We had a nice big storm in January in the northwest. I live on a hill that got 20 inches of snow in 3 days, followed by and ice storm that took out the power. Last time we had a big storm that took out power, we had a baby, so when it got cold we packed up and went to the inlaws. This time, we had our new insert, and the baby is 5 years old now, so we stayed. Here is what we learned:
1. Burning 24 hours a day, the bedrooms actually reached a reasonable temperature. Normally, I burn just in the evenings, from about 6 - 11 p.m., starting earlier some weekends. I only burn 2 or 3 weekday nights, because we just aren't home enough other nights. So normally, the insert doesn't heat the bedrooms, but because the gas furnace kicks on in the early morning, it's not a problem. We piled a bunch of extra blankets on when the power went out, but we ended up quite warm.
2. I go to bed late, and my wife gets up early, but still, I got up in the middle of the night to restock the stove, to keep the house warm. This kind of sucked, but not too bad. If I tried to do a really good job of packing the stove, sometimes I ended up with smoke in the house. But it turned out that because we weren't counting on it running for that long, I didn't need to pack it too well. So long as there were enough coals for my wife to rebuild the fire (she's not inclined to mess with this normally), the house stayed reasonably warm. We have an internal chimney, with a large stone hearth that absorbs a lot of heat, and I think that helps keep things from getting too cold when the fire gets low.
3. Normally, I clean the glass before every fire, and it's beautiful. Burning for 3 days straight, the glass got cloudy, and it really made a difference in my enjoyment watching the fire. I was surprised how much I noticed this.
4. We went through more wood in that one week than we had all winter. This is not an exact calculation. But we went through a mess of wood.
5. Our house is listed as 2,187 square feet. So the upstairs (main living area, and location of insert) would be almost 1,100, and the Morso 5660 is supposed to heat a maximum of 2,200 square feet. We closed one of the bedrooms (currently used as a home office), and were able to heat the rest of the upstairs fine with no fans or blowers. This stove heats quite well without electricity, especially when kept hot. But I can't imagine that it would heat 2,200 square feet unless there were no walls, or you kept the air much more open than I did to burn as hot as possible all the time. I didn't spend too much time fussing with it.
6. Thanks to hearth.com, I was using dry wood, and that probably helped a lot. I'm really glad I got an insert and learned how to use it, and had enough dry wood.
1. Burning 24 hours a day, the bedrooms actually reached a reasonable temperature. Normally, I burn just in the evenings, from about 6 - 11 p.m., starting earlier some weekends. I only burn 2 or 3 weekday nights, because we just aren't home enough other nights. So normally, the insert doesn't heat the bedrooms, but because the gas furnace kicks on in the early morning, it's not a problem. We piled a bunch of extra blankets on when the power went out, but we ended up quite warm.
2. I go to bed late, and my wife gets up early, but still, I got up in the middle of the night to restock the stove, to keep the house warm. This kind of sucked, but not too bad. If I tried to do a really good job of packing the stove, sometimes I ended up with smoke in the house. But it turned out that because we weren't counting on it running for that long, I didn't need to pack it too well. So long as there were enough coals for my wife to rebuild the fire (she's not inclined to mess with this normally), the house stayed reasonably warm. We have an internal chimney, with a large stone hearth that absorbs a lot of heat, and I think that helps keep things from getting too cold when the fire gets low.
3. Normally, I clean the glass before every fire, and it's beautiful. Burning for 3 days straight, the glass got cloudy, and it really made a difference in my enjoyment watching the fire. I was surprised how much I noticed this.
4. We went through more wood in that one week than we had all winter. This is not an exact calculation. But we went through a mess of wood.
5. Our house is listed as 2,187 square feet. So the upstairs (main living area, and location of insert) would be almost 1,100, and the Morso 5660 is supposed to heat a maximum of 2,200 square feet. We closed one of the bedrooms (currently used as a home office), and were able to heat the rest of the upstairs fine with no fans or blowers. This stove heats quite well without electricity, especially when kept hot. But I can't imagine that it would heat 2,200 square feet unless there were no walls, or you kept the air much more open than I did to burn as hot as possible all the time. I didn't spend too much time fussing with it.
6. Thanks to hearth.com, I was using dry wood, and that probably helped a lot. I'm really glad I got an insert and learned how to use it, and had enough dry wood.
