In the market for a new stove

Contrary to popular belief, as long as you stick with the reputable brands, Lopi, Woodstock, Avalon, Osburn, US Stove, Vogelzang, Drolet, Jotul, and others there are really no "bad" stoves. All will heat fine, all behave slightly differently. With every brand you will have a few that say they are no good and a few that say they are the best. Dry wood, learn how to run it and you will be happy. Pick for looks, firebox size, and Guarantee. IMHO

Our house has almost the exact layout as yours, but 1232 sq ft. I have a Jutol Oslo and it can run us out if I really crank it. If I was to do it again it would be in the basement! But, I would still have a stove upstairs because the aesthetics of It.

NectarNook said:

Can you cook on top of a soapstone stove? It certainly is beautiful.

I've never used a catalytic stove, but I've been reading about them on the topic pages here. I'm almost starting to lean toward them simply because of their long burn times. I grew up having to take turns waking up to stoke the wood stove a couple times a night - what a pain in the buns! My husband and I have done a tiny amount of research before now, and we liked the Alderlea T4. Looks like a good stove. But... I wanted to resist the urge to buy the very first one we saw. I'm so bad about that, and I usually end up finding something I like more after the fact.

Thanks for the super fast feedback.

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Since you do not have much space to heat and I assume your place will be fairly energy efficient I would also recommend a catalytic stove. With those you can regulate the heat more easily especially in the shoulder season when you do not need the stove cranking. With a normal EPA stove you run the risk of heating yourself out of the house in those months. Woodstock is certainly a good suggestion as they have also one of the best customer services in the industry besides making very nice stoves. Other catalytic stoves to look at would be Blaze King and Buck stoves. A firebox size of 2 to 2.5 cu ft. should be sufficient for your place.

Hmmppfff, a better floor plan than mine *miffed*

Welcome to the forums, Nectar !!

You are getting good advise !Keep processing that firewood !

Most definitely can cook on soapstone stoves. Look up posts by rideau, she is the queen of cooking on soapstone, both a Woodstock Fireview and Progress Hybrid. It's amazing what she has done. Gotta second a Woodstock, they are a pleasure to run, view, and live with. And they have a 6 month money back guarantee, which did my indecisive soul good. Was a big expense for me, but one which I now know was the right choice for me. I wouldn't have thought buying from the manufacturer rather than a local shop would have been the way to go, but I get better support by far from the manufacturer than my friends get from the local shop.

Agreed, with one difference........Must have a furnace or boiler/baseboard type system as main, then wood as supplement/"backup". That's here, may be different for you.
Devil's in the details.
NectarNook, one bit of advice....and considering your location, it's probably already in the plan, insulate that place extremely well.
This will help for as long as the house stands. Less heat and cooling needed means less work..............
Pics to follow, we hope. Good luck in your stove quest.

BrotherBart said:

PS: I would seriously advise talking to your homeowner's insurance company of choice before you go with wood and a kero heater as sole source. I don't know of a company in the country that will insure a place like that any more.

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No problem in this category for us. We have the wood stove as our heat source but no kerosene and I wouldn't really want that in the house. I will say that one time we needed to be away in the winter. It was not super cold. If my memory bank is working right I think it was high 20's to low 30's daytime and teens at night. We did use a little Pelonis heater (electric). Those are really small but put out some decent heat and they have a blower. The day we came home the temperature was 25 or around there and the house temperature was around 60 degrees. No problem with water pipes either.

NectarNook said:

Can you cook on top of a soapstone stove? It certainly is beautiful.

I've never used a catalytic stove, but I've been reading about them on the topic pages here. I'm almost starting to lean toward them simply because of their long burn times. I grew up having to take turns waking up to stoke the wood stove a couple times a night - what a pain in the buns! My husband and I have done a tiny amount of research before now, and we liked the Alderlea T4. Looks like a good stove. But... I wanted to resist the urge to buy the very first one we saw. I'm so bad about that, and I usually end up finding something I like more after the fact.

Thanks for the super fast feedback.

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Welcome to the forum NectarNook.

For sure you can cook on a wood stove. We've done so for many, many moons and continue to do so with the Fireview. And as I stated above, we have no insurance problem.

Where you are building probably is not too far from where we once lived (Escanaba area) so we are somewhat familiar with your climate. For the house you describe I would not hesitate putting in a Fireview and would recommend the Progress but think that might be too much heat for you. You have the right requirement with good dry wood. I will add that we have recommended everyone be 3 years ahead on the wood and if you do that, you should never have a problem with your wood. Stack it outdoors, off the ground and cover only the top of the wood stacks.

On the Fireview, I'll add that our previous stove was much larger but we were never really comfortable with it except in spring and fall. During the winter months we were not comfortable and even closed off part of the house. Then we started shopping for stoves. At first we had our minds made up to not get a cat stove. However, we had heard great things about Woodstock and to make a long story short, we did buy the Fireview. I'll also admit that when I first saw the stove, although it was and is beautiful, I doubted it would heat our old crate. But then, there was that 6 month guarantee and that did go a long way towards making up our mind. In addition, we visited some folks who heated with the Fireview and that was the final straw. We came home and ordered one.

It did not take long to know that it was the right stove for us. In our first year we found that we no longer had to close off part of the house. We heated the whole thing and were finally warm in the winter. The really amazing part is that we used only half the amount of wood that we had been using! Then we also found that we no longer had to clean our chimney as often which is a blessing. We've had the stove for 6 full heating seasons now and we did clean the chimney once to get about a cup of soot and absolutely no creosote. That was 4 years ago when we cleaned it. We might clean it this summer to see what we get.

I'll add that our chimney is a SS chimney and the pipe goes out the rear of the stove, through the wall and then up alongside of the house. We do not have a chase but we do not have any problem with draft.

As for the cat, it makes running the stove very simple and easy. You do have to clean the cat occasionally but that is a task that takes only a couple minutes. With the Fireview, it is a matter of letting the fire die out so only a few coals left. Naturally for protection the company has to say to do this when the stove is cold but we never wait. Just let it cool a bit, open the top lid, reach in with one hand and lift out the cat. I take it out on the porch and brush it lightly with an old paint brush. Sometimes I'll use canned air, like what you would use on a keyboard, and blow through the honeycomb (never used compressed air but the canned is okay). Then it is a matter of setting the cat back in place and closing the lid. Simple, quick and easy.

Good luck.

Backwoods Savage said:

No problem in this category for us. We have the wood stove as our heat source but no kerosene and I wouldn't really want that in the house. I will say that one time we needed to be away in the winter. It was not super cold. If my memory bank is working right I think it was high 20's to low 30's daytime and teens at night. We did use a little Pelonis heater (electric). Those are really small but put out some decent heat and they have a blower. The day we came home the temperature was 25 or around there and the house temperature was around 60 degrees. No problem with water pipes either.

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Maybe you should share the name of your insurance company.Not arguing, everybody is just saying that *most* won't insure a place without another heat source.

When we leave, the thermostat gets set as low as it goes, 45° I think. I'm pretty sure it has never come on over a weekend. Of course, that's with the stove loaded up with good stuff and set on low, so it's making some kind of heat for a day and a half

Foremost.

Woodstock Progress and Lopi Cape Cod would be at the top of my list.
Jim

I completely get the desire to heat one's house entirely with wood.

But I have to ask, what happens if you are away from your house for a while in the winter without a backup system on a thermostat?
Do you have to drain the pipes every time you go on a trip?

If you're looking at Blaze King, check out the smaller Sirocco 20 and Chinook 20. Might be a better fit. The Ashford 30 is supposed to be out this fall. I'm not sure if they will have a smaller version of that as well.

Trimming down splits seems like a PITA, but it's not that big of a deal. Quite a few threads on the subject. I wouldn't let it be a deciding factor.

NectarNook said:

My fear with these bigger stoves is that our house is so small we'd end up needing to open every window in the house to let in cold air so we don't roast.

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If you look at the EPA numbers, you'll see that you can run the Progress almost as low as the Fireview. The Progress has that nice big window. The Progress is reported to be even stingier with wood; Less wood needed means less work. That said, I'm selling the Fv and am going to heat with the Keystone. We have about the same sq.ft, no vaulted ceiling, not as tight an envelope, an unheated/uninsulate basement and milder climate to be factored in. I think the Fv could handle your place, with adequate reserve headroom, but I'd say get the stove that has the features you like as well, since it'll be there for a long time.

lumbering on said:

I completely get the desire to heat one's house entirely with wood.

But I have to ask, what happens if you are away from your house for a while in the winter without a backup system on a thermostat?
Do you have to drain the pipes every time you go on a trip?

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They have a basement so the pipes should be OK, and like Dennis said, you can keep the upstairs warm enough with a small electric space heater when your house isn't huge....

If it were me I'd opt for one of the smaller Woodstocks. Your home is small at 960 sq ft and a Keystoneor Palladian would have little trouble heating a new home of your size. My Keystone is almost too much at times for my 1200 sq ft. A bigger stove may look out of place in a smaller home and take up more space with a larger hearth.

You can cut down splits pretty easy with a chop saw, I do it all the time and use the small chunks in the shoulder season or chop them into kindling.

Blaze Kings are known to be the most controllable stoves. I'd get a Blaze King if it were my main source of heat (which it will be this year). I'd get a princess due to the fact that you have 20 inch logs already cut. Some of the other stoves listed above by others won't take that. It also has a very broad range of heat production. On those cold long nights in Northern Wisconsin, it would never be at a loss of providing long stints with plenty of heat.