Need help choosing stove

sanddog said:

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum. I am looking into a Hearthstone stove and trying to heat a 700sqft great room with 14 foot cathedral ceilings, so I am having trouble with the right size stove. Any suggestions appreciated. I like the soapstone for the longer burns and softer heat.
Thanks!!

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Hi Sanddog, welcome to the forum. I second BeGreen: What is the reason that you only want to heat one room? One of the biggest complaints people have about their stove is that it is undersized for their needs after they discovered how nice wood heat is and they would like to heat their whole house. Any chance you may want to do that, too, in the future? Maybe you can tell us how big your house is, what kind of insulation it has, how often you want to burn, give us an idea about the floorplan etc. and we would be happy to give you some recommendations.

In addition, do you already have seasoned wood? Any modern wood stove will need wood with a moisture content of less than 20 %.

sanddog said:

Thanks, this is a garage renovation so it is separate from the rest of the house, will only really need to heat this room. I will ahve a couple of ceiling fans installed.

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First I would suggest checking with your local building inspector/fire marshal and your house insurance whether they approve of a solid-fuel burning appliance in a garage. In many places that is a no-go.

Second, are you planning on overnight burns in that space? And how well is it insulated? A stove for a garage sounds more like something that needs to heat up quickly but will not burn every day. A smallish steel or cast iron stove will do that and not be as expensive as a soapstone stove. If you just plan on short term heat I would look at stoves in the 1.5 cu ft range. If you want to keep the heat going overnight you need at least 2 cu ft. A catalytic stove may be an option here as they have long burn times but will not heat you out of that smallish room.

begreen said:

Sounds like it was a garage. Now a 700sqft great room with 14 foot cathedral ceilings. With that high ceiling I would start with a 2 cu ft stove and install a ceiling fan.

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Got it, thanks! Agree, 2 cu ft sounds like a good size. How about a Woodstock Fireview: http://www.woodstove.com/fireview ?
A catalytic soapstone stove coming from the company with one of the best customer service's around.

Your not too far from Woodstock..... You'd enjoy a visit... Seeing their stoves in person will really get your attention as to how serious they are about building great quality stoves... You'll be very impressed!

Maybe this will help. Last spring I put a lopi republic 1750 in my 768 sq ft garage. I have a ceiling fan and it does a great job.

A good Hearthstone option would be the new Castleton. It will be available anytime, it's a 1.9 cubic foot stove and is retailing for $2K. It's a great little stove!

Welcome to the forum sanddog.

When you put in the ceiling fan, make sure you run it the right way. That is, you want it blowing up in the winter. This will effectively move that hot air out of the top of the room much better than blowing down. Up in winter, down in summer.

An option:http://albany.craigslist.org/for/4019292594.html

It sounds as if this garage renovation is perfect for a stove installation. If you are going to spend a good amount of time in this room and using the stove when are there it could save a good portion of your heating bill separate from the main house. The medium to large sized stove may get you the longer burn times to satisfy room temps with the fans going. good luck!