I encourage other owners who have been through a winter with an Ashford 30 to post up. When I started shopping for new stoves in Jan 2014 internet commentary was sparse.
My wife really liked the look of the stove in the showroom, and it says "BlazeKing" on it, so I bought one.
They say a picture is worth 1000 words, 2k words attached. Same house three years running, all three winters fit inside the trailing 30 year average for my local climate. Notice the "peep" column, my wife and I have four children between us. If everyone was home for a month the "peep" column would read "TSKJEE"
First year of data, no wood burning. Winter of 13/14 I was running a Ovation Country Flame EPA cert non cat stove, circa 2001 by the serial number. Non-cat technology has reportedly come a long way in the intervening years, dunno from experience. Winter of 14/15 was my first year with the Ashford 30. If space aliens take that thing out of my living room tonight I will go get another new Ashford 30 to replace it tomorrow.
Besides the plummeting oil bill and more efficient wood use, compared to my old non-cat i love being able to set the thermostat on the side of the Ashford 30 to a setting that I know will keep the house at a stable comfortable temp based on the forecast overnight low. If it is going down to -20dF tonight (my house, my install, my wood) I'll set the Tstat at about 1/3 and be comfortable all night. If it is going down to -50dF tonight I'll set it at 3/3 and plan to toss some spruce in the box when I get up to pee around 0300.
And my wife likes the look of it. Win, win win. FWIW I have saved enough on the oil bill to start having logs delivered instead of trucking back and forth to the state forest with my chainsaw. I don't mind the exercise, but it is an enormous time commitment- I look at that $1200 as buying back free time rather than an energy cost.
My wife really liked the look of the stove in the showroom, and it says "BlazeKing" on it, so I bought one.
They say a picture is worth 1000 words, 2k words attached. Same house three years running, all three winters fit inside the trailing 30 year average for my local climate. Notice the "peep" column, my wife and I have four children between us. If everyone was home for a month the "peep" column would read "TSKJEE"
First year of data, no wood burning. Winter of 13/14 I was running a Ovation Country Flame EPA cert non cat stove, circa 2001 by the serial number. Non-cat technology has reportedly come a long way in the intervening years, dunno from experience. Winter of 14/15 was my first year with the Ashford 30. If space aliens take that thing out of my living room tonight I will go get another new Ashford 30 to replace it tomorrow.
Besides the plummeting oil bill and more efficient wood use, compared to my old non-cat i love being able to set the thermostat on the side of the Ashford 30 to a setting that I know will keep the house at a stable comfortable temp based on the forecast overnight low. If it is going down to -20dF tonight (my house, my install, my wood) I'll set the Tstat at about 1/3 and be comfortable all night. If it is going down to -50dF tonight I'll set it at 3/3 and plan to toss some spruce in the box when I get up to pee around 0300.
And my wife likes the look of it. Win, win win. FWIW I have saved enough on the oil bill to start having logs delivered instead of trucking back and forth to the state forest with my chainsaw. I don't mind the exercise, but it is an enormous time commitment- I look at that $1200 as buying back free time rather than an energy cost.
Lol
