Well so far I have to say Im pretty happy with this insert. Today when I got up at 9am I loaded the stove with four small ash splits on a small coal bed left over from the night before, then around 1pm I put four more on, then at 5pm I put three splits on and havent touched the stove since, it has a good coal bed now and the house is at 79 degrees at 7:50pm ( hotter than I like and not bad for 11 small splits of wood). The temps during the day where in the mid 40's and are currently at 31 degrees outside. This stove top gets up to 600 degrees with little to no effort. When i start a new fire in a cold stove Ill take a split usually ash and split it up into about six pieces and use it as kindling, light it up and without adding any more wood the stove top is at 600 degrees and that kindling will burn for about an hour or alittle longer. This puzzles me because I read people freaking out when their stoves hit 600-700 degrees. I know my temps are accurate because I use a magnetic temp gauge and an IR gun and they are within 30 degrees of each other. On a full load the stove top will hit 800 ( for about 10 or 15 minutes) then it will settle down and cruise between 600 and 700 degrees for awhile. I have tried to reduce the air sooner (like at a 400 degree stove top, reducing the air in increments) on bigger loads but I tend to get smoke coming out of the chimney so I have to give it more air to clean up the burn. It may take me some more time with this stove to perfect the way It burns when fully loaded, when running small loads 3-4 splits its very eazy to maintaine the fire and keep the stove top around 600 and burn clean but then im re-loading every four hours. Over all Im real happy with this stove and look forward to colder weather.