trying to decide on upgrading to a blaze king ashford 30.2

[WV Homestead]

i currently have a hearthstone heritage 8021 and I am thinking i want to upgrade to a ashford 30.2 blaze king stove. i currently just hate that i have to baby sit the stove all the time to make sure it doesn't over heat( and crack the soap stones) ;i just feel that my soapstone stove is fragile. my question is how durable are blaze king stoves; such as wearable items (are they built to be replaced and how often) like the door hinges, latches ? i know the catalyst will need replaced eventually. but are there any flaws that stand out in blaze king stoves ? and are they worth the price tag of $3645?

i have a 1600 square foot ranch home
i live in the northern panhandle of wv
well insulated 2008 built home
i burn mostly black cherry that is seasoned 2 years

 

[webby3650]

As long as the gaskets are tight and the bypass is closed, it can be left on high without damaging it. And no baby sitting! The only damage I’ve seen is from leaving the bypass open for extended periods of time. These were extreme cases and the stove was still functional.
Have you had problems with your hearthstone, or are you just afraid you will?

 

[NoobTube]

I can't see how you could go wrong with the BK. Given the size of your home and the quality of wood you have, you would really enjoy a nice Cat stove like an Ashford. The most extreme I've seen required new Cat's and that was as Webby said, because the bypass was left open for really long.

 

[Highbeam]

The price you quote is pretty decent and pretty much the same as the hearthstone was right? My price for a princess like 8 years ago was about 3500$. Current price for a bare bones heritage is 3400$ plus 10% sales tax in my area.

I upgraded my house stove from a heritage to a princess and the only thing I miss about the stone stove is the looks. It was pretty. The ash ford is quite a bit prettier than the princess though. Actually living with the princess for full time heat, the princess is unbelievably easier, more efficient, and more comfortable.

Be sure you have a proper chimney for the bk. The hearthstone was not picky but with the ashford’s history I would be sure that the chimney is excellent before recommending an ash ford to anyone.

 

[WV Homestead]

As long as the gaskets are tight and the bypass is closed, it can be left on high without damaging it. And no baby sitting! The only damage I’ve seen is from leaving the bypass open for extended periods of time. These were extreme cases and the stove was still functional.
Have you had problems with your hearthstone, or are you just afraid you will?

i bought the hearthstone heritage second hand. when i got it the top stone had a small crack in it; along with the meat of the door latch where it contacts the stove was razor blade thin so i had to replace the door frame. also i could tell where the hinges were the holes were wearing out making a lot of play in the door. over the last 5 years with it i haven't over fired it and some of the stones have hair line cracks in them.

 

[Highbeam]

i bought the hearthstone heritage second hand. when i got it the top stone had a small crack in it; along with the meat of the door latch where it contacts the stove was razor blade thin so i had to replace the door frame. also i could tell where the hinges were the holes were wearing out making a lot of play in the door. over the last 5 years with it i haven't over fired it and some of the stones have hair line cracks in them.

Other than the cracks, I noticed all of the same failures which pushed me to sell the heritage and upgrade stoves. The heritage I bought new in 2006 or so was not made to last much past the 6 years and 30 cords I used it for. Then the choice of what to upgrade to became very clear once I spent some time on this forum.

 

[webby3650]

over the last 5 years with it i haven't over fired it and some of the stones have hair line cracks in them.

Unfortunately I see this pretty often on hearthstone stoves. Most that I see have a crack somewhere.. with no other indications of abuse.

 

[MTASH]

We absolutely love our Ashford. So simple to run it will make you yawn. Longevity/maintenance are to be determined though since we haven't even had it a full year. I will be honest and say that if I was single, I probably would've purchased a Princess or Sirocco, but my wife prefers good looks!

I fully agree with @Highbeam concerning the chimney requirements, so pay close attention to that if you take the plunge.

Personally I think it would be a good stove for your home. $3600 is what I paid last December for one in brown, so that is a good price if that's what you are looking at. Especially in WV where I think shipping cost is higher.

 

[Poindexter]

I agree with the above. The A30 is probably a good choice for the situation you describe. Mine would have been a 30.0 if BK had known there would later be a .1 and a .2., mine is technically a 30, I just call it a 30.0 so folks know it isn't a 30.1 or a 30.2. Mine was installed May 2014, running strong.

I change the combustor about every fifteen to twenty cords or so, cheap.

I did have the door gasket replaced summer 2018. A handy home owner can do it at home after buying the gasket, but it is a mission critical part. I paid I think $50 to have mine done by the guy at the stove shop who has done thousands of them. Taking the door and front fascia was kind of a chore, but I had a blanket on a sheet of plywood scrap ready to catch the assembly so as to not scratch up the paint.

The learnning curve wasn't too bad. Mostly I had to learn to not open the loading door. My grandpa shared hiss expertise with me about opening the loading doors on the old smoke dragons about every 45 minutes or so to poke around in the firebox with a metal rod. Don't do that. When you load it, stuff it full, run it a full throttle for thirty minutes, turn the knob down to probably about 1/3 throttle for you and GO AWAY. Truly, just leave it alone.

i do want to second and third the previous about top notch chimney. With good dry fuel and a low throttle setting your flue gas temp 30" above the stove is likely to be below 200 dF. You want top quality double wall stainless steel pipe, no tree tops within 20 feet of the pipe outlet and you got to do that 3-2-10 thing in the federal regs for chimneys.

You will get some crud in the pipe, but it should be grey/brown with no (or very few) shiny black flecks. I would clean the pipe at install, then after one cord, probably burn two cords before I brushed again, then burn three more cords before you brush again. I am currently brushing the pipe about every four cords but I could probably go six or eight.

When my bypass door gasket needs to be replaced I am paying someone else to do that. Right now it is doing fine and I probably have 30-40 cords through mine. I do leave the bypass door open in the summer so it doesn't get compressed, but I do keep the loading door latched all summer so the cat doesn't get in there and get ash all over the living room.

You will also have to come up with an end of burn strategy. You should get a moisture meter for firewood, 30-50 bucks at lowes/depot/harborfreight. Look for a stud finder with a couple pins sticking out the top. Plan to wear out three nine volt batteries the first year, but if you keep burning all cherry all the time (I burn all spruce all the time) by the third year you won't hardly need to go find the meter because you will know from experience.

Deep in a burn towards the end of a coaling stage your combustor probe temp will be hanging just in the active zone and your flue gas probe (if you run one - you don't actually need one) is going to start drifting down. I have only ever burnt cherry wood in BBQ smokers, it does make good coals --- but you may either reload on a thick bed of coals, or turn the throttle up to burn the coals down to make room for a bigger reload.

I take a bit of pride in keeping my combustor active from September into May, it is just more efficient to keep the stove hot rather than bang out cold starts over and over.

So the two things you need to do are 1. take your fireplace poker to the dump and 2. figure out how to manage the end of your burn.

The primary variables for your end of burn strategy are going to be wood species (and you have a slew of them to choose from back east) and moisture content of your fuel, both of those together will give you the length of your coaling stage, and the other one is throttle setting during the burn. I suspect you will very rarely run above half throttle given a new tight home in a southern latitude.

Run it wide open thirty minutes, cut it back to 1/3 throttle and come back in twelve hours. When you come back in twelve hours turn the throttle back up to high and leave the combustor engaged. Go pee or let the cat out or something, then come back to look through the glass and see how big a coals pile you got.

If your cherry is good and dry (14-16% MC) you are strong candidate for getting through your winter with 24 hour burns.

Also, do get the convection fan kit. It makes a huge difference trying to spread heat around in a single story home.

 

[Poindexter]

I thought of a couple other things.

None of us know what "tight 2008 build" really means where you are. Do you have an air door test? Do you know your degree loss per hour? When I heat my 1980 build to 72 degrees and turn the boiler off with a cold wood stove I lose one degree per hour inside the house when the outdoor ambient is about zero ish to -20ish dF .

There is probably a outdoor ambient temperature range where you could load an A30 about 45 minutes before bedtime, run it on high 30 minutes, turn it down too a half, wait ten minutes, turn it down to about 1/3 throttle and go to bed. In the morning, do nothing with the stove. When you get home from work turn the throttle up to high, burn down the coals, and then about 45 minute before bed load the stove again. I am ass/u/me/ing your tight 2008 build is similar to what a tight 2008 build would have been up here and expect that target outdoor ambient window is something like +15 to +30dF.

The only potential problem I see is that if your 2008 house is 2008 Fairbanks, Alaska tight the A30 might be a little more stove than you need. Your house, no offense, is probably not Fairbanks tight. On the other hand if my next home is a 2008 Fairbanks AK tight 1600sqft build I probably would put in an A 30 and figure out how to make it work.

Ii am also tagging user @Ashful to this thread. He lives near Philadelphia and is running two A30s. One is on about a 15 foot stack, the other on about a 30 foot stack. He is routinely getting 24 hour burns out of one of them with oak. I don't recall what MC he is claiming for his oak, but he has his wood seasoning process dialed in pretty good judging by the pictures of his stacks.