As I understand it's to shut then klunk. This helps with a tighter seal.
2014-2015 Blaze King Performance thread (Everything BK)
- Thread starter Dieselhead
- Start date
-
Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.
We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.
We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.
- Status
You access the bypass adjustment through the flue collar. I wouldn't worry too much with it, it seals pretty good on the gasket even if it doesn't latch. Next time you clean the flue take a look at it.
What about loading the stove while the cat is still active?
Shoulder season! Was 25f here last night but the high today is supposed to be around 60f, so I misjudged my burn time when I loaded the stove last night and need about 3 more hours of heat than I'm going to get. So would it be ok to open the bypass and throw a couple pieces in with the cat probe thermometer on the first small line in active or should I wait until it is inactive to open the door?
Shoulder season! Was 25f here last night but the high today is supposed to be around 60f, so I misjudged my burn time when I loaded the stove last night and need about 3 more hours of heat than I'm going to get. So would it be ok to open the bypass and throw a couple pieces in with the cat probe thermometer on the first small line in active or should I wait until it is inactive to open the door?
BKVP
Minister of Fire
Webby is correct. The click is the sound of the by pass crank rod going past center and stopping up against the adjustment bolt. You do adjust through the flue collar as well. CAUTION. THE ADJUSTMENT REQUIRES A 7/16th OPEN OR BOX END WRENCH. THERE IS A KEEPER NUT BELOW THE HEAD OF THE BOLT. YOU MUST LOOSEN THE KEEPER BOLT BEFORE TURNING THE BOLT 1/4 TURN CLOCKWISE. FAILURE TO LOOSEN KEEPER NUT WILL RESULT IN BOLT SNAPPING OFF AND A PARTS NEEDED PHONE CALL.
MAKE SMALL 1/4 TURN ADJUSTMENTS. REMEMBER, AS THE STOVE HEATS UP, THE TENSION MAY INCREASE.
Yeah what I ment by 'Dont care' is I always run the stove HOT so it's not an issue really. You can see the glass is relatively clean in the second pic I posted.
Infact, only coals left this morning as the wife turned it up before bed. The glass is super clean compaired to most I've seen.
I do relatively hot reloads. No choice sometimes. Throw the by-pass and open the door slowly. Reload and fire her off.
The more I read about BK's on here the more I think people are turned off buying one because of the baby sitting involved with these CAT units. Don't do this, don't so that etc etc. If you do this the CAT will explode or the firebox will rot out.
Fill it with DRY wood and enjoy. Heck if the thing piles up I will be on the blower to Chris if the dealer ain't gonna play ball.
Infact, only coals left this morning as the wife turned it up before bed. The glass is super clean compaired to most I've seen.
I do relatively hot reloads. No choice sometimes. Throw the by-pass and open the door slowly. Reload and fire her off.
The more I read about BK's on here the more I think people are turned off buying one because of the baby sitting involved with these CAT units. Don't do this, don't so that etc etc. If you do this the CAT will explode or the firebox will rot out.
Fill it with DRY wood and enjoy. Heck if the thing piles up I will be on the blower to Chris if the dealer ain't gonna play ball.
I'm a first year cat burner and am impressed with the lack of babysitting. If they are turned off they are reading too deep into it.
That's a myth. First off, there is no way to know what temperature the catalyst is running at. Secondly, the stove is designed to prevent that from happening. Thirdly, we know that 95% (I believe was the quote) of cat failures are from door gasket leaks. Lastly, 10 year cat warranty.
Have you ever seen a BK cat overheated to failure? How did it happen?
Yelp, Rossco should pay more attention to the rest of the threads on the main hearth forum while scrolling down to find this one.
We're definately not the only ones having detailed conversations over the small things. I doubt our conversations are hurting stove sales though.
There has always been a pretty strong ash pan vs. no ash pan debate on this forum. Not unlike the cat vs. noncat debate. We won't change each other's mind but I don't have an ash cloud problem, don't want to waste time sifting ash through a little hole, and don't want to waste time making several trips outside in the rain to dump the tiny ashpan. I'm a shovel and bucket guy until I get a stove with an ash pan at least as big as a bucket and with a dump system that is way less labor intensive that a tiny hole.
Not really a BK issue.
One perpetuated by Blaze King themselves.
"Catalytic combustor temperatures above 1800F (1000C) will shorten the life of a combustor. Combustor temperatures between 1400F and 1600F (760C - 870C) are common, but operating temperatures between 700F and 1400F (371C - 760C) are recommended."
Yet they don't tell you how to measure this temperature, how to control it, or whether it has any bearing on your warranty. Instead the VP comes on this site telling us to run it really hot for an hour each week. The stove design allows us to run this stove with minimal fuss about mythical temperature thresholds.
Certainly, there is a maximum stove top temp or a temp at which parts start to glow also, just about everything has a maximum safe temperature but getting those things that hot isn't always something we need to worry about. My computer screen will burst into flames at 1000 degrees!
Actually, it's also perpetuated by other stove mfg'ers (e.g. Dutchwest) and by the cat manufacturers. I've been reading (and ignoring) it for years.
I can say that on a number of occasions, I have seen the cat thermometer needle pegged beyond the 2000 degree reading, and that, heading into my 6th burning season (with my BK with stainless-steel cat), the thing is still working just fine. Dunno if a ceramic cat would have tolerated this less well or not. (I replaced the dumbed-down "Inactive/"Active" thermometer with the one with actual temperature readings).
I am also confused about people saying you can't really tell how hot the cat is. Seems like the thermometer works pretty well; yes, I understand it's just a steel spring, but I still imagine it's accurate to within 100 degrees or so. The main problem I have with it - and I'd seek guidance on this - is that the "zero" seems to keep drifting; that is, with a cold stove, the needle is well below the bottom end of the scale. I'll loosen the nuts and adjust it, but after not that many burning cycles, it has drifted again. Wonder if somehow I'm adjusting it incorrectly ...
Last edited:
I know. I've never understood the point, really, of that last little "clunk when you push the lever a little farther. Looking at it through the flue collar, it looks like the bypass door actually slides horizontally a fraction of an inch when you do that. And does tightening the nut just mean you have to push a little harder to get the clunk, and if so, what's the point ?
Parallax
Minister of Fire
The "clunk" locks the bypass closed so all the smoke has to go through the cat. If you don't lock it, some of the smoke is going to go straight up the flue. If the bypass door isn't tight when locked, you'll get leakage. That's why it's important to have it adjusted properly. (I know this only because Chris recently walked me through how to adjust mine.) You don't want it so tight that when the stove heats you can't lock it (given the expansion of metal).
I don't mean "zero degrees", silly, though I suppose I could have worded it better. What I mean is, the bottom end of the scale (on the non-dumbed-down cat thermometer) appears to be about 60 degrees (2 small tick marks below the lowest large tick mark, which is below the large tick mark labeled "200"). So I'd like to set the needle near that lowest small tick mark when the stove is dead cold. But it's not; it'll drift to where it's a couple hunrded degrees' worth below there - far enough that the 500 degree reading (where you want to engage cat) is WAY off.
BKVP
Minister of Fire
The best part of this discussion is the many points made by each of you with regard to manuals, instructions and use. These observations do pay dividends in better manuals, so thank you all.
Ceramic substrates do not tolerate as much heat as the stainless. However, even stainless has the threshold temp at which point the wash coat (which is applied before precious metals) can peel away and take the metals with them.
It should be noted the ceramic cats do hold temps longer and more consistently than stainless. Stainless do heat up quicker by an average of 10-15 minutes in our studies. Yet their thinner construction allows them to cool sooner, with less mass.
As for how hot can you burn them and can you over fire, 1800 is very hot to a ceramic cat and 2000 is very hot to a stainless cat, but BOTH work just fine in 99% of applications. If someone lived in SE Alaska and had wood that was not optimal in moisture content due to late harvest, lack of tarps etc., a stainless cat would be slightly better to deal with that moisture. As for reading the temps, years ago we had the standard cat probes with the temperature indicators. Our phones rang off the hook each time the reading dropped 100 degrees. I kid you not, when we went to the active and inactive marks, the calls CEASED. And yes, the thermostat will slam shut if a stove begins to over fire to the point where it may be damaged. Very few owners burn their stoves as hot as possible that often. Our suggestion to burn it on "high" is predicated upon the issue of the build up of creosote in the firebox due to shoulder season heating. A good hot fire can keep both the firebox clean and the combustor clean. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BURN IT ON HIGH FOR AN HOUR EACH WEEK SO LONG AS THE BUILD UP IS NOT ACCUMULATING.
The warranty on our cats, by Federal (current law) is 3 years plus an additional 3 years prorated (not required by same law). Due to extremely low warranty claims (extremely isn't extreme enough), we started a PROMOTION in March of 2012, where the OEM combustor (the one in the stove when new) has a 10 year, 100% warranty. I want to clarify this is an ongoing promotion and until either the law changes or we have an issue, it will continue.
For those of you folllowing the stove design challenge, this was on CBS yesterday:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/calendar-week-of-november-3/
I'm off to NY, so all of you play nice while I head East!
Ceramic substrates do not tolerate as much heat as the stainless. However, even stainless has the threshold temp at which point the wash coat (which is applied before precious metals) can peel away and take the metals with them.
It should be noted the ceramic cats do hold temps longer and more consistently than stainless. Stainless do heat up quicker by an average of 10-15 minutes in our studies. Yet their thinner construction allows them to cool sooner, with less mass.
As for how hot can you burn them and can you over fire, 1800 is very hot to a ceramic cat and 2000 is very hot to a stainless cat, but BOTH work just fine in 99% of applications. If someone lived in SE Alaska and had wood that was not optimal in moisture content due to late harvest, lack of tarps etc., a stainless cat would be slightly better to deal with that moisture. As for reading the temps, years ago we had the standard cat probes with the temperature indicators. Our phones rang off the hook each time the reading dropped 100 degrees. I kid you not, when we went to the active and inactive marks, the calls CEASED. And yes, the thermostat will slam shut if a stove begins to over fire to the point where it may be damaged. Very few owners burn their stoves as hot as possible that often. Our suggestion to burn it on "high" is predicated upon the issue of the build up of creosote in the firebox due to shoulder season heating. A good hot fire can keep both the firebox clean and the combustor clean. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BURN IT ON HIGH FOR AN HOUR EACH WEEK SO LONG AS THE BUILD UP IS NOT ACCUMULATING.
The warranty on our cats, by Federal (current law) is 3 years plus an additional 3 years prorated (not required by same law). Due to extremely low warranty claims (extremely isn't extreme enough), we started a PROMOTION in March of 2012, where the OEM combustor (the one in the stove when new) has a 10 year, 100% warranty. I want to clarify this is an ongoing promotion and until either the law changes or we have an issue, it will continue.
For those of you folllowing the stove design challenge, this was on CBS yesterday:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/calendar-week-of-november-3/
I'm off to NY, so all of you play nice while I head East!
Slam might be a little bit to aggressive a word to use here Chris.
It will slowly close some but from my observations it never closed on 3. Now maybe I did not let it run on 3 long enough for that to happen..but she was hot.
I have seen it close on 2.
Cheers!
I seem to recall something in my manual about the draft control closing in case of a thermostat failure so this leads me to believe there must be some type of fail safe built into the thermostat.
I'm confused why you think that everyone has gone and replaced the OEM cat meter with a numbered one like you have or even a thermocouple. If BK supplied a numbered cat meter then yes, we would know how hot it is and could verify that the stove is operating within the cat manufacturer's parameters. I propose that they decided that this monitoring is not necessary and removed the capability from the production stoves. There are lots of things done in the lab during development.
Last edited:
If the bi-metal coil itself should happen to break it will close.
It will close just from the weight of the flapper when that happens.
Ok. Just seen Rustys pics on the faulty thermostat thread. The pic of the inside of the thermostat was great.
Yes. This. I am impressed as well. Fill her up, fire her off, turn it down when the dog demands to go outside because it's too warm in the house.
Enjoy.
Uh oh. I have opened the bypass door and added wood several times when the CAT was in the active range. After loading, I closed the stove door, let the new wood char a bit, made sure the CAT thermometer was in the active range, and closed the bypass door.
What else would one do???
- Status
Similar threads
