Stove manufacturer efficiency comparisons

Good shared experiences!

I'm just a guy that heats ONLY with an old beat up earth stove.
I have thought about upgrading since our first and current house 7 years!

I always read the back and forth to no avail!
Maybe a pro con list would help.

When I think about upgrading, I think about how I burn 5+ cords a year heating my 1800sqft efficient recently renovated home.
On days like today (mid 40s) I can low burn (smolder) with stove top temps literally at 200 and keep the house at 73 all day.
I will probably be burning 24/7 through April.

Cost aside the only real difference I've seen in this thread is the cost of cats and maintenance of them.
The BKK peaks my interest due to it's long slow burns(even the princess)(I want 200 degrees) I can also bring it with me to a bigger house some day. I even think I can run the bkk on my 6 inch flue......

I as an outsider with no experience with epa stoves see the IS as a niftier stove, that on spring and fall days I won't be able to regulate low enough?

Advice? Opinions?

 

I would not recommend the king on a 6" flue. The manufacturer is very picky about this.

 

Screwloose, both good stoves.. I guess the pros and cons really depend on what you think is important to you..
I see BK big advantage is the thermostat.. IS looks better (to some) maybe ash Grate pan system... I think IS has exceptional burn low slow ability.. BK advantage is its autimatic.. good news for you is that You are not a far drive from Woodstock factory in Lebanon NH..

While we are trying to discuss this in an informational way... I met with Tom, Owner of woodstock, at an open house, and he commented him and BK (ceo? he gave his name) were friends and said they were (BK) nice stoves... I also asked him if they were ever going to make a bigger stove 4 cu foot firebox and sadly he said no..

 

I think a key thing to remember here is that these are ALL good stoves, and there are still others out there that are also excellent. So it is not really a choice of Woodstock vs. Blaze King, it is really a much wider choice.

My suggestion would be to think about how you use your current stove, what about it is lacking (read: sucks), what about it is good and what about it could be better. For me, an aspect of woodburning that I will not do is shovel ashes out of a stove: it makes a mess, is tiresome, the ash bucket is hot and full of embers, and it cannot be done except at the end of a burn. I prefer a stove that can be used while continuously burning and never having to stop to do any normal aspect of wood burning.

A perfect stove for me would be a top / side load, large stove (maybe 6 or 8 cu. ft.), open grate over a sealed, thick walled ash pan (so the ashes just fall through), with an easy access, top loading catalytic combustor. The stove can be loaded or 'topped up' anytime, the ash pan can be removed and swapped with the other one anytime, and minor service can be done on the combustor even when the stove is warm but nor roaring. Such a stove is not commercially made although gassifying boilers come close but those just would not look right in the living room I also like much higher woodstoves so I do not have to get down on the floor to use them; a modern woodstove sitting on a two- foot tall pedestal would work well for me.

By all means, read individual reviews and opinions but do your own research also; I always suggest downloading the owner's manual for every stove you are considering so you know how they work, what they require, how they are serviced and so forth. Also check on the price of any consumables as well as any common repair parts such as window glass and so forth. This will prevent a nasty surprise down the road potentially, such as: "you want HOW MUCH for a new door glass?!?!?!?!".

Every once in a while, I stop at a local stove shop for a rope seal or something and always look at the Regency they have on the floor. A beautiful, robust, large (mid 4 cu. ft. range stove, will take 22" splits in either direction), well made wood stove from a reputable manufacturer with a lifetime warranty. No grate but one could be fitted into the existing stove fairly easily. If it was not for the outrageously expensive, IMO, cat. in that stove, and the somewhat high price tag, I could see it sitting in my house.....

To answer your question: I think it will be tough to run an I.S. cleanly (not throwing creosote all over the chimney and inside the stove) and keep the surface temps. down to 200 F. I have never used a Blaze King but have to think that the auto draft regulation is a great feature; that said, I think it will be tough to keep any large stove running the cat. hot enough to burn the smoke and not overheat a tight, well insulated house when it is in the mid- 40's outside. When it gets that warm, I usually start a fire and burn it fairly hot but I do not load the stove so it burns out fairly quickly. The shoulder seasons are tough for a lot of people and that is when we start a lot of fires from cold, when it is below 30F, most of us can keep a fire going for weeks or even months.

Brian

 

I just measured mine came out at 3.21 cu ft.. stove finally cool enough to put a tape measure in it.. I am completely soap stone lined.. do not know if that makes a difference....

 

an interesting read on wood efficiency in general

 

Great news. Back when I had a hearthstone, a Woodstock owner and I compared measurements of his fireview and my heritage. We were both disgusted with how the manufacturer lied about the capacity of the fireboxes. Both had overstated the volume significantly. An honest 3.2 CF is great and I really really like the gasketless cat. On the BK, my cat is also very easy to access and remove without tools but the gasket is a pain.

 

Interesting indeed. They are a little off on thermal efficiencies of a modern utility boiler/turbine/generator unit but by compasrison the extraction and shipping costs for fuel seem to dominate that overall efficiency rating anyway. A modern "supercritical" unit efficiency often approaches 45% when it is operating near its peak efficiency although that number drops off somewhat when it is operated at any other power level.

 

the cat is not truly gasket less it sits in a hole.. there is a gasket around hole.. it sits on top of.. much like a regular door gasket.. I haven't needed to change in 2 years.. Just trying to be clear.. no need to change gasket to remove clean and replace cat..

 

Yep, exactly right. And because the gasket sits horizontally on a flat surface (it is a flat gasket), I find there is no need to replace it even after it has long- since stopped sticking down to the sled. I just push mine into place over the cut- out and drop the combustor on top of it. The gasket does not seal the combustor but rather the combustor flange, which is welded onto the combustor so there is zero chance of ripping or in any way misaligning or misinstalling the gasket.

To expand on this one point, I do believe Woodstock hit one out of the park with the combustor design, placement and access. The stove top simply lifts off, and exposes (Easy Boys!) the cat.. At that point, the cat. just lifts out or can be brushed or vacuumed right in place. I literally cannot think of any way the design could be made easier, faster or more robust. This was a huge selling point for me when researching stoves because a clean, correctly working cat. is the core of a cat. based woodstove IMO.

To be fair, the Blaze King King and Regency 5100 are also pretty reasonable to service / R&R the cat. although not as fast and easy as the Ideal Steel. I compare this to older designs in which the cat. is bolted into the back of the stove, behind some kind of bolted in deflector; I would not touch a stove design like that even if it was free because 1) you have to let the stove finish the burn and actually be cold before you can even look at the cat., never mind clean or remove it, 2) you have to 'frolic' inside the stove in a really awkward way to get at the cover, combustor and 3) the bolts / screws / pins that retain these parts are also of course inside the stove and subject to seizing, breaking off, etc. and I have no interest in trying to fix that nonsense.

IMO, there are some really bad stove designs out there and it seems that the worst of the bunch are some of the older (but still in production) cast- iron, cat. based stoves.

Brian

 

Hearthstone has some efficiencies listed on their website in mid to high 80s% ... using a different rating then govt! thoughts?

 

Can you see the cat glow on the IS? Which way does the smoke go through the cat, meaning does the fly ash accumulate on the top or the bottom where you can't see it. It's hard to imagine the sleds, radiators, and air paths in the WS hybrid stoves without one in front of you.

I really like seeing the BK cat glow. It's located right inside the loading door, behind the perforated flame shield that easily lifts off and out without tools. It's right there in front above the loading door too. The smoke goes into it from the front so any ash accumulations can be seen and monitored plus I can blow it off with lung power from outside the loading door. If only the gasket was reusable like the IS.

The really old and outdated cat stoves use nuts and bolts in the firebox, some were downdraft like the old hearthstones and VCs and were located low in the firebox behind panels. No thanks!

 

No. Well, maybe a small part of the end. If you get on your hands and bend your neck the right way. Have the Advil ready. So, no.
It would be fun to watch the cat glow but watching the secondaries helps make up for it.

 

As Unhdsm said, nope, you cannot readily see the cat. glowing on an I.S.

The cat. on an I.S. sits nearly vertical, with the smoke entering the bottom and coming out the top. There really is not any fly ash on either side of the cat. due to the way it sits although some does coat the inside of the cells of course over time.

Yes, it would be nice to see the cat. glow in operation, and I would imagine there would be a lot of infrared heat passed through the glass into the room because of the cat.'s position. Unfortunately, all of the I.R. and really, all the cat.'s heat goes directly into the radiator on an I.S., which is why they scale and warp so much. Woodstock has an experimental I.S. on the floor that has a glass stove top and no radiator. I was really interested in that because it would allow direct viewing of the cat. and even better, would allow the I.R. heat to radiator out of the stove. And of course, no radiator to warp. Looks like a win- win all around to me although in the experimental one, the glass was 'bare'; of course there would have to be a slotted screen or heavy grate over the glass to prevent it from being broken from something hitting it.

Brian

 

This video should give you a good understanding of how the I.S. is put together regarding the top of the stove and parts (cover, radiator, combustor).



This is a better video but it is an early version of an I.S. The new stoves operate identically but have been made more simple.



Brian

 

Is that second video Brian K's beta model?