Reality of soapstone heat up time

I'm with the crowd here. My Hearthstone Phoenix takes about 30 minutes before I start feeling heat. I usually go about 5 hours between loads, which includes a long coaling stage. This is where soapstone really earns it's keep. I don't see much in the way of temp change in the house at all since the stove takes a LONG time to cool off. Hours after the fire is out, the stove is still hot.

I use a Woodstock Classic in my workroom (24x36, 8' ceiling, lots of glass). I keep the space minimally heated (oil fired furnace) to keep the water in my iron from freezing usually to 40-45F. The thermostat is programmable and kicks on at 5:30AM brings the space up to 60F and holds it there for an hour before reverting to the minimum temperature. I light the stove at 6AM and the soapstone is very warm/hot to the touch by the time I engage the cat. (250F on the stovetop), 15-20 minutes. Once I engage the cat. the stove heats up fast! and continues to do so, usually maxing out at 600F (with a full load) and gradually falling off after that. On all but those very cold and windy days the stove takes over from the furnace within 35 minutes and the room is comfortably warm for the remainder of my work day. On really cold and windy days it can take the full hour for the stove to heat the space alone and I may have to toss in a few splits around noontime, but not usually.

Customers to my shop are frequently surprised by the even, gentle heat and the fact there is no "smell of woodsmoke" when they get out of their cars. I answer a lot of questions about "what kind of stove" I have. We have a Fireview in the house which performs beautifully, as well.

begreen said:

Hitting 600F in an hour from a cold start is definitely possible and in a cast or steel stove with good dry wood.

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Just 500º? A steel stove can hit 1,000º in under an hour. Not that anyone would intentionally do that though

Its all going to average out about the same regardless of steel, cast, soapstone. The properties of the material will just shift the heat delivery around not change the total heating. So if your burning consistently it shouldn't make a huge difference. If your heating part time and just for brief bits then soapstone might not be the best but I wouldn't think wood would be a good option in that situation regardless of the stove.

Ditchmonkey said:

My local dealer told me that a soapstone stove can take a couple of hours to heat up fully. But what's happening during that first couple hours? Can I expect the room warming up at least a bit during the first 20 or 30 mins?

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As being new to wood stoves and the owner of a new Hearthstone Mansfield Soapstone stove maybe i could help a bit. I was in your shoes a couple of months ago so here go.
As far as a few hours to heat up no way, It will take a little while to get to max temp but you have to understand it takes a while for the heat to transfer through the Soapstone.
As to what size that is the million dollar question i decided to go 1 step larger than my installer suggested just my choice.
Here are the things i like about the stove and what i don't like. Like,1. looks you better like the way it looks because it is a piece of furniture. 2. Firebox size i love being able to load N/S that is putting your wood straight in.
3. Nice size window to watch the fire.4. stove produces heat for a long time.
What i don't like is when it gets really cold i wish i could get more heat out of the firebox.
If i had it to do all over i think i would look at a hybrid soapstone and metal stove. The best of both worlds but it all depends on your needs and application and house layout.

Mountain Man 511 said:

What i don't like is when it gets really cold i wish i could get more heat out of the firebox.

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I've got an Equinox, which is the same stove but one size larger than you. You should have no trouble at all getting enough heat out. What temps are you cruising at? I suspect your wood is not dry enough.
With very dry wood, mine gets too hot and I wish I could turn the air control down a bit farther.

To the OP - I have posted lots of times here that soapstone is best if run full time. If you are just burning a few fires a week, I'd look at steel or cast unless you want to pay a lot more just for the looks.

450 degrees in about an hour with dry wood and a good draft. LOVE soapstone! Many of my neighbors have steel stoves and they want my soapstone stove. Just saying....

I loaded my Heritage today at 8:30 from a cold start. Stove was throwing heat via the glass within about 20 minutes. By 10:00 the soapstone was up to 400. Like others have said, where the soapstone earns it's keep is both the lovely warm even heat and the fact that is throws heat long after the fire in no longer burning. I leave my house for work at 2:00pm. When I get home at 1:00am, the soapstone is still faintly warm and a reload is fairly easy if I'm willing to stay up the 20 minutes or so to let the wood get up to temp properly.

ssoucy said:

hearthstone is a non cat and has 1.5" stones. I think woodstock uses thinner stones so they heat up quicker and actually can take higher stove top temp. Woodstock says 700max whereas hearthstone says max 600.

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Most of the Fireview is two layers of stone, 1.25 + .75 I think, but don't have one here to check. The Keystone has less double stone and less thickness of stone layers. Don't know about the PH. I would think that the Hearthstone, being a tube stove, would probably heat up quicker than the straight cat Woodstocks...

A pound of soapstone will store roughly twice the amount of heat that a pound of iron or steel will. This is a useful feature for steady heating, but there is no free lunch. The fact that stone will hold more heat than iron/steel means that more BTU's must be put into the stone to get it up to a given temp. 2 hours sounds a bit long though. . .maybe 1 hour with a cold stove, but when it's consistently cold out, my stove is never cold because it gets loaded every 12 hours.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/help-me-choose-a-stove.94381

Anyone who has problems getting their soapstone stove either up to high temps or is finding it takes too long to get there should review this thread.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/getting-a-hearthstone-up-to-600°.76166/

If you don't want to view it, he's got the top of the center stone to 400 in under 20 min.

I can attest that I can do the same on my Equinox. The reality is that many people are either hesitant to push their stoves anywhere near the allowable limit or they find that a low & slow approach is all they require. It has very little to do with soapstone, it is more about your technique. I see lots of threads about people having issues getting steel & cast stoves up to something any of us would call 'hot'.

I believe rideau when he says that soapstone will not burn your hand as readily BUT I suspect he's running it lower than some of us. I do agree that soapstone is less dangerous to touch when it's the same temp as cast or steel but when mine is hot, 'less dangerous' is a subjective term. The post from dx7en explains why. Soapstone holds more heat and gives it off slower. So when you touch it, it's burning you just a bit slower. If someone would like to experiment by burning their hand on a steel, cast & soapstone stove for comparison and post a utube, I will give you the idiot of the day trophy.

When we first began using the Fireview I didn't realize that the markings on the stovetop thermometer for "creosote", "best operation", and "too hot" were meant for the stove pipe! not the stove. The thermostat came with our brand new stove and the instructions were to place it atop the soapstone directly over the combustor (which we did). I watched one of my first "on my own" fires heat the stovetop thermometer to "too hot" and was so freaked out I called the Good Man and left a panic-stricken message on the machine where he worked. I next hauled out the manual and carefully reread all the instructions and found the simple explanation: the temperature reading on the thermometer was about half what the temperature inside the firebox was and the point of the burn was to burn hot to maximize efficiency. According to the manual I was doing everything right and so was the stove.

I was still a little shaken but pretty much OK after that (lol). For combustion you have to have: ignition, oxygen, and fuel. I figured if I opened the by-pass to the cat. and closed the door dampers the fire would eventually be choked off and the fire dep't. would have ample time to bail my pathetic ass out. It's been 24 yrs. now and I've never forgotten how frightened I was that day. But I also learned that understanding how our stove was designed to burn and how well it could perform when used correctly was the entire "point of the exercise"! I've never looked back or been afraid since. I routinely get our stoves to 600+, the house and barn are still standing, and there is next to no creosote in the chimneys when they're cleaned.

Don't feel bad Bobbin, I didn't realize you were supposed to use a thermometer specifically for soapstone either! All these years I thought I was coming up short in heat. Now that I have one specifically for the stove, I'm actually doing pretty well. My soapstone seems to have a sweet spot of 400.

OP, two other things about soapstone, at least in my case. The stoves throw a lot more heat when the temps are over 25 degrees or so. (most likely a factor individual to my house) and on the colder days, I get more heat using the blower versus letting the heat just radiate off the stone.

OK I bite. What's the difference between a 'soapstone' thermometer and a regular 'stove' thermometer? I tried my old VC thermometer and it was awful, so I use the IR gun and the digital flue thermometer.

The thermometer that came with our brand new Fireview 201 in December 1991 was by Condar (I think) and I had no clue about stovepipe temperatures and stovetop temperatures. It still resides over the cat. on our Fireview, as a matter of fact (it may be valuable on Antiques Roadshow!). I am pretty well schooled in the drill after all these years so I've never thought about replacing it. The fact that "clicked" with me on that day was that what was going on inside the firebox wasn't "too hot", at all. It was just right, and I'd done everything right... I just got scared; but not so scared I lacked the presence of mind to read the manual!

The thermometer on my Classic (2007) has "bypass", "best catalytic burn range", and "over fire" categories on the outside of the temperature readings. A lot less confusing for those new to burning!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0074QT8OC...vptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_4t0x5tov7w_b

I honestly don't know if this is marketing BS or not, just thought it made sense at the time that soapstone might require a different temp range than pipe.

The one on my Classic looks pretty much like the one you linked, rudy.. I'll bring the camera in with me and take a shot of the oldie on the Fireview and we can marvel at how far we've come.

I still have the one use for stove pipe. Think I'll put them both on there tomorrow and see if they register the same temps.

rideau said:

I have to disagree with not much heat from a cold stove for a few hours. In my experience (11 years) a cold soapstone stove only takes an extra fifteen to twenty minutes to get hot. ...

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I think this observation would be most closely aligned with physical reality. If you look at the thermal capacity of soapstone... especially on a decorative stove, you only get a couple thousand btu in a couple hundred pounds of soapstone. Most charts show a heat capacity around 0.2 btu/lb - ºF, so 150 lbs of stone going from 70 degree room temp soapstone to 450ºF is only about 12K btu... or 10-15 minutes of stove output.

If it does go slower, it's most likely the soapstone owner does not wish to 'push' the envelope and put too much heat into soapstone too fast...fearing a crack. So they build smaller, more even fires...and marvel at the 'even' heat soapstone puts out.

Corey said:

I think this observation would be most closely aligned with physical reality. If you look at the thermal capacity of soapstone... especially on a decorative stove, you only get a couple thousand btu in a couple hundred pounds of soapstone. Most charts show a heat capacity around 0.2 btu/lb - ºF, so 150 lbs of stone going from 70 degree room temp soapstone to 450ºF is only about 12K btu... or 10-15 minutes of stove output.

If it does go slower, it's most likely the soapstone owner does not wish to 'push' the envelope and put too much heat into soapstone too fast...fearing a crack. So they build smaller, more even fires...and marvel at the 'even' heat soapstone puts out.

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So what your saying is you think my stove is too small for my home?

Daylansmama said:

So what your saying is you think my stove is too small for my home?

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I'm not sure I see where you've made a prior post on this thread, and I my reply was confirming rideau's observations - unless you have thousands of pounds of soapstone, it's not doing a lot in a physical sense. At best, the soapstone owner is fearful of cracking the stone so builds a smaller fire and warms the stone slowly. Often, I think this is attributed to an 'even' heat from the soapstone when in reality, it's just a low / slow fire warming the stove overall.

I don't know about your stove or house size. Generally soapstone stoves are used by those burning 24/7 or nearly so, as they appreciate the 'even' heat. I (and others) let the stove go out during the day when everyone is gone, then get a raging fire going in the evening to warm up the whole house. This type of burning is NOT conducive to soapstone stoves. So it may not be so much a 'size' issue, but a 'burning style' issue.

rideau said:

Seriously, a soapstone stove starts to heat as soon as you light a fire. A cat soapstone stove (and I think they are all cats?) will be at 300 degrees within half an hour of light up. It is certainly radiating heat at that time, and it has been putting significant heat out of it's glass window from ignition.
It is incorrect to say it will take a few hours to start heating.

I would say this is a non-issue, unless you are heating a home in a colder climate that you use only occasionally In that situation, where you are trying to rapidly bring temps up 20 or 30 degrees, soapstone isn't your best answer. 42 to 72 generally is not going to happen in one hour with a soapstone stove. 64 to 72, no big deal.

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^ Good points with which I totally agree.
My soapstone heats our den fairly quickly.
I watch for the Ecofan to engage after starting a fire in a cold stove and it begins to spin after 12 to 15 minutes.
Burning way less wood compared to the Lopi Answer NT we were using.

I have had zero issues getting my Phoenix Stove to start heating up quickly. This is the only stove I have ever owned...so I cannot comment on how much faster a non soap stone would heat.

Also, from October (sometimes earlier) thru at least April I don't let my stove go out. I burn it 24/7 and even early in the morning when it is down to coals, the soap stone is still keeping the house comfortable.

I personally will only ever have a soap stone stove. ....hopefully this one lasts forever!

bholler said:

I have worked around allot of hot stove trying to diagnose problems i can attest to the fact that if you touch a hot stove it will hurt and probably burn you no matter what it is made of. I still have a pretty good makr on my arm from the last hearthstone stove i was working around while hot.

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I'm guessing that's why you're called bHOLLER