alderlea, isle royale, defiant

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kenkathy

New Member
Nov 1, 2007
8
Moab, UT
I need to heat this space on weekends. It has an open floorplan, a 30 foot ceiling, is located at 10,000 feet with a large ceiling fan. I've already posted a thread regarding the upcoming equinox, however, my wife only likes the more traditional cast iron appearing stoves. I also need to get this installed within the next 2 weeks, so the equinox is out. I currently have a 2005 jotul 500 oslo which will not adequately heat the space on available aspen and pine. It is rated at 70,000 btu's, states it can heat up to 2k sq feet, weighs 445 pounds and has no listing of the actual firebox volume. In any event, I've narrowed my choices to the pacific energy t6 alderlea, the quadrafire isle royale and the vc defiant nc. The defiant has the largest firebox at 3.4 cu feet vs 3.0 with the t6 and isle. The t6 has a greater mass at 585 vs. 480 for the isle and 510 for the defiant. The hardest thing to understand for me is the btu ratings. The t6 is the only stove with btu ratings greater than my current stove at up to 95k. The isle is rated up to 65k and the defiant to 60k. The suggested square footage is 2k to 3k with the t6, 2400 with the defiant and 2500 with the isle royale. I'm leaning towards the alderlea based upon btu and mass but like the top load of the isle and the looks of the defiant. I don't want to replace my current stove with a stove which won't do the job. Please help.
 

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Mass will not make a difference. You need heat output - wood in = heat out! Was the place 100% finished and insulated when you used it last year?

The ratings you give are not the ones that the stoves are tested to by EPA.
vc claims: BTU/hr Range EPA Test Method 10,000 to 30,000 BTU/h for the stove you mention.

I actually think the tag on it shows a little lower, like 27K BTU.

But that does not mean much either! All things being equal, ANY larger firebox will give you a longer burn at the same heat output. The Oslo (my guess) is somewhere about 2.8, so stepping up to 3.0 may not float your boat. I would go with the biggest available, which is the VC in this case - unless you can find anything bigger.

A little more detail if you would - did it heat the place and just not burn long enough? Or did it not heat the place at any output? I ask that because if it not do it at any output, I doubt ANY of those other three will.
 
I don't know how to break this easily to you Ken, but this is an energy disaster. Lovely home, but not designed for easy wood heat. I suggested the big Blaze King, but it sounds like your SO nixed that idea. Too bad, you will need all the heat you can get, especially considering this is a temporary dwelling. It takes time for heat to equalize in a house, often a day or two in the dead of winter. You are asking for instant relief to which I don't think there is a magic solution short of a large quantity of fossil fuels being expended.

The alternative might be a wood furnace if there is a basement. But nothing short of brute btus is going to make this place comfortable in short order.
 
My God! That stove pipe is unbelievable.
 
I've got r32 in the roof, r 16 in the walls, modern double pane glass. VERY efficient envelope. It is directly south facing and today I was up on the mountain and outside air temp was 28, inside at 4pm it was 65 without any heat source. I have a direct vent propane wall heater which keeps the place at 45 degrees minimum throughout the winter. My current stove, if burning at maximum, will heat the space. However, I'm reloading every 2 hours. In response to Be Green, energy disaster might be a bit harsh. Last year while unoccupied, I kept the place at a minumum of 45 degrees from November to May at 10,000 feet with a propane wall stove and consumed a total of 400 gallons of propane which also ran a generator on the weekends, hot water heater throughout the winter and cookstove.
 
My vote is the Alderlea T-6. Should easily burn all night, and can be damped down to keep area from getting too hot. Even the T-5 might be big enough. The Alderlea's aren't cheap, though.
 
The house is getting killed by the huge glass area. Yes, you get good gain during the day, and that is commendable, but even with modern double pane it is a large heat radiator at night. Perhaps you can contrive some sort of insulated panels or insulated curtains to mitigate the nighttime loss.
 
Mass makes no difference. BTU's are strictly a function of the way the stove is operated, and what is printed in the brochure is essentially what the marketing department told engineering to come up with that they think will sell the most stoves.

The ONLY really useful data point is firebox size. For any given variety of wood, the number of BTU's per volume is a constant, with the only variable being how fast you burn the stove to get them out - think of it as being like a tank with a valve on the bottom. You can just crack open the valve and get a trickle for a long time, or open it up wide and get a lot of volume for a short time - but the TOTAL amount of water you get out either way will be the same.

By going to a bigger firebox, you get a bigger "tank" that you can put more BTU's in per load, and thus if you burn at the same rate, it will take longer to "empty" the tank. It sounds like if you crank your existing Jotul, you get enough heating rate (but it does sound like you are somewhat over-firing it) but the volume isn't enough to give you a long burn time at that burn rate.

I would go for the largest firebox I could get, which sounds like the Defiant among the stoves you list. However that isn't going to be a huge jump in firebox size, so I don't know how much good it will do - you might go from 2 hours a load to 3-4 hours, is that going to be enough? I doubt you could get to the 8 hours / load range.

Biggest help would be to improve the R-value of those big windows. I would consider trying to get some heavily insulated, tight sealing curtains (perhaps the "WinterWarm" type?). If you really wanted to be efficient about it, I'd consider getting an electric motorized rod system and set it up so that it automatically closes at night in order to keep as much of the solar gain in as you can.

Gooserider
 
Ken,

Again, we have to use simple math here - no magic. If Jotul does not give the CF of that firebox, you can probably measure it yourself - but let's take a figure of 2.7 CF for calcs.

That means if you buy a 3 CF stove, you will load it every 2 hours and 12 minutes! Instead of every two hours.
Or, if you get the Defiant, you will perhaps get 2 1/2 hours.

So don't be fooled by others stove preferences. The answer here is very easy. Given those particular stoves. get the one you can get the most wood into- the Defiant. If anyone here claims they can get more wood in the others, I'd be very surprised. 3.4 CF is pretty big, and you add top loading to that, and the other stoves will not catch up in terms of load size....and load size is your mantra.

If you have any doubt, try a test - we used to do this at our shop. Simply ask to use the wood pile at the shop, and see how many spits and logs you can get it.
 
Yes, that's why I recommended the Blaze King 1107 - 4.7 cu ft of brute force. All the other stoves are within spitting distance of each other and are not going to address the huge thermal loss that is occurring at night. Adding thermal shades to the windows would also be a big win and might help a smaller stove keep up, depending on the R-value of the shades.
 
HI KK,

Sorry to see that layout of that cabin. Nice, but not the best wood heat layout.

I agree with the others, the largest firebox seems to be what you need. Begreen is right, the blaze king would be king in this situation. But I am sure Kathy will like the looks of another stove better so that is probably what you will go with.

Good quality well seasoned wood will make a large difference too. I am burning pine now and it is only so so. But with well seasoned cherry, I can bake ourselves out of the room. So take good care of what wood you have to burn. It makes more of a difference than if the stove is 2.6, 3.0 or 3.4 sq. ft.

Also, I have no idea what difference the elevation makes in stove performance. And, if your house is so well designed, you might have a problems with lack of air infiltration for air for the stove to burn. An AOK might help.

Carpniels
 
Thanks for all the input. After reading the above input, I realize that the reason I struggle to heat my space is my inability to load the jotul effectively and I have soft wood which hasn't been seasoned well. I usually can get 3 splits of wood per load. I try to make these on the bigger side thinking they would heat longer than more small splits. The front loading feature of the jotul is tough because the ash spills out and the logs roll out if loaded with more than 3 splits or logs. The side load is roomy but it's precarious to "shove" a decent sized log above the wood below without pushing the towards the front glass. I still can't find the firebox volume of the oslo and the epa rating is 12-35 k/hr. I have numbers from 1500 to 2000 sq feet for heating capacity. I'll give jotul a call and find out the actual firebox volume, of which I'm certainly not using effectively. Of note is the fact that I have a propane direct vent wall heater in the same room which is rated at 50k/hr but is significantly derated with altitude. It has an attached blower and can heat the room. I'd much rather use wood than propane.
 
That is one of the advantages that the Defiant or other top load stoves will offer, you can probably get more wood into a top loader with a given firebox size than a front or side loader, the stove has a couple of andirons in the front to protect the glass, which actually make it hard to front load, but you can essentially open the top and stack wood in as full as you can get it. No worries about stuff rolling out on you.

You might be able to get better use out of your Jotul if you can load it "north-south" instead of "east-west". (I.E. with the ends of the logs going front - back) I don't know if the shape of the firebox allows this. The advantage of N-S loading is that if the splits want to roll, it is toward the sides of the stove rather than the front, so you can stack more wood into it if you need to. The folks with squarish fireboxes like the PE's swear by this, but it depends on the stove design whether it would work for you or not, and I don't know your stove well enough to comment either way.

Gooserider
 
This is off topic slightly, but if I was you, I'd lose some of that single wall stove pipe. The flue gases must be room temperature by the time they hit the class A?
 
I would stay away from the everburn system.
 
HI KK and Goose,

I have to make a comment on the top vs side or front loading. Goose said that you can get more wood in a top loading stove than a front or side. At least for the Quad Isle Royale, that is not true. The reason is that the stove door at the top is smaller than the front doors. Hence the opening is smaller and thus the splits have to be smaller that you can add to the stove. Also, the Isle is very deep but the top door only covers the front half of the stove. Thus you cannot load the back of the stove from the top. Also, the secondary burn tube plate moves back and forth when you load from the top and that takes up precious space in the firebox. That limits the amount of wood you can load from the top too.

So, I always load the Isle from the front. Larger splits mean longer burns which is what I need. Also, you can load N-S if your splits are regular 16 inch and you can fill up all the small spaces between the larger splits with the smaller splits. That works really well to load up the Isle. Air circulates well too.

So ,to recap: don't assume that a top loader can take more wood because of that feature. Side or front is better (at least for the Isle).

Carpniels
 
Thanks for that clarification CN, I've never had a chance to play with an Isle Royale, even though it was on the short list of possible stoves that would fit in my setup. I think the IR is different from the other top loaders that it has a secondary burn in the firebox setup - the other stoves like the VC's (both cat and non-cat) and the Lopi Leyden from what I've seen, don't have any plumbing between the gridle and the firebox, so its a straight shot through a fairly big opening.

On the VC Encore, the top hole is slightly shorter than the firebox length, but you can easily angle the logs in to get it pretty full, and then maybe fill a couple chunks into the gaps. The hole is also nearly as wide as the firebox and centered enough that you can reach all of it. However, because of the space lost to the cat or everburn chambers, the firebox depth is such that N-S loading wouldn't be practical, I haven't measured, but it's only about a foot front to back.

OTOH, it would be difficult to load the Encore from the front, as the andirons would seriously be in the way, and the opening isn't much wider. IIRC, the Leyden and the Harmon have the andirons mounted on the doors which at least keeps them out of the way when loading through the front, though it might not be as strong.

I haven't played with a Defiant, but I believe it's pretty much the same setup as the Encore, just everything is on a slightly bigger scale.

Gooserider
 
Hello to all. I've had both Encore and Defiant in VC-CAT and now have Defiant w/Everburn. The Everburn is taking some getting use to, but once it is going it burns hot and well. I think that the VC-CAT version would be easier to use and perform better for your weekend use. You can fill that one right up to the top when top loading. The one thing is that you do need to keep the cat clean (an occasional chore) as it gets fly ash in it over a season: but then you aren't burning every day so that will not be a big problem. I have an open floor plan, 2400SQ/FT. Ceilings are only 20 feet, with bedrooms in the loft above. The Defiant did a better job than the Encore and the 24 inch lenght of splits is nice. I can easily keep the upstairs 74 and the downstairs 70 with the fans on daytime, then shut the fans off nightime and the night burn keeps the upstairs warm. With 30 feet for weekend use, you might as well just keep them going on low/med. As noted by a previous comment, the Everburn will require more getting use to and fidgeting: the CAT version will burn hot and stay that way. Some of the soapstone models available might be a good bet for you as well, nice looks and blast furnace performance. Great Luck to you!!
 
kenkathy said:
Thanks for all the input. After reading the above input, I realize that the reason I struggle to heat my space is my inability to load the jotul effectively and I have soft wood which hasn't been seasoned well. I usually can get 3 splits of wood per load. I try to make these on the bigger side thinking they would heat longer than more small splits. The front loading feature of the jotul is tough because the ash spills out and the logs roll out if loaded with more than 3 splits or logs. The side load is roomy but it's precarious to "shove" a decent sized log above the wood below without pushing the towards the front glass. I still can't find the firebox volume of the oslo and the epa rating is 12-35 k/hr. I have numbers from 1500 to 2000 sq feet for heating capacity. I'll give jotul a call and find out the actual firebox volume, of which I'm certainly not using effectively. Of note is the fact that I have a propane direct vent wall heater in the same room which is rated at 50k/hr but is significantly derated with altitude. It has an attached blower and can heat the room. I'd much rather use wood than propane.

Ken, you can measure the firebox size yourself. Record it's width, depth and height up to the secondary tubes. Multiply them to come up with the cubic inches, then divide by 1728 to get the cu ft.

Your experience with the Oslo is similar to mine with the Castine. I have to careful when loading so that a log doesn't roll out. That is one of the advantages of a good top loader and of the PE Summit/Alderlea T6. As long as the logs are not too long, you can load the stove north/south, and there is no chance of a log rolling out. I like this loading style, it's like having a wide- box stove. The fire is fed from the log end instead of side, which helps with an even burn.
 
My hit on Ken's situation involves the altitude (10,000 sq.ft.), the cubic footage to be heated (22,500 cu.ft.) and his statement that he really needs a stove to bring the place up to temperature FAST, when he arrives for a weekend and also when the sun goes down and the temperature plunges.

This cabin has the equivalent cubic area of a 2,800 sq.ft. house with 8' ceilings. That's a lot of air. A lot of cold air. A lot of cold, low density air at 10,000 sq.ft. The cabin isn't going to be comfortable until all this air is warmed to a livable temperature. Ken has a ceiling fan to help mix and destratify heated air, but needs a good source: ie, a woodstove that puts out a large volume of superheated air.

So, I figure Ken needs an air-convection heater with the potential for short term super-high temperature output.

I don't like a radiant heater for this application: it would take too long to get the air heated up. I don't like the soapstone Equinox, because it will take a loooong time for that 700-pound brute to even begin to produce heat from startup, and even then it would be radiant heat. I don't like the jumbo Blaze King, because it is designed to produce Blaze King's signature long, low-temperature burn, and again, it is primarily a radiant heater.

For this job, I like the Pacific Summit, Summit Classic, or Alderlea T6. All three models have convection panels on three sides (plus the top on the Summit Classic and T6) to reflect radiant energy back at the firebox and cause the air in the space between to superheat and rise out the top into the ceiling fan blades.

Some on this forum have pooh-poohed PE's tested maximum output of 97,000 btu's, but I've burned a couple of these critters, and don't recall ever burning a stove that could get as hot as fast. Based upon our own experience being cooked right out of our showroom when we weren't paying attention to the Summit, as well as customer feedback over the years, we typically tell our Summit firebox customers they've bought a rocketship, and need to pay attention for awhile on a fresh load so they can turn the draft control down and let the EBT take over before they blast themselves out of the house.

I suggested to Ken that he take his situation to the Forum, figuring the Summit owners would ratify my opinion en masse and put this matter to bed. Where are you guys?
 
Find a couple of these stoves https://www.hearth.com/gallery/pics/woodcoal/source/free-flow.html
Something to bear in mind is that the wood that is being burnt has a lot of volatiles and less pure carbon, which is why it tends to burn so fast. I think a catalytic stove may do better at stretching out the burn on this kind of wood becaue the fire can be damped down to smoke and the combuster will burn the smoke at a steady rate. I'm not sure that any of the stoves with the heated secondary air are the best for such high volatile fuel when you need a long burn. If I was in your position, I would take a load of the fuel to the stove dealer and try out the burn to see if in fact it will hold a burn the way you need. This will avoid future disapointment.
 

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Ken says the place is fine during the day (65) on solar gain. It only needs a little supplemental heat. His complaint is about feeding the stove too frequently at night. So wouldn't a stove you start up an hour or two before sunset, that goes for high btu, long burn be the ideal? The only way I know to give him both options (longer burn with more btus) is with a bigger firebox.

Although this place may have the volume of a 2800 sq ft house, it has the glass area of a 5000 sq ft house. I'll have to check, but I believe this amount of glass area would be in violation of WA state energy code (much milder climate), without triple or quad paned windows. The only solution I see is better glass insulation, reduce the volume of space being heated or more, steady btus.

I'm guessing that the Jotul is giving him about 30K BTUS given the lower wood quality, the PE Summit can him about 35K Btus? and the Blaze King about 40K? (not peak but steady state Btus) Does that sound about right?

Aesthetically, I would go for the Alderlea or the Isle Royale in a heartbeat. But I am not sure it's going to solve the original complaint of too frequent fuelings. Maybe he just needs to run the propane furnace more?
 
kenkathy said:
I've got r32 in the roof, r 16 in the walls, modern double pane glass. VERY efficient envelope. It is directly south facing and today I was up on the mountain and outside air temp was 28, inside at 4pm it was 65 without any heat source. I have a direct vent propane wall heater which keeps the place at 45 degrees minimum throughout the winter. My current stove, if burning at maximum, will heat the space. However, I'm reloading every 2 hours. In response to Be Green, energy disaster might be a bit harsh. Last year while unoccupied, I kept the place at a minumum of 45 degrees from November to May at 10,000 feet with a propane wall stove and consumed a total of 400 gallons of propane which also ran a generator on the weekends, hot water heater throughout the winter and cookstove.

If the house envelope is very energy efficient, why not run the propane furnace more at night together with the woodstove? If sized correctly, it's the fastest way to get a rapid amount of btus in the house to compensate for nighttime losses and will allow the woodstove to burn without refilling for hours.
 
The Oslo firebox is 13" deep from where the air inlet is on the front, 15" to the glass. 24" wide and 12" high.

I would say about 2 cubic feet.

2 stoves on either side of the house would probably work. Then you could spend the whole weekend feeding the dam things. :ahhh:

J.P.
 
That is 2.5 cubic feet if those measurements are correct, so the 3.0 cubic foot stoves will do 20% longer burn.

As far as PE and "magic" goes, THERE IS NO TOOTH FAIRY. If a 2.5 cubic foot efficient stove with max indoor pipe is burning for 2.5 hours, then a 3.0 cubic foot is gonna burn for 3 hours- period, !!

Certainly there could be slight difference in "heat-up" time or max output, but that is not the scenario or question. The gentleman needs more wood capacity because he cannot put enough fuel in to get the heat out.......

Remember- long, long ago tens of thousands of customer SWORE up and down that the Dutchwest from Taiwan was the best stove made....and Consumer Reports even rated it highly. Mob mentality is a dangerous thing.

I've been counseling the same advice for almost 30 years (you and a BTU) and so far it has not let me down. Heat in=Heat out (adjusted for efficiency).
 
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