Really need some input and help here sizing/stove considerations

So I have been a member here for some time but to give you a short history here it goes. My family and I have made a drastic change in our lives over the past few years including 1. Moving from the rat race of the big city (Denver) 2. Closing down my commercial construction company 3. Our place is in the middle of nowhere (cannot even see a neighbor without a spotting scope!! (LOVE IT) 4. In short we have downsized our commitments, house, really everything to get more back to the basics and to spend more time together as a family especially while my three kids are still young, and so far we are loving it.

If you look at my older posts I was designing a home to be in the neighborhood of 1500 square feet or so....to make a long story short the final evolution of our design and downsizing has our house at the following and it is what we will start building here this late winter.

It will be about 600 square feet upstairs with 8 foot ceilings and a basement of 400 square feet. The upstairs will consist of one small bedroom an open passageway to a utility room with one bathroom and a open kitchen/family room where the stove will be placed

It will be well insulated with a r-60 ceiling, 2x6 walls with r-23 roxul in the stud cavities and either 1.5 inch or 2 inch poly iso insulation on the outside of that with a great deal of care going into all of the air sealing etc, (I will not bore you with the details) and the basement will have insulated walls as well (r-20)

We mostly burn elm in this neck of the woods

My elevation is 4400 feet

With the air tightness of the home I will be utilizing an outside air combustion kit with the stove.

We are having real trouble with the sizing on the stove. With our past house plan and stove research we had decided on a alderlea T5 but obviously that is too large. We love the T4 but are concerned that it would be too large as well. We heated our former house with a stove that was way too big for the house and freaking loved it even when we sat around in our undies with the front door open letting the below zero air in from out side but we would like a more intelligent pairing on this one. Is a 1.5 cubic foot box like in the t4 too big for this design? Any other suggestions on a good small stove. We researched to death the previous picking with the t5 and with me doing 95 percent of the work myself including all the design etc I cannot turn this into a super long project and am hoping that you all can help as much as you did last time. Thanks for your time, Travis.

Can I even call it 1000 square feet with 400 of it being a basement and insulated to boot. I have always been leery of the cat stoves as my buddy has one and he has to replace it fairly often and I love the KISS principle but because of your suggestions and the logic behind them I will look at them further. I appreciate the input and additional options.

No, it will be on the main floor.

I have acres of standing dead elm and could never justify buying my fuel. Do you know of a good heat loss calculator as the wood stove is such a centerpiece of our home and we love burning wood and the heat it provides soo much I would rather insulate my house less then do without or have to buy pre made fuel.

Gotcha, thanks for the link. I will be checking out all of the aforementioned stoves. Right off the bat I notice the Jotul 602 has a box size of about .82 cubic feet (how cute) and the F100 nordic qt is just slightly larger but has the viewing glass which the wife is in love with and I enjoy too but I ran across some pretty negative reviews on the F100.....functionality wise etc how different is the 602?

Have you had any direct experience with the Morso 2b. I like the longer splits it takes plus I think it has enough glass the keep the boss happy. Seems to be compared a lot to the Jotul 602.

Ok, so my heat load calculations are saying 18,348 BTU/Hour providing the best information that I currently have on the house design. My issue now is how can you apply that to the stoves since the manufacturers numbers are typically inflated so much.

The stove will be heating the basement as well. A mini split system will provide the heat when we are away and cooling in the summer and thus the only air moment I will have will be a HRV. Hopefully enough of the heat will make it down there. In my last house the furnace never ran and the basement got cool but not cold with the underwear weather upstairs. Part of the 600 square feet upstairs in our new place does include about 175 square feet of utility room that is slab on grade that I entered into the heat load calculations. It was a pretty detailed calculator that I used to come up with the 18000 BTU an hour or so but I would like to check it against others.

By the way I really really like that Woodstock Keystone. It accommodates the split size I like, has nice viewing and good burn times. After reading some more I think I can get over the cat issue but I am leery if I can run the thing low enough for such a small space after doing the calculations. My wife just got home and is not to fond of the longer and narrow morse/jotul stoves but alas looks are not everything.

So, with me having no research at all concerning cat stoves since they were never an option in the beginning then I guess my biggest question is if a cat stove is able to achieve a low and slow burn with lower heat output better then a non cat stove. In the case of the keystone I know it shows up to 45000 BTU max but would it be able to efficiently hold closer to half that with little negative effect. I am also sure their 45000 number is at sea level using the best wood possible in a lab and I am almost a mile high, don't burn oak. Also is the claim of a more spike free and even heat with the soapstone a sales gimmick or a legitimate and noticeable feature.