Have some questions about a RSF Delta

Your post lacking punctuation and paragraph breaks is difficult to read so I could only take away a small bit of it. I can't really make out where the bedroom is in relation to the stove. The gravity vent could potentially put too much heat into the bedroom.

I opted for the central heat blower instead and I also chose to run it backwards, bringing cold air to the stove rather than sucking hot air away. It works very well for me. My class A chimney is chased up through our master walk-in closet upstairs and it throws off enough heat to keep the bedroom just right if the closet door is left open.

WRT stepping back the mantel and chimney breast, the CTC on the class A will most likely determine that. I used all metal studs to build the surround and stepped the chimney breast back 6 inches.

I'm in the process of having an RSF Opel 3 installed. The unit is up and running but the finishing is not complete. I have the central heat blower installed into the plenum which is working to keep the house warm. The living room, where the fireplace is, is the warmest, obviously, and the master BR, always the coldest room in the house, is still the coldest due to it having the longest duct run from the plenum and three outside walls and three good-size windows. The air coming from the register in the MBR is 80F but the room temp is only about 65F. With the geothermal not coming on anymore (and using that evermore costly hydro), it's made us pretty darned happy, though I'd like to see if the system can be tweaked to bring more heat to the bedroom area and a bit less to the kitchen/dining/living room area.

The setup we went with was similar to that in the RSF catalog, pg 15. The unit is set at about a 15-20* angle to the wall adjoining the woodbox. We also opted for the stepback mantle. One thing I'm glad we did was to not go for the clean face option, though we both felt it looked far better in the catalog. With the access to the firebox closed off, how do you adjust the chain controlling the damper or adjust any of the electrical hookup or the blower temperature switch? Just seems that you'd potentially create a huge pickle for yourself by closing everything off. We went with the grates (rather than louvers) to cover the opening.

We did get the thermostat (for the blower) which, since it's installed in the coldest room, means that it's always calling for heat. I think it would be better to skip the t-stat and just put a thermal switch on the blower circuit that kills the blower when the firebox temp drops too low. I intend to inquire about that and maybe remove the t-stat.

I'm using more wood with this unit - about a face cord every 9 days or so (though that's over Christmas and we've been feeding it pretty steady). I anticipate that will drop to perhaps a face cord every two weeks once vaca is over. I was also burning a lot of small stuff (< 2" sticks, 4-5" maple and elm rounds with a light sprinkling of black locust) over Christmas and those stick fires don't last very long. I don't like burning rounds in this unit due to the tendency for them to roll forward (doesn't happen so much in the stove) and bang into the glass and leave coals lying there, waiting to drop out when the door is opened. Splits stay put much better, so I'll probably split everything (within reason) this year. I'm getting huge coal beds which take time to burn down.

Overall, we're very happy with the unit. We're warm in the house now (as mentioned before, still some tweaks needed), we're heating for the cost of some gas and a little electricity (to run the central heating blower plus the furnace fan) and we have a beautiful fire to watch in the evening. I ask you, can life get any better than that?

Presumably you've seen my posts with pictures; if not just search for mine of my Delta 2. We like it a lot!

Sam