Another IS question

You'll love it and remember, everyone thinks their stove is the best.

Different stoves can be better or worse for different reasons. That doesn't make them a bad choice. If the stove does the job that you expect of it, then it is possibly the best stove for that given situation. Case in point: We had the Jotul Castine F400. In blue-black enamel it is arguably one of the best looking stoves on the market. My wife loved the way it looked in our living room and it heated well during our normal mild winter. However, the following winter was much colder and it could only keep up with heating the house if I fed it hardwood every 6 hrs.. Hardwood can be hard to come by in our area so that led me to start looking for a larger stove. We ended up with the T6 which is almost twice as large.

Does this mean the F400 wasn't the best stove, no. It simply wasn't the best stove for our circumstances. The F400 was a willing and well behaved heater. Once I learned the best way to start and run the stove it performed excellently. Is the Alderlea T6 the best stove? Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't come in blue-black enamel and is a little chubby looking, but in a nice way. I like to think of it as Rubenesque. What we love about it is that we no longer have temperature swings in the house, even after the fire has died down. We love the ability to have good long burns and to be able to keep up with cold weather. And we like the flexibility to load N/S or E/W. Would a PH, IS or Mansfield work in this circumstance with the same result? Yes, very likely. But, my wife doesn't like the dated styling of soapstone stoves, nor the steampunk look of the IS. So, end of story. They are not the best stoves for our circumstance. But they could be a perfect fit for hundreds of other installations.