Speak up or hold your peace.

Rossco said:

Well if it helps.

This summer I removed a PE Super 27 from the basement and replaced it with a BK Princess Ultra. I didn't think the 27 could heat my home. It did ok but 6-8hr burns. Just no viable. The wife had two children to feed never mind a wood stove.

Say it again: 8" flue and a BK King.

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That BK will heat the house no better than the PE. Feed less often? Sure. More heat in the upper floor? I doubt it.

Bigg_Redd said:

That BK will heat the house no better than the PE. Feed less often? Sure. More heat in the upper floor? I doubt it.

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Well Iam wiping the sweat off my brow as we speak.

And yeah. All wood had the same BTU's and all that but the BK gives off a steady heat. The PE would start off well and then Slow down during the mid to late burn. This frikin voodoo magic box pumps out even, steady heat for upto 3 times as long. So technically heating my home better.

I have a few tricks to get the heat around the house.

You want a bigger stove. I have a 2.3 cu ft stove. It is in the basement but next to a spiral staircase. It heats 1050ft downstairs and upstairs so 2100. Our basement is well insulated. I wish we had a bigger stove. The house stays warm unless it gets to about -10f. Then it has trouble keeping up.

White Lake - the same White Lake with the Antrim truck stop?? Love going there for b'fast when playing golf up the line.

Get the Summit. You can run a large stove with smaller fires no problem. We have a Nap 1450 in our basement. Our house is a little bigger, ~1800 sqft plus mostly finished basement. I ran it for a year (with good wood) and it really couldn't get enough heat to get to the far end of the upper floor. Besides that, I had to re-load a little more often.
The second year I cut 2 register openings and removed a bunch of the dropped ceiling tiles in the basement and had a vent fan blowing cold air down. The house got somewhat warmer upstairs, but never above about 64 in our far bedrooms.
Following year I installed a Regency I3100 (2.9cuft) insert in our living room (upstairs) and have never had an issue getting enough heat.
I really prefer the insert in the LR, but if I had have been a little smarter, I would have gotten a bigger stove downstairs and probably been able to heat the whole place. There are other things that have me staying with the LR insert - I love a warm LR, my wood supply lends itself more to upstairs than downstairs, I don't "forget" to run down and close the air, I can watch it more closely etc...

Get the Summit.

Also look into the local building codes and read them carefully. You can use between floor registers if you follow code. For a drywalled basement ceiling that should mean a full metal duct with a fusible damper. For un-finished or "open ceilings, there's really no code rule, but read your local codes carefully (try not to take the word of some 70 yr old bar room "expert", actually read it yourself and understand it.

Also look into getting some sort of temp sensor / alarm device (http://www.auberins.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=17&products_id=292) to give you some sort of warning when the stove is getting close to shutdown temps. If you're upstairs it's way too easy to get distracted - oh crap the dog just threw up on the kitchen floor - and temporarily forget the stove - squirrel! - and run down to an inferno.

Did I mention - Get the Summit. You can always build a small fire in a bigger firebox, but not the opposite.

Its been mentioned a few times indirectly already but it bears repeating:

"Heat" does NOT rise. This is a common misconception. Hot air does rise (assuming it can displace falling cold air) but heat will radiate equally in all directions and naturally wants to flow from regions of higher heat to lower heat (cold) until equilibrium is achieved.

What this means is that the radiant heat from that stove on the lower level is going to be trying to heat not only the walls and ceiling but equally trying to warm the floor and the dirt underneath. Some heat will ocnvect through the ceiling to warm the floor of the upper level, but the primary way for warmth to get upstairs is the rising column of warm air going up that staircase (sounds like a split level/ raised ranch type of layout?).

You want to make sure that the slab is well insulated from the ground below and reallly work on developing good air circulation between the two levels. To make this work just with the warm air going up the staircase you somehow need to get the cold air down at the perimeter upstairs to get that warmth to flow to the farthest rooms.

We often get members with basement installs report frustration heating evenly, for good reason.

Go big, get a convective (blower) stove, and do everything you can to keep the air moving.

If can get two small stoves on each side of the house.

Some thoughts:

Minimum lifetime of the stove: 20 years. $500/20 = $25 per year.

Spend additional $250 each winter to buy oil/gas to supplement the Super. You lost money after the second winter.