First time wood-stover... BK PE32; am I doing it right?

[rollercoasterracer]

First off, I want to say thank you to all who post helpful information. I know I'm a new registered user, but I have been reading these threads for over a year when I was doing research on what to buy. Since then, I've been reading a bunch trying to learn about our stove so I can do it better (I get fixated on new hobbies...). So, since this is a new hobby (and the primary heat to our house), I figured I should register.

This is our first wood-burning stove, so I'm trying to learn... if you see me doing anything stupid or see something I should be doing differently, I am all ears, I am here to learn. The wood we're currently burning are 'spin-outs' from a local mill (mostly larch). They're debarked, sat outside for over a year, then 2yrs ago I split it and stacked it and has been covered in our wood shed since. I do not know the MC%, but I am assuming it's plenty dry. We live in north Idaho @ 3,065' ASL (non of that good hard-wood).

We have a BK PE32 in our 30x40 'barndo.' It only has a second story/loft over about 1/3 of it, the rest is pretty open. I have a large fan directly above the stove. In hindsight that was poor placement... it forced me to do a 45* offset to go up with the flue. The stove was installed from the company we purchased it from and was inspected and signed off. It is single wall all the way up to the ceiling box then double/triple (not sure which) through the attic and out. From stove top to first 45* is 7' 6"; from 45* to 45* is 5' 6"; from stove top to ceiling is 12' 9"; from ceiling to top I believe is another roughly 8'.

Did I screw up getting single wall instead of double wall? The company originally was going to do double wall, but I requested single wall not realizing BK recommends double... I just assumed the company was trying to get more money. The stove is in the corner of a concrete wall, so I wasn't concerned with fire danger. My thought was to reclaim the heat from the flue before the cat was engaged, but now I'm starting to realize it may be dropping my flue temps too low when we burn on a lower setting, messing with the draft. We have found we can't turn the dial down very much at night before it just starts to drop to in-active... could that be my problem?

I was wondering what the best way to monitor temps would be... I was reading about the Condar gauges, I was thinking of replacing the OE BK cat probe with one and getting another for the flue. Would that be the best way to monitor?

Here are some pictures of one of our burns over about a 25min time period. The stove was set about 3/4 of the way open. Do these temps look ok?

I turned it up after this wide open and let it go for a bit, until I felt like it was getting a bit uncomfortably hot... I know BK did away with the numbers on the sweep, so I don't really know what to reference to make sure I'm within safe parameters. I'm assuming it's not good to let the gauge sweep all the way clockwise around back into the in-active zone, right?

Last night we burned it really hot for a while, we had stove top temps around 600*F and flue temps (at about 3' high) around 300*F. We did just clean the chimney about 2wks ago. We used the stove occasionally last winter while we were here working on the house or staying a couple of nights before me moved full time. This year we started burning in October, but not full time... lots of smaller shorter fires. The weather has been weird this year, so we haven't been burning 24/7 yet, maybe a couple days straight at a time. The flue was impressively clean when we cleaned it (at least I think it was, judging by a lot of pictures I've seen on here, but again... this is our first experience).

Thank you again to all of those that post helpful posts. It has been a wealth of knowledge and I enjoy reading the varying opinions and reasonings. If anyone has any insight or recommendations to get the most out of our stove safely (temps, gauges, monitoring, upgrades, etc) I would love to hear it. Time for me to sign off and get a fire going... wife is cold.

 

[stoveliker]

Yes, the single wall is not great.
Your 3000 ft above sea level also cuts a bit into draft. But you have 20 ft so this all may be a wash.

Don't change the cat probe. It's only meant to tell you when to engage the cat.

Flue temps are about double the wall temp for single wall. 500-600 gas temps.is okay, tho a bit warm. But maybe you need to run it as high to have enough output.

Don't measure stove top temps, they vary top much in location due to the cat being there, and in time due to burn mode fluctuating (cat heating up and cooling down).

The cat going crazy hot is normal for a new cat. It'll settle down after a cord or so (in my experience).

Does "not very low" mean you are cooking yourself out of the place?

If not,.and the stove is keeping you comfortable, keep things as they are...