper, and had the thermometer on the stovetop. It went from 400 to 650 in 10 minutes and there were no changes in air regulation on the stoves part- the damper just doesn't move. I very lightly touched it with a screwdriver to close it, said a silent prayer, and waited an hour till it cooled down to 475.

More info - with the damper closed, I open the door and barely see any red coals at all. As soon as the door is opened, I notice everything fire up. I just did a candle/match test from the outside and couldn't find any super strong air leaks pulling air into the stove. The only place it would enter are the side jets and then only if I held the blown out match within 1/4" of the holes. Otherwise the smoke just went straight up in front of them. With an open stove door, the smoke will be pulled in from several inches away. (It's still slightly warm from last night's fire which I didn't add to after 9pm and there are some red coals left)

Keep the ideas coming. We will succeed! (Or I'll lose it, whichever comes first)

Some success in today's fire....

1) I remembered that I had put a small pile of wood on the back patio. It may have dried out better as it's near the dryer vent and gets no moisture from rain/snow, etc.
2) I replaced the covers on the coil and the damper. I can't see the damper so I just set the cover on top and can remove it with a gloved hand to see if it moves.
3) I put a small bar magnet on the top part of the damper. It didn't seem to move it's position so it shouldn't be too heavy.

The stove went up to 350 and I noticed a change in the damper's position. I started typing this post then. While I was typing this it had continued to climb to 450 and the damper had closed even more. I closed it manually to try to hold the temp here at 450. I'm not going to add any wood and let this fire really die down to see if the damper opens back up. If it does, I'll remove the cover from the damper and start over to see if I can leave it off. If the cover isn't important, I'll add more wood from the woodpile to see if that affects anything.

I understand the wood not being properly seasoned can make a difference. But shouldn't the coil be going nuts trying to fight it?

Thanks again,
Craig

And as quick as it seemed to be getting better, it stopped for now. Seems like the damper actually closed itself (which they may do when you're cooking, I don't know). But once the stove cooled down, it didn't want to open. It had already gone down past 350 so I made a little gauge to hang next to the damper and removed the magnet. Opened the damper slightly with the control rod, and the fire climbed up past 450 without the damper closing again. So I replaced the magnet but moved it 1/4" from the edge (closer to the middle) hoping the magnet might be too heavy to allow the damper to open with it all the way out at the edge. I'll keep messing with the magnet until it's very close to the pivot meaning the extra weight isn't helping.

LLigetfa said:

craigs said:

I understand the wood not being properly seasoned can make a difference. But shouldn't the coil be going nuts trying to fight it?

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The problem is the thermal mass of the stove. It just can't react fast enough and by the time it finally does, it's too little, too late.

I had the same model RSF as I have now in my former home and I was burning a lot of wood before its time. The bi-metal coil just couldn't react fast enough so when the fire got roaring and increased the draft, it would run away on me. I also had a tall inside chimney and the EPA notch in my damper was too large so I had to reduce my zipper air.

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Are you saying that instead of messing around with the stove I'd be better off cutting, splitting, and stacking wood so I can burn dry stuff a season or two from now with less trouble?

Craig

mbutts said:

Just so we are on the same page, have we established the air flapper is moving freely with no resistance on its pivot points?

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Yes, one of the first things I did was disconnect the flapper and it moved effortlessly on it's shaft. So much so that I didn't even consider cleaning/lubricating it - it works fine.

mbutts said:

Tapping it lightly with a finger when it is partially open will cause the oscillate part way open and closed 2 or 3 times.

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I'm not sure it did this before yesterday, but once I put a "knob" on the end and got the pressure off the flapper, this is how it works.

mbutts said:

Or if you depress your finger on the flapper to close it, it will easily return to the exact same place as it started from?

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That's how it is working now. If I push down on it, it'll "spring back" to where it was before I touched it.

I just wish I had the kahoonas to load this sucker up with really dry wood and see what happened.

Craig

You guys are going to think I'm off my rocker now. Tonight I built a fire in the stove, got it going, and set the damper where I thought it would be ok. Well it was ok (for once) and allowed the stove to warm up and the thermostat actually slowly closed the damper to keep it around 350 (I had it set pretty low). I added more logs in 3 stages to get a big load and kept bumping up the damper because the thermometer kept creeping down to 350 where it would level off. I finally opened up the damper a lot more at once than I had been doing, and it's been sitting on 425 for a couple hours. I can even open the door, move the logs around, and close the door and the temp will stay right around the same place as before I messed with it. So my first point is that the temp isn't going nuts on me tonight.

Second point is that it FEELS different. Usually, if the temp was 425 it would feel quite hot over here on the couch and if it went to 450 or 500 I'd be sitting here in my boxers feeling a little hawt if you get my drift. This heat feels more "even" across the whole room and is really comfortable. In fact it almost feels like something is wrong and the stove isn't putting out heat until you consider how comfortable it is compared to when I started the fire. I think if I opened it up a little more (the damper is almost completely closed - I could probably heat the superdome with this thing) it'll easily drive me out of the basement like dad's original one did when I was a kid on the super cold days.

The wood that's available to burn is still too short and too small a diameter to really cook like it should, but I think this is close enough for now. Does it sound like this is closer to normal or have I gone from one extreme to another? The lack of "super hotness" at the same temp has me confused.

Craig

Just a quick update for anybody that was watching. I stayed home yesterday because my truck was being worked on and one of the foremen told me if I didn't need to visit the sites it would be better to just stay off the roads. It had snowed around 6" during the night and basically snowed all day too. So first thing I started a fire in the woodburner and went out to plow. Because of my initial problems I kept going in and checking on it every 15 or 20 minutes but after a couple hours it was apparent that all was well (and had been for a couple evenings since I got this issue worked out). From about lunchtime on I only checked it once every hour or so and sometimes it ran itself up to 400 or 450 but each time the damper closed itself and it dropped back down. It pretty much stays at 300 or 325 most of the time. The house was 68-70 all day and most of the night. I had remembered to turn the house thermostat down to 66 to see if the furnace would kick on but it didn't. YAY!!

The bonus was that Tuesday I took my saw with me and got almost half a pickup load in 20 minutes. The tree was right next to the haul road and it was easy pickin's. There is just a huge amount of knocked down trees at that site too, all right next to the road. I'll be bringing home the wood big time after this snow melts.

Next winter we'll be running 24/7 and my gas bill should be the minimum charge every month. Can't wait.