2017-18 Blaze King Performance Thread PART 2 (Everything BK)

First post on here- I've been reading on this forum for almost a year now trying to decide on what stove to buy and how to install. I have a large but well insulated home (just under 3600 Sq ft) and live just outside Anchorage Alaska. I chose to go with the Blaze King, King Ultra. I have to say I would hug this stove if it wasn't so hot all the time. It has been burning 24/7 for about 5 weeks now. It got down to about 5 degrees here last night and the furnace didn't have to kick in even once. I was able to hold about 66 degrees at the point of the house that is furthest form the stove. I try to set the stove to be almost out of wood at the 12 hour mark and I hit the mark 9 times out of ten. I figured it would pay for it's self in 4 to 5 years but if it keeps this performance up it will be more like 2 or 3 years. Anyway, I just wanted to thank all of you guys for posting and sharing your knowledge and experiences for guys like me to soak up.

As mentioned before I only can run at 3 or higher. The t state stays right in the middle of the active zone when I do that for 6-7 hours.

Here is a pic 30 mins after I dial it down not even to 2. You can see the t stat has dropped considerably and continues.

gunpowda said:

I don't see how I can get a 25 hour low burn with the ashford 25. I can't even get to 8 hours.

I would be content to get 12 hours which is less than half of the marketed 25 hr low burn capability.

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These stoves can only hit those long burn times at very low burn rates, so until we get your burn rate issue resolved, you won't be hitting those numbers. Good news is that we're headed into winter, when you will likely be interested in pushing higher burn rates, so we have until spring to sort this out. Excepting those with smaller or very well-insulated homes, those low and slow burn rates which yield the long burn times, are most useful in fall and spring.

I only burn hardwoods, and the last few years it's been almost entirely oak, with some ash and hickory occasionally mixed in. On these woods, I can have active cat to about 30 hours, and a hot coal bed putting off heat to about 36 hours. I believe my Ashford 30's are just a bit bigger than your Ashford 25, but not by a whole lot. I believe BK tested the Ashford 30 to a max burn time of 30 hours on doug fir, perhaps someone here can verify.

Hitting those super-long burn times relies on every single element being perfect. Excellent draft, dry wood, properly sealing bypass. Any one factor a little out of kilter, and it limits how low you can run. You'll get there, we just need to figure out which issue(s) might be affecting your rig. I think BKVP is planning to discuss with you next week?

OK, I have to chime in. I have had my Sirocco 20 for one week now. I am firmly on the side of, “these things are alien technology, as in unlike anything I’ve ever seen or used, and I have used a number of wood stoves.”

It’s so great to have so much control, to be able to turn down the usual blast furnace of heat from a stove. It’s amazing how it can provide good steady, self-regulated heat. It’s been on 24/7, and the electric baseboards all off, since we got it. We have had some days below freezing and I’m getting 20 hrs easily, from six med splits on low mostly but with the recommended 20 mins on high first.

My dad and two uncles who are familiar with wood heating, and are the ones who cut, split, and stack their wood, now want one. This thing is unreal.

Thanks again for all the advice provided here during our decision time. The best thing I learned was about the low-burn capabilities of a cat stove and boy I’m glad we jumped in and tried the BK.

Low burning does make for a mostly dark box, with a wisp of flame here and there, but it sure beats burning hotter, opening windows, and wasting wood when the higher burn isn’t needed. Or worse, deciding not to waste wood and have no fire! And of course we can likely look forward to a normal flame show come winter and higher thermostat settings.

Looking forward to warm cozy shoulder seasons to come. Not to mention winters. Thanks again all. Sorry for what sounds like a raving promotion, but I had to share my feelings! Cheers

moresnow said:

Hey Tegbert.

Hate to say anything but. Are you moisture checking your splits on a freshly split exposed surface? No good just pulling splits from the pile and checking the weathered surface. Likely this has been rehashed a time or 2 already but worth asking. Best of luck.

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Yep that’s what I did. Those splits I picked out and brought them inside for 24 hours before splitting and measuring again.


Lopi Rockport
Blaze King Ashford 25

Tinmanb1b said:

First post on here- I've been reading on this forum for almost a year now trying to decide on what stove to buy and how to install. I have a large but well insulated home (just under 3600 Sq ft) and live just outside Anchorage Alaska. I chose to go with the Blaze King, King Ultra. I have to say I would hug this stove if it wasn't so hot all the time. It has been burning 24/7 for about 5 weeks now. It got down to about 5 degrees here last night and the furnace didn't have to kick in even once. I was able to hold about 66 degrees at the point of the house that is furthest form the stove. I try to set the stove to be almost out of wood at the 12 hour mark and I hit the mark 9 times out of ten. I figured it would pay for it's self in 4 to 5 years but if it keeps this performance up it will be more like 2 or 3 years. Anyway, I just wanted to thank all of you guys for posting and sharing your knowledge and experiences for guys like me to soak up.

Click to expand...

Nigel459 said:

OK, I have to chime in. I have had my Sirocco 20 for one week now. I am firmly on the side of, “these things are alien technology, as in unlike anything I’ve ever seen or used, and I have used a number of wood stoves.”

It’s so great to have so much control, to be able to turn down the usual blast furnace of heat from a stove. It’s amazing how it can provide good steady, self-regulated heat. It’s been on 24/7, and the electric baseboards all off, since we got it. We have had some days below freezing and I’m getting 20 hrs easily, from six med splits on low mostly but with the recommended 20 mins on high first.

My dad and two uncles who are familiar with wood heating, and are the ones who cut, split, and stack their wood, now want one. This thing is unreal.

Thanks again for all the advice provided here during our decision time. The best thing I learned was about the low-burn capabilities of a cat stove and boy I’m glad we jumped in and tried the BK.

Low burning does make for a mostly dark box, with a wisp of flame here and there, but it sure beats burning hotter, opening windows, and wasting wood when the higher burn isn’t needed. Or worse, deciding not to waste wood and have no fire! And of course we can likely look forward to a normal flame show come winter and higher thermostat settings.

Looking forward to warm cozy shoulder seasons to come. Not to mention winters. Thanks again all. Sorry for what sounds like a raving promotion, but I had to share my feelings! Cheers

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I'm in the same boat as you guys, I didn't know a wood stove could be this good. For me it really moved my wood stove from being something nice to enjoy on cozy evening with the family, to my primary heat source even though I have a high efficiency NG furnace too. It's so easy to keep up with the BK compared to any other woodstove, I can just put wood in whenever it works for me 10/12/20/24/30+ hours, don't every have to worry about the hassle of relighting a fire as I'm leaving for work or busy with the kids.

SuperJ said:

I can just put wood in whenever it works for me 10/12/20/24/30+ hours, don't every have to worry about the hassle of relighting a fire as I'm leaving for work or busy with the kids.

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Even though I am on BK heating season 3, I still enjoy the "wood freedom" of reloading at any time convenient for me and never having a cool or too hot house. No more banking coals, E-W vs N-S, scrounging for hardwood burning "right to left", fiddling with dampers just to be warm in the morning. An 8 hour burn used to be a good challenge. BK burn times could be rated in days not just hours. Even the smallest BK, the 20 series, can be loaded 2X a day at the users convenience. Love it.

Yesterday's burning trick banking (one way to do it):

Loaded my first sap-sicle of the season tonight. Its -10 and looking for -20.

The split has about the same cross section as a 2x3, with an end to end vein of sap one quarter by three quarters inch. The splits i have checked this year are running 12 to 13% MC, very sweet, all spruce.

Standard hot reload, active combustor waiting for the new load to char before i flipped the lever.

Wow, cat food. It was awesome watching dry sap turn into flaming foam and a black plume with the near end of the combustor lit up like the las vegas strip.

Next time i fill the rack in the garage i am going to pull a dozen or so more sap-sicles out of the stacks and get them a little closer to their ultimate destiny.

What have we got, three more weeks of autumn?

Being that theres not much to do with these stoves I figured I was gona top off the garage wood rack today, and then hang some xmas lights on the house. I got a good deal last year at Walmart, 125ft of led soft white icicle lights for $40.00, these aren't those freezing cold white lights.

Ok guys, One of my problems was somewhat solved but now I'm unsure of my next step. I posted some pics (I believe they are in the now closed thread) of our very crappy but supposed to be professional install. My 2 problems were a slight smoke smell once stove was turned down and smoke coming out of firebox on hot reloads only. No problem on coals. So on a different note but somewhat related I bought myself an early Christmas present, a fan kit. So now with fan running on low the smoke smell multiplied big time. Very worrisome. Then came a 2 day power outage. No smoke smell what so ever, also no ceiling fan running! So it's been over a week now with the fan kit on low, no ceiling fan and no smoke smell. Very happy about that. So that brings me to this morning where I still had enough logs to produce flame but I wanted to top off and head out for the day. I open the thermostat to full for a few minutes, open the bypass for a few more and then very very slowly crack the door, wait a bit and then try to open it and that's when I get the smoke coming out. It seems to dissipate once I get a few logs in but it;s a fine line between just a bit of smoke and running to shut the fire alarms off. My wood is anywhere from 18 to 25 right now. Not ideal but it's what I have. Could this be causing my problem or do you still think I should add more chimney? I'm figuring I'm at 12 or 13' with two 45's.

Bullyboy said:

I open the thermostat to full for a few minutes, open the bypass for a few more and then very very slowly crack the door, wait a bit and then try to open it and that's when I get the smoke coming out. It seems to dissipate once I get a few logs in but it;s a fine line between just a bit of smoke and running to shut the fire alarms off. My wood is anywhere from 18 to 25 right now. Not ideal but it's what I have. Could this be causing my problem or do you still think I should add more chimney? I'm figuring I'm at 12 or 13' with two 45's.

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I think you have a height problem. It sounds like you're doing everything right, and that 12 feet of chimney is an effective 10 feet, with those two 45's. The 45's are much better than 90's, which reduce effective height by 2' - 3' EACH, but they're not completely penalty-free.

The procedure for minimum smoke spill is to undo the latch, and just crack the door open a half inch. Let it suck some air for a few seconds, to get draft really kicking. Then open it an inch or two, pause, and then slowly open the rest of the way. It sounds like you're already doing something pretty close to this.

On my stove with the shorter chimney, I get draft reversal when the chimney is cold, and draft stall when it gets too cool. It sounds like you're dealing with a bit of that. I'd find a cheap and temporary way to add 3 feet for a few days, and see how it performs. If that solves your issue(s), then invest in a permanent solution.

Poindexter said:

Single digit MCs are no fun ones.

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What problems do single digit moisture contents givw you?

Should i be worried about a leak somewhere for the ceiling fan being able to create the smoke smell?

This might help: After the 20 minute "load char" slowly turn the thermostat down. While turning it down listen for the tap noise the damper plate makes when it shuts then open it slightly. If it is quiet, you can hear the combustion air flowing. Let it go for ~10 minutes then turn it down some more. Do this until the stove is where you want to be heat output wise.

Suddenly turning the thermostat down produces an extremely "rich" (not enough oxygen to fully oxidize it) mixture. This is extra smelly. Back in the days of the carburetor, a rich mixture was evidenced by black smoke. With time, the stove will cool and so will the wood, causing it to evaporate more slowly and the fuel to oxygen ratio will self balance resulting in much less or zero smoke smell.

Tell me if this works for you.

Yup, Been doing that since day one. I usually take close to an hour to bring it down to low and slow. Roughly every 15 or 20 mins I'll turn it down a bit.

I wonder if a rapid turn-down might cause the firebox to go into the positive? This would the reason for smoke smell. I took my pressure readings via the thermostat hole, the wrong side of the cat, possibly. I wonder if the dynamic restriction of the cat permits the firebox to go positive at turn down? To prove this I must, somehow, access the interior. When I get time I will drill a hole in the ash plug and test this hypothesis. When firebox combustion gasses enter the cat, they are greatly heated and expand, possibly causing a resistance of flow and a positive firebox.

To lessen smoke roll out, wait longer. I used to get up in the morning, turn the Tstat to high, open the bypass and then go make coffee. Seriously. Still do that, even on 15 feet of stack at -30.

Let it run wide open in bypass for 5 to 7 measured minutes. If you are still getting smoke rollout, shut the door immediately, leave it at wide open tstat in bypass and go take a shower.

Once you have been in wide open bypass for 30 measured minutes, if you are still getting smoke roll out, you dont have enough fuel burning fast enough to make enough heat to establish enough draft with whatever stack height you got at whatever the outdoor ambient is. At that point just get the reload done.

Getting the door open without smoke roll out gets easier and faster as the coal bed gets bigger, stack gets taller and outside temps get colder.

ben94122 said:

What problems do single digit moisture contents givw you?

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Fuel that is too moist, greater than about 16% MC at my place, needs higher throttle settings to keep the cat active throughout the burn.

Fuel that is too dry, under about 12% at my place, just vanishes in the firebox and my plume is unclean. I think the smoke comes off it so thick that the combustor cant get it all, so by by to long burn times, and wasted potential btus going up the stack.

Poindexter said:

Fuel that is too moist, greater than about 16% MC at my place, needs higher throttle settings to keep the cat active throughout the burn.

Fuel that is too dry, under about 12% at my place, just vanishes in the firebox and my plume is unclean. I think the smoke comes off it so thick that the combustor cant get it all, so by by to long burn times, and wasted potential btus going up the stack.

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My Doug fir stacks measure 13-14% and after a few cords I will be into a lot of very resinous sapsicle fuel. I should be in great shape then?

So the bk system handles lots of dry sapsicles well?

Poindexter said:

To lessen smoke roll out, wait longer

Click to expand...

Poindexter said:

Once you have been in wide open bypass for 30 measured minutes

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Ok, I'll try that first. we are hitting warmer temps for the next few days so it might be awhile before a hot reload. I'm tempted to try tonight but the thermostat is pretty much at 12oclock and I think it would involve opening some windows.

Bullyboy said:

Should i be worried about a leak somewhere for the ceiling fan being able to create the smoke smell?

Click to expand...

The smell comes from the loading door seal. While running, place tour nose just above the door. In my experience, the hinge side smells more than the door side. When it is light, I don't smell it at all in the house.

If you get on a ladder you can smell it at the ceiling as it is very hot and rises. The fan just pushed down to where you are. Somehow, it dissipates.

Since replacing the door gasket smoke smell is no longer an issue. I can make it produce smell, but I can avoid it too.

My chimney is 17', no bends.

@Highbeam i am looking to find out this year.

What i am looking for is how much fuel i can burn how fast for max short term heat output, while maintaining a clean plume.

It will be a moving target since the combustor is slowly, constantly degrading.

I know i can get a lot of fast heat by loading a boxful of regular cordwood at 8-9-10% MC, but that overwhelms the cats capacity, i see wasted btus in the black part of my stack plume.

This is only really an issue for me when daytime highs are in the -30s and overnight lows are in the -40s.

In that regimen i can load a box full before i leave for work. If i set the tsat on high i come home to a cold stove, if i dial it back to medium i usually have pretty good coals and the combstor indicator at about the halfway mark in the inactive zone.

What i want is the whole 1200 sqft warm for the wife when she gets home 2 hours after i do.

One key to warming the whole space is to get the combustor active and get the deck fans running, so i tend to leave the tstat at medium and come home to a warmer cat, so i can the cat active quicker and get the deck fans running sooner.

So i get home at 345 and need to warm the house, all 1200sqft, 10dF before 600. The cat is half inactive, but i got coals.

So bypass, full throttle, come back in 5-10 minutes. Open the door, push everything back, rake the coals forward, load N/S to expose max wood and min bark to the coals at the front, let that take, push the door to just cracked and let it rage a bit, latch the loading door when the flue gas temp hits 1000dF or a bit before, wait for the cat to finish heating to active still in bypass...and here is the moment.

I would not, and do not, endorse using flaming sap balls to bring the cat up to temp. Intuitively, rich burning fuel like that needs to go into a hot stove with a cat hot enough to be active when the food hits it, or your just making creosote.

Brb

@Highbeam continued, instead of just flipping the lever to bypass and walking away, that moment where I turned aside is, I think, an ideal time to add a little sap. For one thing, it has a bunch of energy in it. The other, my local BK dealer says to not start the deck fans until the combustor is well up in the active zone.

I have good luck with maybe adding a tablespoon of sap dust and small chunks at this point. Just open the door, toss the spoonful onto the hot coals at the front, latch the loading door, flip the bypass lever to engaged, watch the needle spool up and start the deck fans.

When I had less control of my seasoning process and was burning at 12-16% I have tossed in a baseball sized chunk of sap at this point without appreciable damage to the stove.

The trouble with both of these approaches is surface area burning per unit time. With the spoonful of dust, the surface area is high, the pulse is strong and short. With the baseball sized chunk the starting surface area is very high and the pulse is strong, but it decays and gets weaker as the combustor gets hotter and better able to handle it.

So this year I am fooling with full length 16" length sap-sicles. I actually set out to see if I could burn barkless spruce this year, Chihuahua spruce I have been calling it (no bark), so as I had wood delivered I was splitting the bark and sap wood off the bigger pieces and stacking the Chihuahua spruce in one area and the little tiny splits of bark and sapwood in a different area. I had to process 4 cords of spruce to collect one cord of chihuahua spruce. So that idea was a nonstarter and I am still getting flakes of spruce bark on my wife's cream colored wall to wall carpet in the stove room. But I got a bunch of small splits that are essentially all sap wood.

My first impression is the sap release from these little guys is better suited to the system. I set one E/W on the coal bed at the front yesterday at "that moment". It started bubbling and smoking out both ends pretty quick, the needle spooled on up, got the deck fans going, fire burned through the split to the sap vein and I got the pulse of fuel into a very active instead of a barely active combustor.

My impression is if I see black in my exhaust plume I have too much sap in the firebox. Next I need to rig up a mirror or a camera so I can see the stack plume without having to stop to put on all the gear required to go outdoors at -30.

Nigel459 said:

OK, I have to chime in. I have had my Sirocco 20 for one week now. I am firmly on the side of, “these things are alien technology, as in unlike anything I’ve ever seen or used, and I have used a number of wood stoves.”

It’s so great to have so much control, to be able to turn down the usual blast furnace of heat from a stove. It’s amazing how it can provide good steady, self-regulated heat. It’s been on 24/7, and the electric baseboards all off, since we got it. We have had some days below freezing and I’m getting 20 hrs easily, from six med splits on low mostly but with the recommended 20 mins on high first.

My dad and two uncles who are familiar with wood heating, and are the ones who cut, split, and stack their wood, now want one. This thing is unreal.

Thanks again for all the advice provided here during our decision time. The best thing I learned was about the low-burn capabilities of a cat stove and boy I’m glad we jumped in and tried the BK.

Low burning does make for a mostly dark box, with a wisp of flame here and there, but it sure beats burning hotter, opening windows, and wasting wood when the higher burn isn’t needed. Or worse, deciding not to waste wood and have no fire! And of course we can likely look forward to a normal flame show come winter and higher thermostat settings.

Looking forward to warm cozy shoulder seasons to come. Not to mention winters. Thanks again all. Sorry for what sounds like a raving promotion, but I had to share my feelings! Cheers

Click to expand...

What were you running before the BK?

kf6hap said:

The smell comes from the loading door seal

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Honestly, I know everyone's perception is different but I can't detect the smell at all around the door. The only place I smell it is directly above the cat gauge.