Englander/Timber Ridge Madison big enough?

10Klife · May 13, 2015

Just found this forum a few weeks ago while researching wood stoves. Tons of great info here. I've wasted many hours at work the last couple weeks reading and soling up info here.

My question is regarding the Timber Ridge Madison. I've seen that it is rated for up to 1800 sqft and I seen the max BTU's range from 50,000 in the online manual to 65,000 on the Northern Tools website. Just wondering if anyone knows what is accurate?

We are looking to heat our 1500 sqft home. The house is insulated fairly well and we are working on air sealing it better over the summer. The main floor where the stove would be is about 1000 sqft. The stove would sit at the base of the stairs and we are hoping enough warm air travels upstairs to hear the bedrooms. We don't need the whole house to be 75* just looking for it to be comfortable.

The big thing is we live at 10,200 ft. Heating season goes from October to the end of May.

Been debating between the Madison and the 30-NC. We prefer the Madison due to the dimensions/clearances.

Any thoughts advice from Madison owners would be greatly appreciated!

Dix · May 13, 2015

Good post, and welcome to the forums !!!

I am also interested in the Madison t replace my 13. The 30 would be to much fr the area I need to heat, looking for the longer burn times from the Madison.

Looking forward to feed back.

Ropelie · May 13, 2015

I have a Madison and heat my 1400 square foot comfortably all winter long. Mine is in a 17 by 12 living room and that gets fairly warm, our bedroom stays pretty chilly but that is how we prefer it. I could not be happier with my Madison it is the perfect size. Even when it was below zero I could heat my entire main floor with the stove, with the stoveroom being in the upper 70s. I never use the auto air control however

Grisu · May 13, 2015

Welcome to the forum!

What kind of wood will you be using? With softwoods you may not get a long enough burn time from a 2.4 cu ft firebox or you will need to turn it down to a point at which the heat output suffers. Is that wood already sitting split and stacked in your yard that it can dry below 20% internal moisture?

How tall of a flue can you put in at the location you are considering? At that altitude you will need quite a bit more than the usual 15 ft minimum.

What's your current heat source and how much fuel do you use during a cold month? That will help in determining how big the stove should be. Plus, what's your goal: 100% wood heat or would turning on the furnace occasionally be ok?

10Klife · May 13, 2015

Up here we mainly have spruce. I've got about 5 cords split and stacked from last summer. I haven't hit any of it with a mm yet but it's been covered all winter and should be pretty dry by now. Lots of beetle kill spruce around here to add to the pile over the next month or so as well.

We currently have electric baseboard and an old propane stove as our main heat source. The propane will be replaced by the wood stove. We are hoping to do the majority of our heating via the new stove but will have electric as a back up for when we are gone or those longer cold spells.

Still working on the chimney details. Currently the propane goes out through the wall. I know going straight up for the wood stove would be best so trying to figure out where the best route through the second story would be. I should be able to get about 18' pretty easily.

We were looking at a Jotul F500 which had a 2.5 firebox. The dealer thought it would be sufficient. They said that for our area it was rated to about 1800 sqft, down from 2000 normally. Is taking away 10% heating capacity normal for colder climates? Seems like the type of wood would affect its ability more? Tough to justify the difference in price if the Madison can do the job.

10Klife · May 14, 2015

Ropelie said:
I have a Madison and heat my 1400 square foot comfortably all winter long. Mine is in a 17 by 12 living room and that gets fairly warm, our bedroom stays pretty chilly but that is how we prefer it. I could not be happier with my Madison it is the perfect size. Even when it was below zero I could heat my entire main floor with the stove, with the stoveroom being in the upper 70s. I never use the auto air control however

Glad to hear the stove is working for you! There isn't a ton of info out there yet on it, but like it seems that most feedback has been positive. The only real negative I've seen is the auto air control. Seems like most people don't use it and just things going the old fashioned way.

Jags · May 14, 2015

Welcome aboard.

1500 sqft, high altitude, long heating season and sounds like you want to be a 24/7 burner (using primarily soft woods) with the wood stove providing the lions share of the heat.

There are quite a few stoves that can do the job for you, but I would like to suggest one thing. In a typical tube style stove it is not unusual to need a 3 cuft stove to maintain overnight burns. There are some exceptions like the PE Super 27, but 3 cuft is a pretty standard number to aim for.

In the Cat stove category it changes a bit. They are known for their lower burn rate for extended periods of time. If I were a brand new burner looking for 24/7 heat from my stove, I would at least consider looking at both the tube and cat versions of stoves available.

Edit: moral of the story is that a tube style stove that can do overnight burns are often bigger stoves that can really make some heat. If looking into a mid sized stove with the intent of overnight burns - it can be done, but often with a lesser amount of heat (lower stove temps). You are stretching the fuel load over a longer period of time vs increasing the fuel load to obtain the long burn.

I hope I am not confusing things here...

begreen · May 14, 2015

This house is at a very high altitude. It will require additional chimney to achieve enough draft to perform well. I would add at least 10 ft to the minimum req. or 25ft of straight up chimney if possible.

billb3 · May 14, 2015

I'd consider the 50,000 BTU output a burning at efficiency output
and the 65,000BTU a 'hot rod - efficiency be damned' output

That's not knowing how the stoves were tested to result in output discrepancies.
It would be nice if a testing method was always tagged to the BTU stated capability.

10Klife · May 14, 2015

Thanks for the info and advice everyone. Lots of good things to think about. Gonna focus on getting the chimney location/height figured out over the weekend and then keep working on finding the right stove to plug into it! I go back and forth just about every hour or so, but currently leaning toward the nc-30. Bigger is always better right?

Grisu · May 14, 2015

10Klife said:
Up here we mainly have spruce. I've got about 5 cords split and stacked from last summer. I haven't hit any of it with a mm yet but it's been covered all winter and should be pretty dry by now. Lots of beetle kill spruce around here to add to the pile over the next month or so as well.

We currently have electric baseboard and an old propane stove as our main heat source. The propane will be replaced by the wood stove. We are hoping to do the majority of our heating via the new stove but will have electric as a back up for when we are gone or those longer cold spells.

Still working on the chimney details. Currently the propane goes out through the wall. I know going straight up for the wood stove would be best so trying to figure out where the best route through the second story would be. I should be able to get about 18' pretty easily.

We were looking at a Jotul F500 which had a 2.5 firebox. The dealer thought it would be sufficient. They said that for our area it was rated to about 1800 sqft, down from 2000 normally. Is taking away 10% heating capacity normal for colder climates? Seems like the type of wood would affect its ability more? Tough to justify the difference in price if the Madison can do the job.

The sqft numbers are pretty meaningless, rather go with the firebox size. (Ideally you would look at your propane consumption to figure out how many BTUs your need.) The Madison has 2.4 cu ft which should be sufficient for 1500 sqft. (For reference: I heat 1300 sqft in Vermont with a 2 cu ft insert.) The problem is that your spruce will burn up pretty quickly and you will have trouble getting an overnight burn out of the Madison if that's the only wood you have. A larger catalytic stove such as Jags suggested may be your best option. Or a soapstone stove that can hold the heat for a long time.

begreen · May 14, 2015

Recalling a conversation from many years back with MSG, If the OP is burning high altitude spruce it could be as dense as hardwood.

Grisu · May 14, 2015

I only know the garden variety sea level spruce; that's just a bit better than pine. ;lol

If the OP's spruce is almost as good as hardwood I suspect the Madison will be sufficient. Knowing the propane consumption would help.

10Klife · May 14, 2015

Interesting to hear that the altitude may make the spruce burn more like a hardwood. If that's the case then that's good news!

So I've been digging around for the winters propane receipts. Looks like we've gone through about 430ish gallons of propane from November to mid April. So about 80 gallons per month. The stove is listed as putting out 65,000 btu's. We definitely ran it very conservatively this winter as it was our first here with the stove and used the electric baseboards to do most of the work. They were set at 62 most of the time. Our house temp averaged 62-64 most of the time. Looking back I wish we would have used the stove more.

When it was going it did a nice job of heating the lower level and got a bit up stairs but I don't think it ran enough to really push much heat up there. It was pretty much like running a forced air furnace with the constant temp swings.

We are hoping a wood stove will eliminate the temp swings and keep a more constant heat allowing warm air to distribute better around the whole house.

Grisu · May 14, 2015

80 gallons of propane is really not that much. About 6.5 mBTU per month. Either your house is better insulated than you think or you used quite a bit of electric heat. Half a cord of garden variety spruce will do that. If yours is more dense it would be even less. In that case, the Madison would be plenty of stove.

I am not quite sure I understand the issue with the temp swings of your propane heater. Nevertheless, a wood stove is a space heater. Its location, your home's layout and maybe the strategic placement of some fans will determine how well you can distribute the warm air. Be also aware that secondary burn (tube) stoves will run hot initially and then slowly taper down until its time to reload. It is normal to have some temp swings with such stoves. For a more even heat output you will need to look at catalytic stoves.

10Klife · May 14, 2015

The propane stove has a thermostat in it that we set pretty low. When it fired up and the blower was going the downstairs got good and warm. After it shut off the rooms cooled down quite a bit. Then it would cycle again.

Guess I'm thinking a wood stove would provide constant heat for a longer time. I understand it is going to cool down eventually as well but I don't see it happening as often I guess as with the propane.

Just found some of the older posts by MSG and others about burning at high altitude. Lots of good info there as well!

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