Want to purchase Blaze King Chinook - have a few questions

[ChipDouglas95]

After being without one for 3 years, it's finally time for us to get a wood stove. In our previous house we installed a Quadra-Fire 7100 zero clearance fireplace. It was installed on an outside wall with a 2.5 story insulated chase and was more then capable of heating our well insulated 1800sf house even on the coldest days. It also burned very clean with zero smoke out of the chimney after a quick warm up so long as it was run pretty hot. That was also one of the dislikes I had with it - it consumed what seemed like a lot of wood and was difficult to damper down without it smoking. I could get a decent overnight burn if I loaded it up fully around 10pm and would have good coals early the next morning. We also got exceptional draft from the chimney - never had a problem with back puffing, always easy to light and when it was hot the draft would suck the doors shut like a vacuum.

In our current house I think we want to go with a traditional wood stove to expand our options and keep the costs down. It will be installed in a 2000sf colonial on an outside wall and although the house does have a traditional fireplace it's in a room that's fairly isolated form the rest of the house and the brick chimney isn't in great shape.

I think I have two options as far as the chimney goes - either run it out of the stove and through the wall into and exterior stainless chimney that would be 2.5 stories tall or run it straight up from the stove through a 2nd floor closet and the attic and out through the roof.

I think I'm ok with the looks of having and exposed pipe on the outside of the house but I'm worried about the draft. We like the looks of the the Chinook and although I've never run a catalytic stove, it does seem to offer a couple benefits - longer burn times and the ability to run it damped down without it smoking.

I guess I'm wondering if trying to combine the ability to run the stove on a low setting and having an exterior chimney is asking for trouble or not.

Also anyone has any thoughts on what my best options would be I would greatly appreciate it!

Steve
I've attached a picture of our living room where the stove will be installed (the toys will obviously be moved to a different room.)

 

[sutphenj]

For what it's worth I had a dealer advise me against a Chinook with an external exposed chimney. Of course that was one person....would be interesting to hear from any BK owners with an exposed chimney if there are any out there and are happy with performance.

 

[ChipDouglas95]

For what it's worth I had a dealer advise me against a Chinook with an external exposed chimney. Of course that was one person....would be interesting to hear from any BK owners with an exposed chimney if there are any out there and are happy with performance.

My gentleman I spoke with at my local Blaze King dealer was nice enough but it didn't seem like they had much experience with the stoves. They had an Ashford 30 in their showroom that they recently fully installed and had been using for a brief period of time. I don't think they would really have too much knowledge about how best to configure the chimney.

 

[sutphenj]

Yup I had a similar experience. His thoughts were the flue temps would be too low and I would have draft issues (25ft chimney). Didn't have much of a reason not too believe him based on my not having any experience.

Perhaps a few BK guys will chime in soon....

 

[moresnow]

Buddy of mine runs his BK Princess from the basement, which can introduce more operating challenges. Out the wall and up to just above his ranch home roofline. No operating issues whatsoever. Checked his pipe after a few weeks burning questionable quality/moisture content softwoods. Less than 1/4 of a coffee cup. Just covered the bottom. Dry stuff. FWIW.
Straight up and out would always be preferred.
Unfortunately your dealer experiences mirror mine with a local outfit. More than happy to sell the standard EPA secondary tube style stoves. Close to clueless on the BK sitting in there showroom

 

[Poindexter]

I got nothing. There is a guy on my street, two actually, well three if you count the guy i can see off my back deck running a bunch of pipe vertical on an outside wall.

It isnt unheard of even up here.

 

[ChipDouglas95]

In general do folks have get good performance out of a chminey run up the outside of a house or does the fact that it's not inside a heated space cause too many problems?

Another option would be to enclose the chminey inside an insulated chase. I'm trying to keep the cost and complexity down but I don't want to sacrifice performance.

 

[Highbeam]

Out and up is an approved installation in every manual I’ve read. No, it’s not ideal and isn’t pretty but it is totally functional if you can get it tall enough to provide enough draft.

 

[sutphenj]

Out and up is an approved installation in every manual I’ve read. No, it’s not ideal and isn’t pretty but it is totally functional if you can get it tall enough to provide enough draft.

"Pretty" is subjective. Some prolly think exposed pipe on the inside isn't pretty either. Lots of install options to appease individual tastes etc.

 

[ChipDouglas95]

I just got back from another dealer a little farther away. Two things I took away from our conversation:

1. He feels I would not have any issues with the exterior run chminey.

2. Before even considering a catalytic stove, I would need to decide if I can keep it going 24 hours a day 7 days a week. He said if the stove runs out of wood and cools down without disengaging the cat that it would surely clog up and need replacing. Does this sound right?

 

[Highbeam]

2. Before even considering a catalytic stove, I would need to decide if I can keep it going 24 hours a day 7 days a week. He said if the stove runs out of wood and cools down without disengaging the cat that it would surely clog up and need replacing. Does this sound right?

That's wrong. He is hopefully just ignorant about cat stoves but some salesmen really spout this kind of junk knowingly to help sell their noncat products.

At the time that the stove runs out of wood there is no more stuff being provided for the cat to clean up. As long as there is fuel(smoke) being made by the fire, the cat is happily eating it. No food for the cat, the cat cools off and waits for more fuel.

 

[sutphenj]

That's wrong. He is hopefully just ignorant about cat stoves but some salesmen really spout this kind of junk knowingly to help sell their noncat products.

At the time that the stove runs out of wood there is no more stuff being provided for the cat to clean up. As long as there is fuel(smoke) being made by the fire, the cat is happily eating it. No food for the cat, the cat cools off and waits for more fuel.

Why would a dealer prefer to sell a noncat vs. a cat?

 

[Highbeam]

Why would a dealer prefer to sell a noncat vs. a cat?

He sells what he has in his store. He then prefers to sell those products with higher profit margins, spiffs, or maybe even more lucrative maintenance requirements. Always think about the biases of a salesman.

 

[moresnow]

He said if the stove runs out of wood and cools down without disengaging the cat that it would surely clog up and need replacing. Does this sound right?

Seems to be another un-educated dealer. Unreal.

No offense to the knowledgeable dealers out there.

 

[SuperJ]

I just got back from another dealer a little farther away. Two things I took away from our conversation:

1. He feels I would not have any issues with the exterior run chminey.

2. Before even considering a catalytic stove, I would need to decide if I can keep it going 24 hours a day 7 days a week. He said if the stove runs out of wood and cools down without disengaging the cat that it would surely clog up and need replacing. Does this sound right?

There are a lot of things about cat stoves from the 80's and 90's that aren't the case for BK cat stoves. It's similar to the emissions controls on early 70's cars. When the first came out with automotive emission controls, there were some negatives, but the manufacturers were forced to work thru it and cars are much cleaner and efficient today. Only a couple manufactures (BK, Woodstove, some others), have come up with compelling catalytic stoves. There a bunch of mediocre cat stoves on the market that don't justify going with a cat, and this is probably were a lot of the misinformation is coming from. I feel like a dodged a bullet when I discovered this website, and subsequently Blaze King stoves. I wouldn't own one otherwise. I'd probably be struggling with a Vermont Casting Encore Hybrid.

With wood stoves most manufactures are behind the curve and milking the relatively lax emissions requirements as long as they can, I have a feeling after 2020 a lot of manufactures and dealers are going to be backpedaling on all their anti-cat FUD (fear, misunderstanding and distortion of the facts).

EDIT (looks like this isn't true): It's going to be hard for secondary burn stoves to keep up with the cat stoves on the new regs.

I had to go out of my local area to get my BK since the local stove dealers refused to deal with catalytic stoves and just spewed misinformation on inquiry. (Except for one that only wanted to sell overpriced VC catalytic stoves for $5000 a pop.)

It is true, and function of physics that the lower the burn rate, the more sensitive your install is going to be to a insufficiently drafting chimney. But if secondary stoves could burn that low too, they would have the same chimney requirements. It's more to of a low burn rate requirement, than a catalytic requirement.

 

[sutphenj]

I'm not sure you can make the claim that it will be hard for tube stoves to keep up with cats in terms of emissions regulations....in fact there are plenty out there that meet and or exceed the 2020 regs. The market is quite strong for tube stoves yet so the manufactures will respond accordingly.

 

[SuperJ]

I'm not sure you can make the claim that it will be hard for tube stoves to keep up with cats in terms of emissions regulations....in fact there are plenty out there that meet and or exceed the 2020 regs. The market is quite strong for tube stoves yet so the manufactures will respond accordingly.

I suppose your right, it seems like the non-cat emission as getting down to close to 1gph, but the newer cat stoves are almost 30% or more cleaner than the best non-cats. It seems like the newer non-cats will likely be able meet the emissions no-problem, but the best catalytic stoves are substantially ahead of the best non-cats (50% lower emissions).

I wonder if the 2020 test is more complicated than just an average particulate calculation?

(broken link removed to https://www.epa.gov/compliance/list-epa-certified-wood-stoves)

 

[lsucet]

It's going to be hard for secondary burn stoves to keep up with the cat stoves on the new regs.

I do agree with you except this part. I think is easier met emission with non cat than with cat. Remember not all cat as designed the same. The question with non cat is if manufactures will offer a better efficiency numbers. Including not all cat stoves give you good efficiency either. In my observation new Hybrid stoves can have improvement on both if designed properly like woodstock stoves. Really, BK is something else but is is for sure not everybody stove.

 

[ChipDouglas95]

Update - I finally pulled the trigger on the Blaze King Chinook 30! Picked it up a few days ago. Pipe hasen't come in yet because it was special order. I decided to go with Ventris pipe instead of DuraTech which they stock. I got the fans and the ash drawer installed and those went pretty smoothly.

It's been so cold here in the North East (just south of Boston) that even if I had the pipe it's just too cold to work outside. On the other hand I sure wish I had a nice hot stove. We have a gas furnace and maybe I'm crazy but I have nightmares about it failing during this kind of weather. It's fairly new but with all the electronics there's almost no way to fix anything on it.

I still need to come up with a temporary solution for ember protection. I was thinking of a 3' x 4' rectangle made up of 1/4" plywood or hardboard, a layer of cement board and then some cheap tiles. We're redoing the whole downstairs of our house next summer so I don't want to do anything too difficult or permanent. If anyone has a better idea I'd love to hear it.

 

[Highbeam]

Since cement board comes in 3x5 squares just use that. No tile required. You can even just buy a flat sheet of thin metal from an hvac shop since only ember protection is required.

 

[SuperJ]

Since cement board comes in 3x5 squares just use that. No tile required. You can even just buy a flat sheet of thin metal from an hvac shop since only ember protection is required.

If you go sheet metal make sure you deal with the edges properly or someone is going to get sliced. If you can find a metal shop with a laser table or plasma cutter you could get a bit heavier gauge for not too much money.

Post some picts when you get everything together.

 

[jetsam]

I went to Home Depot for a hearth pad the other day. Cement board is $10 a sheet, they had a 12x12 tile for 69¢ a tile ($13 for 19 tiles). I skipped buying thinset and bought a bag of mortar instead (I'll regret that eventually when it cracks, but I can use the rest of the bag for brickwork in the spring). $8 worth of 2x3s, and I had half a box of Durock screws around the house already.

That's a portable 3x5 hearth pad for under $40, and it looks nice enough to make the wife happy. I am looking forward to seeing how the mortar holds up in its dual roles as thinset and grout- if it's really bad I'll just scrape it off and use the right stuff.

 

[ChipDouglas95]

Ok, so all the pipe finally came in after almost 3 weeks. Everything looks to be in good shape and not damaged.

We finally had a day of warm weather so I finally got started. This is going to be a through wall installation using ventis pipe with a little under 3' vertical feet of double wall going up and out through the wall thimble. To get the stove perfectly centered, instead of centering the thimble exactly between two 16" on-center studs, I shifted it over about an inch or so and cut out my 12" x 12" hole. One thing I don't quite understand is that since you need to frame out a 12" x 12" box between the studs for the thimble to mount to, this puts the class A going through the wall closer then 2" to combustibles. My thought was that maybe the metal thimble itself provides a radiant barrier to allow for this?

This brings me the my first concern. The good new was that right in the middle of the wall is an outlet to provide power for the blowers. The bad new was that the power going to this outlet is routed inside the stud bay that I'm going through with the thimble. You can see this in the pictures I attached. I can't decided if this is something to worry about or not. It's no closer to the class A then the wood framing would be so maybe it's not an issue. Re-routing the would be difficult since it comes up from the basement and also feeds a couple rooms upstairs.

The second problem I ran into is that I purchased a 12" length of pipe for the horizontal run into the tee. This puts the exterior vertical part of the chimney about 2" away from the side of the house (cedar shingles) but when it gets up to the roof, it will pass by the rake boards, drip edge and shingles which protrude about 2 1/2" further then the siding. I see that ventis sells and recommends using a telescoping section to be used for this purpose or I could purchase the next longer length of pipe which is 18" but this would put the vertical pipe a little too far from the side of the house and possible outside the range of the wall supports.

I would really appreciate anyone's thoughts on these two issues. Hopefully I can get my hands on which ever pipe a little quicker so I don't have to wait another three weeks to finish this up.

 

[ratsrepus]

Chip, leave the wire where its at. I would purchase a 10 ft legnth of 3/4 thin wall conduit, and find someone with a good band saw. Rip it in half and use one the pieces as a shied. you can secure it with one hole EMT straps. for got to mention, cut to legnth before you rip it

 

[Diabel]

I am following this thread closely, as I am shopping for the exact stove and will be doing a very similar install (except in the basement). Same through the wall and same total pipe length.

Are the sides of the stove white or cream?

Thanks