Blaze King, King Classic - 1st fire

[FisherZip]

after months of studying, then acquiring and installing the new stove, finally got the wife and kid out of the house yesterday for my 1st fire. paint stink was not too bad. stove is awesome. although it is a stove into which you put wood, that is where the similarity to other woodstoves ends. it is the most remarkable and unremarkable stove i have ever seen. unremarkable in that after warm up, there is no flame and no smoke. none whatsoever. you might not even know that the damn thin is on, except for the remarkable unlimited heat it dumps into your house. and it burns FOREVER. exactly what i hoped it would be. a couple small issues. one of the 2 blower fans did not work at first and need the wiring connections tightened, but now works fine. the cat temp seems to run really high, which i guess is not a bad thing. i was worried about cranking down the t'stat to cool the cat, as the manual says less air = more smoke = hotter cat! but it doesn't seem to work that way. with the t'stat below 1(!), we held 80 in the living room overnight (40s outside) with the cat temp always well into the active zone. seems good to me. only other thing is the door glass, which blacked up very quickly. don't know why that is, i burned maple/oak lumber cut-offs that have been dry in the barn for a few years, so no moisture/resin. anybody else have that issue? i hear a rag dampened with vinegar and dipped in ashes is good for that. and sadly, doesn't seem to have enough top heat to run my stove-top oven ((broken link removed to http://www.lehmans.com/store/Stoves___Cook_Stoves___Gas_and_Kerosene_Burning___Fullsize_Perfection_Oven___622BB?Args=)), but i guess that;s a small price to pay!
cheers

 

[Todd]

Congrats on the new stove. Cats are a different animal when it comes to stove top temps since the cat is right below the top. The more smoke you make the hotter the top can get. Sometimes I'll bypass for a few minutes to cool her down or actually turn up the air to get some flame in the box which relieves the cat of doing all the work.

 

[FisherZip]

thanks for the feedback! what you describe is what i was expecting...less air = more smoke = hotter cat, but mine does not seem to be that simple. no matter, she cooks like a mutha. only problem is, it really burns for 40 hrs! that is going to be great in january, but it is killing me in may! ah well, should be out by midnight.

 

[SolarAndWood]

what you describe is what i was expecting...less air = more smoke = hotter cat, but mine does not seem to be that simple.

I didn't trust the tstat at first but it really is set it and forget it.

 

[FisherZip]

she's finally out. 36 hrs 'active' burn on one load of wood, plus another 12 of low heat after i opened the bypass because it was about to go into the 'inactive' zone. not too bad, eh? granted, that is in the 'summer', but it's not like i had it set at low the whole time, i really put it through its paces with different t'stat and fan setting to see what it could do. plus, the wood was not exactly my heaviest stuff. so i am impressed. hate to say it, but i can't wait for winter!

 

[Slow1]

You don't need to bypass when it falls to inactive - leave the cat in place. By time the wood has burned down to that stage all the 'nasties' have burned out and it shouldn't hurt the cat one bit to keep burning through. That is one fine stove you have there - very little to no babysitting required. Just feed and forget until next load is required.

 

[Highbeam]

Did you stuff it full? We all like to see pics. I figure that if you're going to have a brute like a BK king then you may as well get a mean looking classic model with the holes on the bottom.

 

[FisherZip]

pretty full, yep, but not packed tight, pretty loose actually. a tightly packed load of oak and locust would probably burn for a week, ha! here are a couple pics from before the chimney went in (my new woodshed too!). i'll try to get one of the new chimney. cheaped out and went with single wall down below. the manual recommends double wall because of higher cat/flue temps, but it is just recommended. i was a little worried about temps where the single wall passed into the adaptor at the ceiling penetration. but no need to worry, the stack temp was surprisingly cool, even when cat temp was very high. a rutland thermometer 12" above the collar never got higher than the low end of the burn zone and spent a lot of time at the top of the creosote zone (except no creosote should be laying down, since it's a cat). my IR thermometer gun said the stack at the celing penetration was not much over 100! crazy, but there it is.