Progress Hybrid vs Blaze King Cat Stove

We have some good dealers that spend time here but in general, for most things, dealerships employ salesmen to sell the products. I have never met an owner, manage, or salesman with much knowledge about their product. Now the installers and techs have real experience and those guys can be sharp. The days of a "good" dealership being important are long gone.

BrowningBar - That Regency dealer to whom you spoke who didn't like cats because none of his customers had ever replaced a cat.....may be a dimwitted question, but does he not like them because he doesn't make a subsequent sale, or because he thinks people run them with a non-functioning cat? I'd think an awful lot of people would buy replacement cats on line, because they can probably be bought cheaper and doing so saves a trip to the stove store, where one doesn't go on a regular basis.

He didn't like them because people ran them without functioning catalysts.

That's one of those problems it is hard to remediate.

About a week ago I talked to the guy I sold my rebuilt Dutchwest to and asked him how he was getting along with it. He said he really liked it but he thought he could use one a little bit bigger. Than proceeded to tell me he really didn't see what the point in the catalyst was, said it was to much work to make sure it was going so he only used it for about a week and now he just leaves the bypass damper open and shuts it down tight for a low burn. Point is I can see how people wouldn't replace the catalyst but that is going to be a hard problem to remedy.

Hell, this is also common with old stoves like the Vigilant. Many people didn't bother closing the damper to burn the stove in down-draft mode. Which made the Vigilant incredibly inefficient.

Bottom line is; you can never underestimate laziness or stupidity. A non-cat stove that isn't a downdraft design is the simplest stove to operate and will cause the least amount of problems for most wood burners.

You can tell people all you want that a cat stove is easy to use. But, if they aren't willing to put in the effort, it will not work for them. I mean, the majority of wood burners out there don't even dry their wood and you are asking them to understand the internal workings of a cat stove. It's not going to happen.

But, the F5100 and the King aren't aimed at the average wood burner. They are aimed at a specific audience. How big is that audience? Not sure.

In a conversation with Jotul tech support last year, in which he claimed their old Firelight 12's and Series 8 cat stoves were two of the best performing stoves the company ever manufactured, I had asked why they don't make cat stoves anymore. The above is almost verbatim the answer I received.

Then he said something I didn't understand about, "if Washington passes the emissions standards that have been proposed, we'll be forced back into catalytic designs, since there's no other way to hit those numbers." I'm still not sure exactly what he meant about that, but I have always assumed this is the reason we're suddenly seeing several manufacturers release hybrid designs.

I think he was just being overly dramatic. Because there are some non-cat stoves that have lower emissions numbers than cat stoves.

BBar, have you heard back from your dealers? Not a peep from mine yet.

No, but the dealer I contacted was out on a roof helping out on an install when I spoke with him. So, I wasn't expecting a quick return on the info.

There are proposed emission standards that are different and, I have heard, will require catalytic or other (new) technology..