Blaze King Princess Cat Questions

Where is your thermostat usually set? Where in the active zone is the thermometer?

A couple good hot fires should clear the cat out (in cat mode, not bypass).

Really need to have a year at least on that wood. 3-6 months isn't long enough, especially if that wood was cut in the spring or summer.

How often do you do maintenance on the cat? I like to brush off or vacuum the fly ash out once every cord of wood burned. If your wood isn't up to par you may want to clean it more often, burn a little hotter or longer in the bypass mode before engaging.

I'm puzzled, where was the 'black stuff" coming from?

If you have smoke coming out the back of the stove (where the intake is) then you have a backwards draft going. How tight is your house? Bathroom/stove exhaust fans? Dryer running?

But the stove was working fine before this. So something changed. Have you done any work on the house?

I would look into installing an outdoor air kit (OAK) for the stove.

This is a serious situation and you should not burn the stove until it is fixed.

Sounds like the prior residents didn't burn proper and your chimney may be dirty and dripping liquid creosote down through the bypass. I'd get the whole system cleaned out before burning again.

Is this black stuff on the outside of hte stove or inside the stove?

You probably already know but that slot in the back in the air intake. So smoke/creosote coming out of there is only going to happen if there is a negative pressure in the house. Sounds to me like the stove is starving for air at times.

I'm sure you could. But how sealed is your crawl space? Any modern construction should be pretty air tight.

Might work. But if the air intake is sized for the furnace, would it be enough for when the wood stove and furnace are running at the same time?

If you were having enough smoke to create creosote in the air intake, you must have had a huge amount of smoke coming into the house?

8" should provide plenty of air. That's all it's for is the furnace? Does the dryer or anything else get air from the crawlspace?

Umbrella said:

There is a little creosote on the inside but not more than is "typically" in the stove. The liquid creosote was on the outside.

From the sound and look of things I am going to get a chimney sweep and inspection scheduled Monday and also go out and get a wood moister gauge to see if this spruce is to moist. It seems to burn fine and ignites right away. The ends show some signs of cracking and the wood doesn't feel heavy or make a dull sound when I hit two pieces together. I am going to clean out the whole stove today and make sure that the cat isn't plugged with ash or that there isn't creosote build up on it.

The liquid creosote was dripping out of the slot on the back middle.

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It does sounds like your issues extend a bit beyond a dirty cat. It will be interesting to see what the sweep finds.

What's your chimney like? How does the stove vent?

I have a king, but had my cat start to plug from some almost seasoned spruce.
I was able to add some good dry birch, got it good & hot before I closed the bypass.
cat had several partially open holes & as it got hot, it cleaned the others.
Took about 2 hours of burning pretty hot, but the cat temp never got to max.
I burned one more 1/2 load of dry birch, hot, almost got the cat to max temp, it burns well now.

Try a vacuum on the grate that covers the cat (do it when the stove is cold)
It may open the cat enough to get a hot fire to clean it out.
Back of the op manual has a method to clean the cat,
it also mentions the best way is to burn a good hot fire every now & then with dry wood.

good luck, learning to burn properly in the new efficient cat stoves, is a challenge sometimes, but once learned, good heat with less wood & less air pollution.
But you GOT TO HAVE DRY WOOD for sure. Self teacher, like you just experienced, & me too. (DRY WOOD)