Got my Orley antique stove replaced with a Blaze King

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area_man

Burning Hunk
Feb 12, 2013
124
Oregon City, OR
It's hard to believe they're both wood stoves. The orley used to require a lot of attention, like sitting in a chair next to the stove for at least 15 min every hour and could never really be unattended.

A problem with leaving it unattended was that the stove was installed slammer style so the draft was all but nonexistent, the house was always smoky and ashy at least some of the time. Another problem was that I always had to overfire it and use fans to get the heat around the house. I was always thinking about some way to get more heat out of it but it always involved putting in more wood and then trying to extract the heat before it overfired too much.

The Blaze King Princess is appropriately sized for my house, not that my house is huge or anything, but it hardly got warm upstairs at all. The blaze king seems to be keeping the entire house comfortable if not super toasty everywhere.

Easier to start, easier to load, doesn't leave a bunch of uncombusted wood behind, the glass window is attractive with the fire going,

It goes through more wood but you'd expect to need more wood to generate more heat.

Super happy I did this. I think I registered this account six or seven years ago when I had the Orley and literally a small Cold Steel tomahawk to "split wood" oh god

That was hilarious
 
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Good to hear it's working out well for you. Looks like it's time to update the signature line and cross off the old tank heater.
 
Good for you and enjoyed the "heads up" on changing stoves to a better burning one and so glad your happy now with more experience as well at this time..enjoyed..clancey
 
I almost kept it and thought about how to weld it into something approximating a safe but that's about the only thing I could think of to do with it. A friend of mine told me to keep it outside and put a piece of pipe out and up the back to draft to a spark arrestor and just have it as an outside wood firepit kind of thing. Ultimately I figured I have too many pines around my house to be sure so maybe a natural gas thing like the Costco people have out on the deck and maybe one of those steel umbrella things from the seating in front of cafes dunno what those are called