Vermont Castings "Defiant" vs Quadrafire "Isle Royale" vs Jotul "600 firelight"....

BTW, if we do get the PE summit Classic, it will be the black one w/ nickel legs and trim.

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Good choice

Mr_Super-Hunky said:

Whorehouse red?????..

Am I missing something here?, or should I just keep my nose out of this and don't ask??.

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Probably better not to ask. If you do, you won't get a straight answer. Roos not been around for a month, but his ears are probably burning now. Sorry I mentioned it, I was really just getting over it.

BTW the Muppet is Mr.Waldorf, yes, named after the hotel. My evil doppelganger.

Another possible to throw in the mix is the new super-size stove that Hearthstone is supposed to be coming out with soon - even bigger than the Mansfield. Giant firebox for stuffing with pine, soapstone for the radiant heating, etc. The only real downside is that it's a brand new stove, so you run the "early adopter" risk of being a beta-tester... However I don't think they will be offering it in Whorehouse Red %-P

Gooserider

Well they have trouble getting the soapstone from the supplier (earth) in any color but grey... However you'd thnk they could come up with an alternative, less ornate design for the legs. Probably still have to have some fancyness to match the body, but do something to loose the duck feet...

Gooserider

with issues Hearth stone has had over the last few years not sure i would buy that unit in its first season on the market they have been making stoves for 20 some odd years now and they still cant get the door handels right just the opion of a guy who sells them

"That leaves two options left that both her and I will accept based on performance and appearance.
.PE Summit Classic
.VC Defiant (not sure if cat or no-cat model).
I like the looks of the Defiant better, but the warranty and heat output on the PE stove is better; although the performance of the Defiant should meet our needs."

Hunk, I haven't posted recently, but we also live in a high mountain setting in a log cabin. The winter can be cold, and we have been heating totally with wood and mostly with pine and fir off of our land for many years.
I'm curious why the Quadrafire Isle Royale didn't make your final list? It seems to be adequate in size and appearance. The warmers are a nice option...
There are almost too many good stoves out there, so I know it is difficult. I think you are wise to require top loading.
Also, if the installation has to pass a building inspection you should look closely at each stove's requirements for pipe size & length, clearances, and floor protection. These things vary widely between different makes, and can easily change the final cost by thousands of $$.
Scotty

Hey Mr hunky sorry to burst a bubble but if you dont think the isle royale or the f600 can handle 4000sqf which they cant there is really no free standing stove or insert on the market that can including the stoves you are looking at

the only freestanding stove in my opion that can even get close to that 3000 sqft mark is the 5700 quad almost all the manufactuers over state the stoves real heating capacity the best method you can take to figure out wich stove will heat the most space is to look at the size of the firebox the more wood the more heat the other major consideration that should be looked at is the material the stove is made out of the steel stoves are more of a true convection heater if you are going to try and heat the house from a remote location this will prove a better choice if the stove is going in a room that you plan on spending alot of time in cast may be the better choice as it has better radiant qualities hope this helps you make the choice better

Just speaking from experience here, I have the Jotul 600 Firelight. It heats my 2100 sq ft home nicely. It is the only heat I have (hence the name "MustBurn"). I only run into trouble below 20 degrees, while burning wet wood. I have fired it to 650 degrees with no issues and run it overnight with no problems. It's a good stove...

MB

I would agree with stoveguy13 about the VERY limited value of mfg heating capacity estimates. A certain volume of wood can put out so many BTU's (exact number depends on the variety) when burned. The only real variable is how long the stove takes to burn the wood, (as in how many BTU's/hour) and that is pretty much under your control, as all the stoves can be adjusted about the same amount.

You will get some variation depending on the stove material - mostly a time shift, soapstone takes longer to get hot and start radiating, but radiates longer after the fire goes out, and arguably maintains a more uniform average temperature. Steel pretty much tracks whatever is going on inside the firebox, and cast iron is somewheres in between.

The marketing department is the one that comes up with the "volume heated" number - but there is no "standard" on the volume, so company A's 2000 sq ft is not going to be the same as company B's. Similarly there is no standard for defining "burn time", or even peak and average BTU's... Each of those numbers can be shrunk or stretched depending on how you tune the stove, and (again) there is no standard. They don't have to get all the numbers off the same stove settings, but can (and may) tune the stove to optimize each one. In essence you can have a short hot burn (High peak BTU's) or a slow cool burn (long burn time) or something in between, (best average BTU, usually) but you can't get all three. VC claims to use the same setup for all three, which is why their numbers are arguably more conservative than some of the other brands.

The ONLY variable that really tells you anything useful is firebox size - a bigger firebox = more wood per load in = longer / hotter fires (pick one, depending on stove settings) = more heat / load of wood out... Note that within limits, you can get as much heat out of a small stove as you do out of a big one, you'll just be running it hotter and reloading more often.

In your shoes I'd throw all those mfgr performance numbers out the window, and simply go for the biggest firebox that you find otherwise acceptable.

Gooserider

GEE WIZ!, Get the Cat Defiant already! You like the looks and the fire box is as big as it gets, so the btu output will be the same or more than any other similar sized stove. Don't look at the BTU numbers by the manufactures, they are all fudged. You can only get so many BTU's per lb of wood no matter what kind of wood you burn. The cat will burn less wood and more heat because it's more efficient. People will argue, but it's true.

Mr. Hunky, I'm not sure you are considering things in the same way that you will after using your stove a few years. You describe yourself as a novice, so if you don't mind I'd like to share some knowledge gleaned from a lifetime of wood heat.

First of all, people rarely run a wood stove flat out except on the very coldest days. That is because when you get a stove that hot, the uninhabitable area close to such an intense source of heat really cuts into your usable floor space. What good is it if the farthest reaches of the house are warm but nobody wants to be close to the stove?

It isn't like forced air where you have a lot of volume of warm air circulating around you. Wood stoves are HOT. And they RADIATE intense heat. The quality of the heat you are putting into the room is much different than warm forced air. I'll say it again, simply comparing BTU with forced air can be misleading because most of your wood heat is radiant heat, not hot air heat. Unlike a room heated by forced air, when you stand in a line of sight of the wood stove you will definitely be warmer than you will be if you step around a partition, behind a counter, or even step behind a piece of furniture. BTW, in your furniture layout you will be more comfortable if your furniture can be moved to take advantage of variations in the heat of the stove versus the weather. Some days you will want to face the stove - some days you will want to face awary from it. Being able to move around in a room to find different zones of heat is something intrensic to wood heat that is very different from forced air heat.

You will find that some people with large homes will use several wood stoves at moderate settings rather than one stove at full blast. That's a personal choice that you will understand more about after you have used a single wood heat source for a few years. Frankly, I think any of the stoves you have listed are fine for your purpose. I also think it is wise of you to have a back up source of forced air heat.

Another thing....I also think that rating stoves on the basis of their advertised ability to heat xxxx cubic feet of house is not the best way to compare them. Stoves of similar dimension tend to differ more in advertising hype then they do in operation.

If you would compare stoves on a single basis, consider doing so on the volume of the firebox first and maybe the weight secondly. Off hand I would say that you want a stove with at least 3 cubic feet of firebox and if cast iron it should be weighing over 425 lbs. Most of your favorite stoves will meet those criteria and should put out similar BTU and burn times. The stove world is very competitive; if one stove was clearly better than another we would all know and tell you. In my opinion, way too much advertising copy has been written about emptying the ash box - normally a minor chore. In fact some stoves work better if the ash box is allowed to fill up and stay full. On the other hand, I am so biased toward the value of top loading that I won't even consider buying a stove without it....thereby restricting myself and missing out on some very beautiful stoves.

Moreover, every experienced wood burner will tell you that your chimney design is at least as important as the stove - probably more so. You should put a lot of thought into the draft because that's where much of the performance difference lies. Consider that a good chimney system will cost as much as the stove.... maybe more - and is a lot harder to change. For that matter, I have absolute confidence in telling you that what kind of wood you burn in the stove along with what kind of chimney you construct will make more of a difference than which brand of stove that you end up with.

I hope I'm not bursting your bubble, but heating 4000 cubic feet with one raging stove on a cold day at 8000 feet is barely possible - and it is certainly going to be different than you are visualizing. Cold days can be a lot of work, but it is worthwhile as the temperature falls outside and the whole family just sort of migrates toward the stove. Woodstove togetherness. And on the days when a more uniformly heated house is desireable, you may want to consider leaving the stove on medium and making up the difference with the forced air system.

Wood heat has an oddly satisfying quality which touches some deep seated sense of comfort. Yes, it is work, but obviously all of us here think the effort is worthwhile. Whichever one you decide on I'd bet you will enjoy the season and learn from it too.
Good Luck, Scotty

Your reasoning on the "quality" issue makes sense, and arguably any welded firebox stove SHOULD be tighter sealing than a cast stove simply by virtue of having fewer seams to potentially leak. However we have had users that have had problems (resolved by an adjustment, but it was tricky to find) with gasket leaks on a PE, and bad welds on an Englander (Englander did take care of the problem) so quality can still be an issue. It is one of the other things that I had in mind when I said pick the biggest firebox out of the otherwise acceptable units...

In your situation, I would probably incorporate a chimney damper into any setup that I built as a properly used damper can help to resolve overdraft problems (You do need to be careful not to use it as a "band-aid" to cover other issues, but it will solve genuine overdrafts...) Our house doesn't have the altitude yours does, and I burn mostly hardwood, but I also have a tall stack (about 25') so I need to worry about draft issues as well. My smoke dragon has a chimney damper built in, and I'd want to put one in for any stove I replaced it with because of my stack height.

I can understand your concern about VC quality and such, but the cat Defiant is a long established model with a good track record overall. Remember that there are a couple of factors that distort what you see here on the forum...
1. We tend to see more "problem cases" than average - there are two main classes of newcomers we see here, those like you who are trying to make smart purchases, and those who are having problems they are trying to figure out. We seldom get people with perfectly working stoves signing up to tell us how well they work...
2. VC is the 800lb gorrilla of the stove industry, and probably sell ten times as many stoves as all the other makers combined - if they had the same defect rate as everyone else in the industry, you would see huge numbers of VC complaints just because they sell so many stoves... Considering the number of Defiants that are probably out there (I don't know the exact sales figures) the number of complaints we get here suggest a fairly low defect rate.

For reasons I discuss elsewhere, I'm not seriously in the market for a new stove, but if I were, the VC Encore would very much be on my "short list" (our house is smaller, so we don't need the Defiant size)

The only big thing that would worry me about a cat in your situation is that some folks say that pine that isn't VERY well dried tends to put out more creosote than hardwoods, which means you need to make sure your wood is well seasoned and that you keep your cat working above the "light-off" temp as much as possible to avoid the potential for clogs.

I'm not quite as comfortable with the newer "everburn" technology as that seems to have gotten more mixed reviews, however at least some of the problem cases have been low draft issues, which shouldn't be your problem.

I think you'd be happy with either a PE or the Defiant. The Isle Royal is slightly smaller, but probably would also do well for you if you wanted the top load and non-cat combo - .3 CF isn't such a huge difference in size for that class of stove, and again we don't here of that many issues with the IR.

Gooserider

Mr_Super-Hunky said:

Scotty:

Thanks for your reply. I must have been typing as you were replying and may have covered a few iteams that you already mentioned.

Your reply came across as very knowledgable and sincere and i really appreciate that.

I must say that I don't have unrealistic expectations for any stove, especially trying to heat around 4000 sf of "volume". That said, I would rather fall overboard from a boat 1/2 mile from shore as opposed to 4 miles from shore! Even though it may be unrealistic to heat 4000 sf with a single stove, I would at least want to get one that is capable of doing 2500 to 3000 as opposed to less.

I still have one trick up my sleeve that I have not mentioned yet, but I promise to inform you of it tomorrow, (it's almost midnight and I'm tired!).

Thanks again for the informative replies. Hint: My "trick up my sleeve" has to do with somehow routing the heat from the wood stove into the already existing duct work throughout the whole house that is used by the current forced air gas unit.. The return grate for the forced air unit is very close to the wood stove location and has me thinking!!. Now I know I won't get any sleep tonight!

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Before you get over excited about this, check your codes There are very strict rules about the locations of stoves and HVAC returns - I forget the exact clearances but I think its a 10' minimum, I wish Elk were still around for the official numbers... The reason is a concern that if you had a malfunction, the HVAC system could cause the rapid spread of smoke and / or carbon monoxide throughout the house with potentially life threatening consequences. (same reason stoves are prohibited in bedrooms)

The other issue is that the hot air coming off the stove is only going to be a few degrees warmer than the room is, unlike in your furnace heat exchanger where you have about a 30-50* temperature rise. Your HVAC system looses a good bit of heat in the ducting, and is not terribly effective at redistributing stove temperature air. You will be better off trying to encourage natural circulation in the house space, possibly using a few strategically placed fans, rather than trying to use the HVAC system.

I know this from experience, we had a little box that hooked into our thermostat, and cycled the HVAC fan for ~5 minutes every 15 minutes or so. We found the net result was that the house temp over all averaged out a little more evenly, but mostly by dropping the room with the stove by about 5 degrees, and bringing the rest of the house up about one... I turned it off about half way through this past winter, didn't miss it, and recently sold the box to someone else...

Gooserider

Goose, I've seen many commercial HVAC installs where asmokegas detector was located in the return air duct of the system,wired in series with the safetycontrol circuit of the unit to shut it down if such an emergency arose.I guess a person could do the same thing with a residential application if they were really sold on the idea of trying to circulate that warmer air from the stove room to the remainder of the home.I agree with your own experience though,the idea of distributing hot stove room air via the Hvac ducting sounds great,but never really lives up to its' billing.

In my opinion, you should have installed a masonry heater. But given the choices of wood stoves you have discussed here I would consider carefully my own ability to maintain the entire system. If you are a good mechanic, then choose the Defiant catalytic. If you tend to avoid mechanical work, choose the PE. Also, consider your budget. The chimney for the Defiant will cost more. And you can expect about $150/year for repairs and maintenance. The cost per year of maintenance for the PE will likely be under $50. Although, depending on some variables hard to predict, you may break even on yearly costs due to the increased efficiency of the catalytic system.

I also think you are trying too hard to get the perfect stove. I think any of the stoves mentioned can be your perfect stove. Don't get so caught up in the minute details that is prevents you from making a decision. I don't think you have to fear making a mistake when considering any of these stoves. I would choose based on the feature set that I liked the best. Sounds like your wife favors the Defiant. That should be enough to swing the decision in favor of the Defiant. Especially if you like the top load and warming shelves, etc. The PE is a fine stove. But no top load, no warming shelves, no double-door open "Franklin style" ambiance, etc.

Good luck. And welcome to the world of wood burning.

Sean

Titan said:

Goose, I've seen many commercial HVAC installs where asmokegas detector was located in the return air duct of the system,wired in series with the safetycontrol circuit of the unit to shut it down if such an emergency arose.I guess a person could do the same thing with a residential application if they were really sold on the idea of trying to circulate that warmer air from the stove room to the remainder of the home.I agree with your own experience though,the idea of distributing hot stove room air via the Hvac ducting sounds great,but never really lives up to its' billing.

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It is probably possible from a theoretical standpoint, although I wonder if such a setup would work fast enough to be effective in a home scale system as opposed to an industrial size system - If sensitive enough to react quickly, you also have a higher probability of false alarms - likely to rapidly lead to the system getting disconnected! There are some new homes with hardwired smoke detectors that do shut down the HVAC at the same time, but that isn't enough to change the rules as I understand it.

At any rate, my understanding from Elk is that (at least in the US) codes don't permit that sort of setup in this situation. To bad he's on break and can't chime in with the specific chapter & verse references and the exact details about what is and isn't OK.

I'm sure that searching back you can probably find something on it, as well as his opinion about just how an HVAC system ought to be setup for best performance in both heating and cooling.

Gooserider