Help Comparing a Harman TL300 and a BlazeKing

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That's confusing, you do need a cat for the really long burns, and if you need more heat you can always turn them up. The cat stoves offer those extremely long and low burns but they also are able to run hard, whatever you want!

True, when you need to run a stove hard the non-cats are quite efficient. That's their specialty but unfortunately it is also the only thing that most of them are good at. This Harman technology, at least in Oak's case, is exceptional.
I shut my air all the way down and this stove runs for a very long time exceeding 10 hrs. many times.. I can't speak for the other stoves but I can on the T-5 and it has surprised me many times.. Didn't you get long burns from your previous stove?

Ray
 
I shut my air all the way down and this stove runs for a very long time exceeding 10 hrs. many times.. I can't speak for the other stoves but I can on the T-5 and it has surprised me many times.. Didn't you get long burns from your previous stove?

Ray

I think "long" means different things to different people. My Lopi Endeavor would have plenty of coals(no meaningful heat) for a relight after 10-12 hours and that was a 2.2cu' firebox, my BKP can throw meaningful heat for 24 hours until we start getting colder temps. I haven't filled it yet during the shoulder season but I'm seeing 24 hours easy between reloads on Scotch Pine with enough left for easy light off.
 
I shut my air all the way down and this stove runs for a very long time exceeding 10 hrs. many times.. I can't speak for the other stoves but I can on the T-5 and it has surprised me many times.. Didn't you get long burns from your previous stove?

Ray

You're happy with 10 hours and your stove shut down to low? That is anything but "very long". My previous stove was a heritage non-cat that I measured at just about 1.5 CF. I could get an overnight burn, 10 hours max, pretty easily after I got the stove mastered. 10 hours is a joke now. I get more than 12 hours with three small splits. My small break in fire lasted 12 hours. Being free of the burn time shackles is very pleasant, no more stuffing the stove full at night just to be sure that the house stays warm.

The t5 is an excellent stove, firebox design really, that would have been my non-cat choice if I didn't decide to take a leap and move to cat technology. I had a t5 all priced out and sized up to fit the hearth. I do miss the nice fire view of the non-cats. I have been told that if I ever need to use the higher output settings of the BK that the coals should at least glow red if not give a small flame. There are some drawbacks to big ugly cat stoves but long burn times and a range of available output settings is not one of them. They look bad, cost a lot, and don't have the same flameshow.
 
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You do not need an exceptional amount of draft with the harman,just adequate. Iv had it on 2 different 25Ft masonry chimneys, no insulated flues any anything fancy.
 
How do you get the heat from the cat? Is it located in such a way that it does no go up the chimney?
 
How do you get the heat from the cat? Is it located in such a way that it does no go up the chimney?

The cat is at the front of a rectangular box, and the flue collar is on top. Not really sure how, but the cat can be glowing brightly, 1500°+, and the flue temp will be under 400°.
 
I do miss the nice fire view of the non-cats. I have been told that if I ever need to use the higher output settings of the BK that the coals should at least glow red if not give a small flame. There are some drawbacks to big ugly cat stoves but long burn times and a range of available output settings is not one of them. They look bad, cost a lot, and don't have the same flameshow.

I'm surprised this is the case with the BK's, Highbeam. With the primary air opened up half way or more, my stove looks almost the same whether the cat is engaged or not. Same flame show, just a little more lazy with the cat engaged. I don't think the uneducated would even notice the difference. Mine doesn't go into "smoulder" mode until I'm down around 1/4 on the primary air control.

Have you ever tried running your stove on max heat output? Maybe you just have way too much stove to open up the air and let'er rip?
 
The cat is at the front of a rectangular box, and the flue collar is on top. Not really sure how, but the cat can be glowing brightly, 1500°+, and the flue temp will be under 400°.
400Deg flue temp sounds good and is evidence of heat not being wasted. The harman is similar with the fire dome glowing at 1500+ and low flue temps as well. Much more heat coming from the heat exchanger around the firedome.
 
Does the Harman put out a low even heat throughout the whole burn with a full load or does it seem to release most of it's heat at the beginning of the burn cycle? This is what impressed me most from the Blaze King, it can throttle down and keep the outgassing to a minimum during the first part of the burn and seems to stretch it out over a good 20+ hours. So far it looks like the t-stat keeps things under control no matter what the draft conditions may be. The flexibility of reloading anywhere from 12 to 30 hours is also such a nice thing to have when your a 24/7 burner.

Flue temps are very low and I wonder as well how a 1500 degree cat near the flue collar doesn't relate to higher flue temps but it doesn't. I've read where other downdraft stoves like the VC Neverburns had very high flue temps, Harman must of figured something out to keep that heat in the stove better han VC?
 
Once the afterburn lights ,you can throttle it down to the point where there is no visible flame in the firebox except for the wood gasses burning brightly where the gasses enter the firedome, If the wood is piled in front of the firedome entrance its hard to see, but i purposely stack the wood as to make a small tunnel so i can see right to the back of the stove. The ceramic glows cherry red and the fresh air holes look like a dozen little cutting torches. Its a show i havent been able dulicate with any other stove. Ill try to get a decent picture.
 
Some of the new model blaze kings actually look pretty decent. The Sirocco, looks very nice and the royal gaurdian is not bad either. The Briar wood has some HUGE viewing door. I was wondering when someone would enhance one of the best aspects of wood burning "the view"
The way a stove looks is very important to me.
 
The royal guardian and the briar, if I recall correctly, are part of BK's non-cat line. They aren't new and just aren't very popular. Without a cat or stat, the BK stoves are pretty average.

I had to run the princess stove at half throttle last night for a few hours to bring the house up to temp. I had stopped loading the fire over the weekend since the house was too warm and house temps had dropped to low 60s. For the first few hours of the fire I ran at my normal low throttle for max burntime but the house was not gaining temperature quickly enough for the women. At half throttle (number 2 on the stat) there was no steady flame, only an occasional burst of secondary flamage but the stove added 8 degrees to the house in those two hours so output went way up. Going from modern non-cat to BK is like night and day as far as flameshow.

We have a local harman dealer. Harman and quadrafire. I believe I looked inside a 300 when trying to turn the wife on to a steel pedestal stove. The harmans really do have a coal stove look to them. Pretty tall.
 
THe harman 300i insert is downright gorgeous.
 
Legs on a fireplace insert?
Since the insert is seemingly based on the TL-300 but as an insert, it shows that a pedestal is not needed. I am assuming that the large ash pan has been removed for the inert. I would think the same thing could take place for the free standing stove.
 
Does the Harman put out a low even heat throughout the whole burn with a full load or does it seem to release most of it's heat at the beginning of the burn cycle? This is what impressed me most from the Blaze King, it can throttle down and keep the outgassing to a minimum during the first part of the burn and seems to stretch it out over a good 20+ hours. So far it looks like the t-stat keeps things under control no matter what the draft conditions may be. The flexibility of reloading anywhere from 12 to 30 hours is also such a nice thing to have when your a 24/7 burner.

The TL300 has an extremely even burn time. While cat stoves do too, if you compare a graph of cat stoves to the TL300, the line is more even with the Harman (slightly higher at the beginnging and lower at the end of the burn for cat stoves). You can check out what I mean here: hearthnhome.com/downloads/brochures/TL300.pdf

I'm the one that had an open tee in the chimney. We had an old Baker coal stove and decided we wanted to stop burning coal and go with wood. We bought the TL300 mainly because we are in a situation where we have to load it up in the morning and then are gone all day (so needed something with long burn times). Burn times of 12-16 hours are common with this stove (it depends a lot on the type/size of wood).

We had it installed and the company we bought it from never bothered to make sure our chimney was ok for a downdraft stove. We couldn't get that darn thing to heat even our family room, let alone the entire house. We had the company out to check the draft in the stove, check the moisture on the wood, etc. (BTW, Harman told us if the wood is too dry, the stove does not work as well.) The dealer just left us hanging.

It was only because of this forum that we figured out what the problem was. The company that had installed our new chimney for the coal stove left the entire system open -- no cap on the bottom and not joined properly where the pipe from the house met the chimney. We had a new liner put in and what a difference! The stove worked exactly the way the dealer and company said it should. It does take a nice bed of coals (we can usually go from cold start to secondary burn in about an hour) to run properly. But once that is established, you just pop the top open (the top load is awesome BTW), load it up, let things char for about 5-10 minutes, and close the damper. It hums along with a stove top temp of about 350 degrees and pumps out a whole lot of heat.

We had our chimney cleaned this past May after a year+ and there was nothing there. The sweep said whatever we were doing to keep doing it as things were super clean.

The low emissions, huge ash pan (we can get by dumping every two weeks), and long burn times (I have heard people say they've had hot coals after 24 hours) were the reason we chose the TL 300. The fact that it's easy to load, holds a lot of wood, and leaves us with a much larger wood pile at the end of the season are added bonuses.
 
27 hours once still enough hot coals to throw in some wood and open the air.
redhorse :have you used he fireplace feature or the roasting basket?
 
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