Blaze King Princess Insert Install Today! (Pics Heavy!!!)

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Fair enough. With a high of 61F today and mid 60s through the weekend, the burning days are numbered anyway. :(
 
You need DRY wood to run low. If you let it burn hot long enough to evaporate the moisture out, you can get by. I wouldn't close that bypass too soon. Moisture and thermal shock will kill the cat.

Personally, I wouldn't burn much at this point. I know it's hard to resist, but I wouldn't want to ruin the $300 cat playing around.

x2, with unseasoned wood I would burn it hot with active flames for an hour before I tried to go low. I wouldn't dream of burning 5 month seasoned wood in my stove. I have trouble using wood less than 2 years seasoned anymore. ;lol
 
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Ok, so it would have to be well charred and black before going low with my wet wood. Good to know. But yeah, I think I'm done, but damn do I want to play!!! (ironic part is I bought a stove that shouldn't take much "playing" once I learn what to do and have dry wood. haha.)

Time to go order the blue stone stairs tread to extend the hearth anyway.
 
Ick, that looks like wet wood with the way that the creosote appears to have been dripping and running down the glass. 5 months aged and those 5 months were winter months. It will work, the cat manufacturer says it will, but you will need to run a higher than normal draft setting and the stove's output will be reduced.

Reloading the relatively hot firebox with green wood (or any wood) requires an extra step. I generally reload after the cat has dropped to inactive. You were doing fine by loading what you did when you did. You didn't mention disengaging the cat to reload but I'll assume you did. As soon as that fresh load was loaded the smoke being produced was too cold for the cat, the cat thermometer is pretty slow to respond but if it could react faster it would have dipped down into the inactive zone right away. You should have left that fresh load in there until the cat meter again went to the active zone and then you could have engaged the cat and went on with life. Since your cat meter is slow to respond, the only thing you can do is wait until you see it climbing within the active zone. The slow meter won't climb until the fresh load is getting moving.

Pretty crazy to actually remove the burning logs. I've never done that.

Don't let this discourage you. Burn if you're cold. Just know that you're burning poor fuel so you'll need to pay special attention to the cat temp. I would go a bit farther and actually make sure that the cat temp probe is well into the active zone before engaging the cat.
 
No discouragement at all, just reality and I thank everyone for guiding me along the way. :)

So last night when I was burning kiln dried wood the installer brought with him, I would just add a piece here or there and watch it go up in flames. Fun to watch. I would not disengage the CAT then.

But I see your point about the wet wood, that appears to be exactly what happened where the cold/wet wood puked all over the cat and the cat could keep up. I did not disengage the CAT, but I should of.

Once I noticed the smoke rolling inside the firebox I disengaged the CAT and the smoked cleared very quickly, then I ran the stove on high with CAT disengaged until the CAT probe was well into the active zone and the wood was well charred and rolling fire.

So hopefully come this Fall my wood will be in a better state and I assume with dry wood I won't have to disengage the CAT each time I reload..... or is that always the practice I should follow (disengage and wait until wood is fully charred before engaging the CAT well into active zone) wet or dry wood?

Thanks!
 
So hopefully come this Fall my wood will be in a better state and I assume with dry wood I won't have to disengage the CAT each time I reload..... or is that always the practice I should follow (disengage and wait until wood is fully charred before engaging the CAT well into active zone) wet or dry wood?

Thanks!

The cat gets disengaged any time you add wood, if you don't the hot cat is getting shocked with room temp. air which is not good for the cat. Some feel as long as the cat is active once the stove is loaded they can close the bypass. Myself I always burn the new load for a while before closing the bypass.

It's best to load these stoves in cycles, don't add a piece or two of wood when you want. Load it full or as full as you want/need for a given amount of time and don't open the door again until the stove is down to coals.
 
Yes, every time the door is opened the cat must be disengaged. Did you get an owner's manual? It actually is pretty clear on most of this.

I have never immediately re-engaged the cat after loading, instead I wait until I see the cat meter climbing and in the active zone. After while, it becomes very automatic.

Oh and that load a piece here and there thing is not how this stove (well, any modern stove) was designed to run. It is meant as a batch burner. Full loads every time and use the stat to adjust output until the stove is out of fuel.

Despite the poor fuel and partial load, it was good to see that you easily made it overnight with such a huge coal pile. It gets much easier with an ash bed, drier fuel, and full loads.
 
Yeah, definitely batch is the way to go (in fact, that was selling point to the wife, hypothetically less dust with less opening of the door), was just playing around last night for the light show.

I was happy with the overnight, but I fully realize it should be easy for most stoves to go overnight in this type of weather (60s during the day).

Now back to scounging more wood and resplitting what I had so it is as dry as possible!
 
From all the info on here about these stoves, overnight should be a no brainer with dry wood.
A day or longer shouldn't be too difficult either.
Dry wood, Dry wood, Dry wood.....
Wait until the year after next, when you've got nice dry wood (unless it's oak)......load the stove at the start of the season, and it'll just burn until spring.==c
 
I hope to do just that. ~5mo old wood don't burn so good on the lowest setting, who would of thought? :p
 
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I was happy with the overnight, but I fully realize it should be easy for most stoves to go overnight in this type of weather (60s during the day).

You may be surprised. The outside temperature has little to do with it, most stoves are non-cats and most non-cats at the miniumum air setting are not able to burn overnight.
 
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