2016-17 Blaze King Performance Thread (Everything BK)

[showrguy]

The BK probes are not sealed but they fit the hole snug to reduce any fresh air draw. How much clearance does the probe have to the thermometer hole?

Maybe have a bushing machined to take up the room and hold the probe?

You are right, they are not sealed, but they do have a flat metal washer type thingy on me that would block any airflow..
The Condar probe just slides on in and some air could get around it,,,,I think..
Btw , found a box that should work..

 

[Marshy]

You are right, they are not sealed, but they do have a flat metal washer type thingy on me that would block any airflow..
The Condar probe just slides on in and some air could get around it,,,,I think..
Btw , found a box that should work..

Are you replacing the BK thermometer with the probe? Maybe you can use the fiber water off the thermometer? Might need a little bushing tuned with a set screw and a shoulder on it so it can hold the probe to the right depth and seal against that washer..?

10-4 on the box.

 

[Highbeam]

Its not that my lowest is to hot, the temp is perfect actually, it just sometimes it stalls at night. Like i said the cat will be active for hrs before i go to bed. Its when i wake up she will be inactive, not to sound like palluter but the stove is still pumping out heat 300+ heat amd i somt see smoke coming out the chimney at all.

What im saying is just the slightist adjustment makes the stove go super hot, this is what im not understanding or am adjustingthe t stat too much.

Or maybe i should ask this question. When you guys adjust your T stats what type of extra heat output are you getting? Im going from the N of normal to then R i am looking at 200 degree inscrease give or take. This is done with a new load typically the same amount of wood, not sure of the species but i can say this test can be done over and over and over with the same results.

If the cat stalls at night then your stat setting is too low. Move it up in small increments (half letters) until this doesn't happen anymore. If moving the stat up to a setting that prevents stall overnight is too hot for your home then your stove is oversized for what you are trying to do.

First off, get rid of the stove top meter. They are not functional on a cat stove that has a single hot spot above the cat. As much as I hate to say so, I would rather you use the cat meter than a stove top meter when judging stove output.

Then, yes, you are making huge stat changes. Move the stat by small amounts, like from the middle of the N to the space between the N and the O. Half letters. Very small changes in stat settings make a big difference. Be patient and allow the stove to reach the new setpoint after a change in stat position. This could take hours. My low (24 hour burn) setting is at the O. My high setting for 12 hour burns is at the midpoint of the normal range which is halfway between the R and the M. The entire "normal" operating range for me exists within 1.5 letters. You need to get your head down there and be precise. I know that some folks in extreme climates use a wider range of stat settings and every stove is different but I think we all can agree that small changes make a big difference.

The stove is supposed to be super hot, be patient.

 

[dh1989]

I reloaded on a hot coal bed this morning. Box full of ~15% MC red oak. I saw the brown icicles on my cap this morning so I closed the bypass down and let it run with the thermostat on high while I ran out to snowblow the driveway and path to the wood pile. I returned to a paint curing smell and the highest reading my stove top meter has ever shown. The IR thermometer reading was taken right over the cat which is where the stove top meter is. The magic BK thermostat had dialed the fire back but there were some amazing secondaries going on. I saw that the cat flame shield was glowing orange and the horizontal bar in the middle of the stove (that blocks the wood from jamming the bypass) had a very slight glow. Needless to say no more icicles on the cap and the house got warm fast.

 

[Marshy]

I reloaded on a hot coal bed this morning. Box full of ~15% MC red oak. I saw the brown icicles on my cap this morning so I closed the bypass down and let it run with the thermostat on high while I ran out to snowblow the driveway and path to the wood pile. I returned to a paint curing smell and the highest reading my stove top meter has ever shown. The IR thermometer reading was taken right over the cat which is where the stove top meter is. The magic BK thermostat had dialed the fire back but there were some amazing secondaries going on. I saw that the cat flame shield was glowing orange and the horizontal bar in the middle of the stove (that blocks the wood from jamming the bypass) had a very slight glow. Needless to say no more icicles on the cap and the house got warm fast.


View attachment 192098
View attachment 192099

Nice! 830F is hotter than I could get my King so far. The difference could be you are burning oak and I have been burning red maple. I'm surprised the BK thermometer didn't peg higher though. Mine was just about off scale and not at 800F

 

[Marshy]

@dh1989, how much clearance do you have behind that stove? Doesn't look like its enough from your user image. EEEK

 

[Niko]

If the cat stalls at night then your stat setting is too low. Move it up in small increments (half letters) until this doesn't happen anymore. If moving the stat up to a setting that prevents stall overnight is too hot for your home then your stove is oversized for what you are trying to do.

First off, get rid of the stove top meter. They are not functional on a cat stove that has a single hot spot above the cat. As much as I hate to say so, I would rather you use the cat meter than a stove top meter when judging stove output.

Then, yes, you are making huge stat changes. Move the stat by small amounts, like from the middle of the N to the space between the N and the O. Half letters. Very small changes in stat settings make a big difference. Be patient and allow the stove to reach the new setpoint after a change in stat position. This could take hours. My low (24 hour burn) setting is at the O. My high setting for 12 hour burns is at the midpoint of the normal range which is halfway between the R and the M. The entire "normal" operating range for me exists within 1.5 letters. You need to get your head down there and be precise. I know that some folks in extreme climates use a wider range of stat settings and every stove is different but I think we all can agree that small changes make a big difference.
The stove is supposed to be super hot, be patient.

Ok i will do it in very small incraments like you say amd test that out. Thanks a lot!

 

[Ashful]

What you are describing sounds vastly different than a cap that you would typically put on a masonry chimney with a 8x8 clay flue.
Here is what I have.
View attachment 192089


And this is what it sounds like you have.
View attachment 192090

You can see three of my four chimneys in this photo. They all have the same flagstone on corbels setup:



Here is a close-up of the largest one, with six corbels:



The brick corbels have been raised, and redone since this photo (the first guy did a sloppy job), but here's the cage. It is the same one you show in your first photo, but I ripped the lid off, and pinched it under the flagstone:

 

[Parallax]

This year, I've been having much better luck with my Ashford 30 than I did a while back. Our wood supply is nice and dry (15% or lower) and the door seal has been fixed so we no longer have a problem with smoke leakage. The draft is still so-so which means we have to be careful on reloads. But a new cap that doesn't allow down-drafts and a draw collar have helped substantially. We've also gotten much better at operating the darn thing, knowing when to reload and when to keep the door closed, and how to do it in a way that presents the smallest chance of leakage into the house.

I have one remaining question. We get chimney smoke for a very long time after starting a burn. Today I noticed substantial smoke about four hours in. Given that our wood is dry, it shouldn't be steam (and it seems a bit brown). There's no problem with the temperature falling prematurely out of the cat range; we're getting good, long burns. How long should it smoke for? Is this normal? If not, what could be causing it and what should I do? Thanks.

 

[kf6hap]

Are you sure it is smoke?

 

[Woody Stover]

don't see going from 45 deg to vertical making much difference. I do agree with the double wall. I'm going to do it, but need to finalize the set up….and you guys are making rethink it.

I'm just guessing, but I think what you have there vs. straight up and two 90, might be six of one, half-dozen of the other. The only way to be sure would be to measure the actual draft in both setups.

A masonry chimney with no insulated liner is a different animal than what you are likely use to.

Yeah, the animal that could fit might be a python, then you have a real problem.

had creosote problems, but, I blame it on the fact I only season my wood 1 year.

Two will be better, and you'll absolutely love three-year wood...easier to light fires, more heat, and less chimney sweeping.

Had a dove in my last stove.

Did it at least leave an olive branch you could use for kindling?

Do they make oval pipe?

Oval and rectangle. You may find cheaper, but I think this is the heavy-duty stuff. http://www.hartshearth.com/ProductCart/pc/home.asp

I do enjoy reading your posts and imagining what it's like to live in your environment.

He's a little more manly than me. Today I walked about 1/3 mile to my SIL's to load her stove for her. It was 14* with a bit of breeze. By the time I got there, I found that half my face had frozen and fallen off...I didn't even feel it happen. The only thing I can imagine myself doing in his environment is freezing to death!

 

[Ashful]

Was it with the same stove? Can you explain positves or negative? Burn times, draft, creasote, im not so worried anout animals cause i wouldnt run one with a cap.

I ran my first Jotul Firelight 12 (catalytic predecessor to current Firelight 600) on a 8" diameter x 15 feet tall clay tile chimney for two years, and then one or two more years on a 6" insulated liner slid into the same chimney. Before the insulated liner, I was having a lot of trouble with back-puffing, about one hour into a low catalytic burn, and after installing the liner that problem went away. However, the quality of my wood (and possibly my burning techniques) had improved by that third year, and so I don't know if I can attribute the performance improvement solely to the insulated liner.

I do believe it also drafted better on warmer days (eg. above 40F) after installing the liner, but since it was done during summer and I desperately hoped my investment wasn't wasted, I wonder if my memory of how the chimney performed before the liner was fair.

I can say for sure that I had less creosote build-up in the liner, than I did in the clay chimney. This may have been partly due to the seamless transition between stove pipe and liner, versus the 6" stovepipe jammed into a 8" liner with gasket rope around it transition.

Summary, I would just do the insulated liner, if it's not a financial hardship. To me, it seems to work better than what I had before, and others have posted more dramatic improvements. If the price is giving you heartburn, and you have a clay chimney that's relatively tall and in the approved range for your stove, I'd not worry too much about running that, either.

 

[Tar12]

Ashful...I am curious as to how much wood you burn a year?

 

[Marshy]

This year, I've been having much better luck with my Ashford 30 than I did a while back. Our wood supply is nice and dry (15% or lower) and the door seal has been fixed so we no longer have a problem with smoke leakage. The draft is still so-so which means we have to be careful on reloads. But a new cap that doesn't allow down-drafts and a draw collar have helped substantially. We've also gotten much better at operating the darn thing, knowing when to reload and when to keep the door closed, and how to do it in a way that presents the smallest chance of leakage into the house.

I have one remaining question. We get chimney smoke for a very long time after starting a burn. Today I noticed substantial smoke about four hours in. Given that our wood is dry, it shouldn't be steam (and it seems a bit brown). There's no problem with the temperature falling prematurely out of the cat range; we're getting good, long burns. How long should it smoke for? Is this normal? If not, what could be causing it and what should I do? Thanks.

I might not be reading it right but, are you saying you are staying in the active zone while its smoking like that? What is the setting on the air control, are you funning wide open or just barely in the active zone?

 

[Marshy]

@Ashful, when you said you had a creosote issue before the liner how bad was it?

 

[Ashful]

Ashful...I am curious as to how much wood you burn a year?

In the past, as much as I could process. I think my record was 14 cords in one year, but I've had other years (last winter) when I think I only burned 6 cords. I'd guess my five year average is 8 - 10 cords per year.

I'm actually running a bit of a new experiment, with these BK's. Instead of trying to push enough wood thru the stoves to heat this joint, wearing myself thin in the process, I'm just loading them on a schedule that suits me. That means 2x loads per day in the stove on the tall chimney (right side in photo above) and 1x load per day in the stove on the short chimney (just left of gazebo in photo above). The 1x load per day is enough for our total heating probably 80% of the time on that end of the house. The 2x load per day is probably enough for our total heating 50% of the time on that end of the house, which is less than ideal, but what my schedule can manage.

We'll have to see how much oil I burn, in this new mode, but it may be less than when I was pushing 10 - 14 cords thru the Jotuls. The BK's put more heat into the house, whereas the Jotuls put more heat into the stone surrounding them, and thus the back yard. This is not a "BK is better than Jotul" thing (although they are), but a "convective works better than radiant" in a stone house, thing.

 

[rdust]

Thank you. if in the future when it get a lil warmer and you run the stove around the same setting as me maybe we can compare if the same thing is happening to yours also.

This is the reason our dials no longer have numbers.

 

[Ashful]

@Ashful, when you said you had a creosote issue before the liner how bad was it?

Not horrendous, but more than the half a red Solo cup I saw others posting, after a full season. It wasn't anything that caused me enormous concern, with one exception. The person who installed that stove (previous owner) jammed a straight single-wall 6" stove pipe up into the 8" ID clay liner, and packed around it with 1" gasket rope. The stove pipe probably went close to 2 feet up into the clay liner, and creosote would fall down and collect in that 1" gap between the stove pipe and liner. This always bothered me, and seemed an ideal situation for a chimney fire. It was some work to knock all that crap loose, when I finally removed that stove pipe to install the insulated liner.

If you make a nicer connection between your stove pipe and the clay tile liner, you can avoid that problem. It's not as ideal as an insulated liner, but it has worked for many people. If budget is tight, and your clay tile liner falls within spec's for your stove, then you may do okay running without an insulated liner the first year or two.

 

[Tar12]

In the past, as much as I could process. I think my record was 14 cords in one year, but I've had other years (last winter) when I think I only burned 6 cords. I'd guess my five year average is 8 - 10 cords per year.

I'm actually running a bit of a new experiment, with these BK's. Instead of trying to push enough wood thru the stoves to heat this joint, wearing myself thin in the process, I'm just loading them on a schedule that suits me. That means 2x loads per day in the stove on the tall chimney (right side in photo above) and 1x load per day in the stove on the short chimney (just left of gazebo in photo above). The 1x load per day is enough for our total heating probably 80% of the time on that end of the house. The 2x load per day is probably enough for our total heating 50% of the time on that end of the house, which is less than ideal, but what my schedule can manage.

We'll have to see how much oil I burn, in this new mode, but it may be less than when I was pushing 10 - 14 cords thru the Jotuls. The BK's put more heat into the house, whereas the Jotuls put more heat into the stone surrounding them, and thus the back yard. This is not a "BK is better than Jotul" thing (although they are), but a "convective works better than radiant" in a stone house, thing.

Thats a lot of wood but not as much as I thought you would be burning!

 

[Marshy]

In the past, as much as I could process. I think my record was 14 cords in one year, but I've had other years (last winter) when I think I only burned 6 cords. I'd guess my five year average is 8 - 10 cords per year.

I'm actually running a bit of a new experiment, with these BK's. Instead of trying to push enough wood thru the stoves to heat this joint, wearing myself thin in the process, I'm just loading them on a schedule that suits me. That means 2x loads per day in the stove on the tall chimney (right side in photo above) and 1x load per day in the stove on the short chimney (just left of gazebo in photo above). The 1x load per day is enough for our total heating probably 80% of the time on that end of the house. The 2x load per day is probably enough for our total heating 50% of the time on that end of the house, which is less than ideal, but what my schedule can manage.

We'll have to see how much oil I burn, in this new mode, but it may be less than when I was pushing 10 - 14 cords thru the Jotuls. The BK's put more heat into the house, whereas the Jotuls put more heat into the stone surrounding them, and thus the back yard. This is not a "BK is better than Jotul" thing (although they are), but a "convective works better than radiant" in a stone house, thing.

Are you talking face cord or full cord?

 

[kf6hap]

14 cords is an astronomical quantity for me. I burn 3 max a year and keep it near 80. You must have a gigantic wood shed!

 

[Marshy]

14 cords is an astronomical quantity for me. I burn 3 max a year and keep it near 80. You must have a gigantic wood shed!

14 cord is is an astronomical amount compared to what I burn in my old Shenandoah and I live in a slightly colder climate then @Ashful. That's why I asked if he meant face cord instead of cord. A face cord (1/3 cord) is a stack 4' high, 8' long and cut to 16". Before I got my BK I would average 6-7 cord per year. 14 cord would be approximately a semi load of logs.

 

[Parallax]

Are you sure it is smoke?

Yes, it's not steam but smoke.

 

[Parallax]

I might not be reading it right but, are you saying you are staying in the active zone while its smoking like that? What is the setting on the air control, are you funning wide open or just barely in the active zone?

Yes, it's in the cat zone. The setting control is typically at 1.5, which in our application is the minimum required. If one sets it lower, it won't stay in cat range. At 1.5, with a full load of Douglas fir, it runs for about 12 hours. Then, to keep it from falling, I'll typically open it to 2.0. After burning that way for a couple more hours, the box is pretty much empty and we can perform a reload without leaking of smoke into the home.

 

[Highbeam]

This year, I've been having much better luck with my Ashford 30 than I did a while back. Our wood supply is nice and dry (15% or lower) and the door seal has been fixed so we no longer have a problem with smoke leakage. The draft is still so-so which means we have to be careful on reloads. But a new cap that doesn't allow down-drafts and a draw collar have helped substantially. We've also gotten much better at operating the darn thing, knowing when to reload and when to keep the door closed, and how to do it in a way that presents the smallest chance of leakage into the house.

I have one remaining question. We get chimney smoke for a very long time after starting a burn. Today I noticed substantial smoke about four hours in. Given that our wood is dry, it shouldn't be steam (and it seems a bit brown). There's no problem with the temperature falling prematurely out of the cat range; we're getting good, long burns. How long should it smoke for? Is this normal? If not, what could be causing it and what should I do? Thanks.

Mine steams like crazy for hours. It's not smoke, cat is very active, but white steam. Usually white right from flue outlet just like the gas chimneys of the neighbors with furnaces. Sometimes that steam plume can extend 30 feet before dissipating.

My wood tests at 14% and is three years old. Our climate is relatively humid in the winter so steam is likely with cold flue temps that result from high efficiency.

20% mc wood is still 20% plus you know that the cat converts the hydrocarbons in smoke to even more water. Our fuel loads weigh over 40# and that's 8# of water which is over a gallon.