You don't need below 15% you need below 20% below 15 will be very difficult to get in pa
Checking in with another update on the BK King 40 stove. Not much has been happening here because I have too little fully dry wood. I'm stretching it by burning the stove only on very cold nights and relying on the heat pump the rest of time, which I never wanted to do! So I'm still trying to make the Blaze King work. Yes I read the manual word-for-word - which I had not read because I misplaced it in the very beginning, leading to some stupid questions here, but it's been ready at hand ever since. But I need to learn how to use it to avoid creating stage three creosote in the pipes and in the stove. I continue to have condensed exhaust liquid dripping from those two seams in the short horizontal section (I posted a photo of the system earlier on this thread) even with all dry wood, such as dimensional that is many years old, stored dry in racks in the barn well above ground level. The dripping usually stops a half hour to an hour into each burn. It does prove that the sections of adjustable angle fittings are not sealed, and if liquid escapes them, so do gasses. The leakage is fortuitous because it brought the condensation to my attention, and the leaks might be protecting the stove itself from receiving the condensation, which I collect in a metal bowl hung below the pipe, instead of going down the vertical stove pipe into the stove. With most burns, I collect about a quarter cup of it.
I think the condensation might be caused by too-low temperature of the exhaust coming out of the stove (just two feet above the stove, the new stove pipe thermometer is reading mostly 200 to 250 if it is accurate) and/or by lack of insulation in the first two feet that the pipe travels through the concrete foundation (if I burn for several days straight, though, the wall gets very hot around the pipe and stays hot for days afterward) and maybe-not-thick-enough vermiculite-cement insulation of the remainder of the chimney pipe. The vermi-cement is about two inches thick, rich in vermiculite, lean on the Portland, and hand-mixed, not too wet.
A few days ago I climbed the ladder to the check the condition of the pipe at the chimney top, which was covered with ice. Very slippery but I was careful. I found some soot under the cap and in the pipe near the top, which I expected from those slow burns that I tried, and the less dry wood. I'll be climbing up and checking again soon, trying to get some idea whether using all dry wood also continues to make soot.
I also checked the stove carefully when it was cold. I could feel some loose soot around the bypass door area that I couldn't reach with a vacuum. The stove window is clear. The cat doesn't appear to be cracked, and all the metal appears to be straight after what I think was a very hot fire. The stove pipe thermometer finally reached 400 in that burn. The cat gauge went "off the charts."
The Ventis stove pipe thermometer is magnetically mounted to the telescoping stove pipe at the point where it becomes (telescopes out as) a single wall, about two feet above the stove. In this position it reads no higher than 250 F. most of the time. As I said, In a very hot fire it reached 400 only once. The cat guage reads mostly in the middle of the active zone but sometimes jumps to the top of the white band or beyond even when I have the thermostat knob set about the middle. I understand, as many of you have explained, new cats can be "overactive."
I appreciate all the ideas and advice everyone has given here. Some of your directions have taken time to sink in.
Now for my urgent question of the day. It applies to the other BK stove discussed earlier in this thread - the Princess insert. I had explained the way the BK dealer's professional installer did it: The insert was not connected to the stove with an appliance connector, probably because the installer cut the liner a little too short, so an adjustable fitting which is longer had to be used to reach the stove, which then made it impossible for me to pull out the insert without breaking the fitting. Since I wanted to have the option of pulling it out sometimes for cleaning and inspection, and because I thought the fitting could leak, which is dangerous, I re-installed the insert myself, adding a one-foot extension to the liner (at the chimney top end) and a proper appliance fitting at the bottom. I also removed the FIBERGLASS that the installer had stuffed in the smokeshelf area, and made and installed a 1/4 inch steel block-off plate, with plenty of mortar and a layer of furnace cement over the mortar. I had discussed with some of you earlier in this thread the idea of pouring vermiculite cement on top of the plate, but finally decided to use rockwool. The rockwool is packed in very hard above the plate, making it airtight I hope. If the liner was "lifetime" rigid stainless, I would have used vermiculite cement to sea it off, but since it is a flexible midweight (hybrid) liner, claimed to be lifetime but who knows how long it will really last, I decided that rockwool is good enough.
Now here is the question: The installer connected the insert's fan motor cord to a metal outlet box with armored, romex cable running down through the hole to the ash pit under the hearth, and out of the ash pit space to the basement wiring system, where I connected it later. The insert's plastic extension cord is wound around behind the insert and the outlet box which also has some plastic parts is also there, in the back corner of the hearth just inches from the back of the hot stove. Regardless of whether an installer "does that all the time," I'd like to know: IS IT SAFE? It gets hot back there, bound to reach boiling point or higher sometimes. Is this a common practice? Has anyone had a problem with it?