What we got here is a dilemma

So considerably shorter burn times when running the blower?
I've only run one stove with a blower, and it was a pre-EPA that I ran for only one year. I liked the heat circulation, but not the noise.
Do any of these stove blowers come with a good quality air filter incorporated?

 

With the blower, my burn times are much, much longer since I can get more usable heat from lower temps.

 

I tend to skip the blower threads because they usually have come a bit unglued by the time I get to them, and I'm not trying to go there, but am perplexed. The best I can make out is maybe you mean the mixing of air in the room allows you to run a cooler fire and therefore a longer burn? (My kitchen ceiling often runs at 90 degrees or more, while my feet are in the 60's.)

 

I was hoping the IS had a blower too, I'm still torn between the IS and PH, being cheap I like the projected price point of the IS but the sale of my princess will offset some of the cost. My wife will also have a say and she loves the PH so not sure.

 

Burn times are not considerably lower with the fans on. There are a few conditions you just have to consider with the BK, especially concerning the Cat. probe. So...
With the fans off- get a load going and after a while(3/4- 1 hour), the stove is at a stable temp.-(cat. probe @ 1500 0r s0). I removed the cover off of my T-stat housing, so I just eye-ball it now (dial @ 1-1.5), the visual adjustment seems to be more consistent. And then..... turn the fans on.
Stove top temps. and Probe temps. will drop. But that's all surface temps.. The Cat and stove are still cranking along, but the gauges are now showing lower temps. The air from the blowers do their job, and heat is exchanged, but the T-stat settings do not need to be adjusted most times.
Later in the burn, it does help to open up the air a bit, but that could be anywhere from 8-16 hours, depending on circumstances.

Truth be told, I pay more attention to the flue probe. temps, and the Cat. probe temps than the stove top temps. I adjust the air according to the flue and Cat..

 

Depending on the heat shield design, this may be an easy project. Here are photos of a plug-in Drolet Fan and thermodisc. The question is whether the heat shield design will effectively route air over and around the stove. If so, cut a hole in the heat shield, drill four holes for mounting bolts, done. The fan should be accessible for cleaning as the comb fins tend to accumulate dust over time and pump out less air. I have used compressed air to blast the crud off.

 

Same here PD, my stove location is centralized in my home and the heat radiates fairly evenly. I'm on the WS pre-order list.

 

The blaze king has a thermostat driven by stove temp. So for any given setting of the tstat, it does whatever needed to maintain that temp. The blowers transfer heat off the stove at a much higher rate than with them off. So, for a given tstat setting, the actual rate of burn will depend on where you have the blowers set as they have a wide range. At high burn, I find that i repeatedly burn a given amount of wood at a given tstat setting a third faster with the blowers on than off. Stove temp is the same but the heat moves faster as does the burn cycle. This is also one of the things that makes the bk special. A full load that does not overheat the house and goes for days during shoulder season can be torched efficiently without fear of overfire in 8 hours if needed in january. There arent too many stoves that can do that.

No air filter and steel stoves are a dust magnet.

 

Just added a blower to mine this winter. What a difference it makes. Like having the convection ability of my old pellet stove combined with the radiant heat if the wood stove. On really cold nights it was essential.

 

I like the idea of cutting the heat shield and adding a blower. I wonder what the heat shield would look like.

I would really prefer a freestanding stoves over an insert.

 

Yes. My existing boiler is six years old and in great shape.

I've thought about this. I am leaning towards a pellet add-on boiler over wood, though. I would keep all three stoves and run the pellet boiler depending upon my needs (lazy, sick, tired of loading stoves, really cold days, or really mild days)

Yes, that is where I am at. Short term, it will be wood stoves. Long term, I think a pellet add-on is in my future, but I don't want to half-azz it. I want total convenience which will require a much larger budget than I have been working with.

I think the combination of the right stoves and the right pellet add-on is the direction I am headed over the next five+ years. Even with this extremely cold winter I have kept the house warm with the stove setup I currently have. The new stoves and future pellet add-on is all about convenience and simplicity.

 

I have been thinking about this project all day (yeah, it was a little quiet at work today ) The first order of business would be to block off the bottom of the rear heat shield so that blower air did not shoot out the bottom of the stove. This could be done by bolting/riveting/welding on a 45-degree plate. Next, adding some curved deflectors on the top of the heat shield would help to route blower air over the top of the stove. If possible, I would like to install the fan so that the discharge is angled upward as opposed to facing straight into the back of the stove. Lastly, if the heat shield is simply a bolt-on option, I'm not averse to doing this as the worst that could happen would be that it doesn't work well and I have to order a new heat shield. A buddy of mine does custom auto work (body, exhaust, engine etc), he has all the cool tools and he could knock this out in a flash. All of this depends on what this heat shield looks like; if there is minimal clearance between the shield and the back of the Ideal, this wouldn't work very well. I'm hoping for/banking on at least an inch or so of room.

 

A few thoughts for you BBar. My beta unit sits in pretty tucked in my mantle, probably not as tight as your prospective install location but its not ideal. My tiny little VC used to sit out on the hearth more and I noticed the heat got into the room better. Since I got the Ideal running I have tossed a little box fan on one side to help move the air into the room proper. I just took a few shots with my IR thermometer, the mag is on the front hotspot at about 550(565 on IR), the side with the fan is 180 the side with out is 240, the actual stove top is sitting about 360 on IR. The thermometers in the room and my own skin notice that the room heat is alot better distributed when I remember to turn on the fan( and I think the difference in the IR readings also show how much more heat I am moving off the stove).


Growing up my parents had what I seem to recall was a scott stove. It had a simple vertical heat shield at the back with a 45 degree bend at the top, they had the bend extended and we noticed an immediate difference in how much heat we were feeling in the room versus headed up toward the ceiling.

Bottom line I really like my beta unit, but if I get a production model I will be looking long and hard at my install and would be very tempted to rig up some type of blower arrangement or modify the heat shield. to help move the heat out into the room. I am curious to see what the heat shield would look like.

I don't actually know if any of my rambling is going to be helpful, but it helped me to type it out.

 

Folks, my fan idea my have just gone out the window. Here is a screenshot of the Ideal design that was posted on Woodstock's site. If you look at the back of the stove, that is where the "preheated secondary air" chamber is. The heat shield would ostensibly mount behind this, and if we were to put a fan blasting cool air onto the back of the secondary air chamber, I have concerns that this could interfere with the burn. There is always the option to get an external fan and the Drolet thermodisc kit to activate it....not an "all in one" solution, but it would probably work.

 

I'd suggest, in another month or so when the brunt of the heating season is over, calling Woodstock and asking them for their recommendation about the best way to add a fan onto the IS. Or send an e-mail.

 

My Summit blows (yes it does) air on the channel for the secondary air which I think is a poor design.
Thin hi temp insulation might help, been thinking about putting some on my stove.
I believe some of the other stoves do the same thing.

 

Looks like I am going with the 30 in the Kitchen.

 

BrowningBar:

A point about the Progress Hybrid that may be of interest to you.

The stove can be burned in a low burn at about 12000 BTU's per hour. But it is designed to let more air in that most stoves, and still burn at about 80% efficiency. So it can burn more wood more quickly than other stoves, putting a lot of heat - with hardwoods up to 80,000 BTU per hour - into the home.

The stove was deliberately designed to be able of put a lot of heat out when needed, whether because of bitter cold, large home, or poorly insulated home.

This stove is capable of putting more heat into your home more quickly than other stoves, by efficiently burning your wood more quickly.

But it s flexile enough to put minimal heat out in low cat burn. I frequently burn one or two splits with the air entirely closed and get a really low, slow cat burn.

Because the Progress Hybrid can be burned with more air than the IS, it can burn wood more quickly but just as efficiently as this, producing significantly more - 20% more - heat per hour.

It can produce at high burn 40% more than an 80 % efficient stove EPA tested to 50,000 BTU's p hour.

It is not that he PH can perform magic and produce more BTUs from the same amount of wood than other stoves with the same efficiency, it can just produce it a lot more quickly, for far greater heat output into a home over 24 hours, when needed. .

 

I appreciate the info, but, for the Kitchen, the Progress was never an option unless I truly tear apart the fireplace to increase the opening. The side loading of the Progress prevents me from doing it in the Kitchen. The lack of a blower means I would rear vent the IS and it would stick out far to much and would require me to redo a large portion of the flooring, plus the stove would take up a lot of room in an area that space is at a premium.

I wanted to top vent the IS with a blower. Since that can not be done, I will have to go with the 30, buy the shorter legs and upgrade the blower on the stove.

 

Might consider a Progress Hybrid and a King, rather than two Kings, for the other locations? I think you'd like the amount of heat you can get fro a PH. Just a thought.