Which cookstove for well insulated Skid house?

Hi everyone,

New member here with a few questions.

I was hoping to get some input on an ideal cookstove for my full time, off grid skid house. I'm looking for a stove that will provide heating, water heating and winter cooking- I have the house set up in Northern Idaho (winter temps are fairly mild and seldom below 20F). The house is 14'x56', built for North Dakota, with 2x6 stud walls and spay foam insulation. It is extremely well insulated and virtually airtight. I can pipe in fresh air by creating a hole under where the stove will go. After a lot of research I am drawn to the Kitchen Queen 380- I like all of it's features and it seems to be a well regarded stove. My main question is will it overheat my house? We like a sleeping temp of around 55F and a daytime temp of around 65F. (In the summer we will cook in an outside kitchen and heat water via solar). So can I run this stove efficiantly at a cooler setting or is it going to be roasting me out? It will go in the kitchen (in the middle of the house) and have to convect heat to the bedrooms at each end of the house. I do not have any inspections, insurance, etc. issues to be concerned with. I do, however, want to achieve the safest and most efficiant set-up I can get.
Thanks for helping out a newbie- I look forward to hearing your guys opinions.
Idaho Homesteader

Thanks for the replys guys. Any ideas on how to make my idea work on having a cookstove that can heat as well? Perhaps some other brand of high quality, efficiant, low output wood cookstove that also makes hot water? This past spring we were able to keep the house fairly comfortable (in the low 50's) just using a couple Aladdin lamps for heat (even when the temps got into the 20's outside).

In regards to the cookstove overheating the house. I thought that we would just cook on it during the times when we also needed to heat the house. During times when we did not need to heat the house I planned on cooking outide or just using a little butane or kerosene burner inside to cook with. My other plan on dealing with excess heat would be to open the windows when needed.

Thanks

Thanks for the incite everyone. I really wanted to try and make wood work, since we have so much of it for free and I like the idea of a wood buring stove. I'll look closer into propane or kerosene options- I know that those would work great for cooking, but I've never used them for heat before.

It really seems like the consensus favors another approach than relying exlusively on wood for heating and cooking. I'm going to have to take some time and really research alot of these options that you guys pointed out (I have a couple months before I need to install something).

I definitely like the idea of a dedicated propane burner to cook on. We are using one of those cheapo butane burners right now and other than the cost of the expensive butane cylinders it really works great. I imagine that a propane stove with a small tank would be more economical.

I have some Japanese Kero-Sun heaters, but I've never used them yet- I really don't know much about them and am hesitant to burn one in the house until I research them some more to see how safe they are.

I was refered to a device called a Condar ASV- it's a dedicated vent that I can install in the house and admit fresh air as needed by burning a wood stove. I'll probably install one of those.

This is all really great info everyone- I really appreciate hearing others experiences. The discussion has motivated me to pursue a multiple source of heat and cooking as recomended. I'm currently looking at some propane stoves that don't require electricity -I'll just run it off a 20 gallon tank for starters and I can always get a bigger tank as needed.

I'm going to play with my Kero-sun's as well and see how they work- I figure that might give me a better idea of exactly how many btu's I really need to be comfortable. I've never had a problem with kerosene fumes from my Aladdin or Kosmos type lamps- maybe the fumes are there but don't bother me that much?

I have a Kero-Sun Moonshiner that put's out 8,600 Btus and a Radian 10 which, I think is around 10,000. I also have bigger ones in the 20,000s btu range, but thats probably overkill. Venting should not be a problem since there are already some dedicated openings to the outside for running cables plus an unuseds dryer vent. I'll also put in carbon monoxide detecters in each room for safety.

I think I could play with that setup for a while and see how it works out. I can then always add a wood burning stove at any point to supplement things.

Regarding a cast iron stove like the Jotul 404 recomended by Peakbagger, How air-tite is something like that versus a tighter, more modern stove made of welded plate? Whatever wood burner I put in I would like to be as air-tite as possible so as to emit a minimum amount of smoke into the house (hence my initial interest in the Kitchen Queen 380).

I've been looking at a Premier prestige propane oven- the tech guy told me that a vent is not required since its just a stove (doesn't get run enough to cause a problem). I also just started looking into vented propane heaters. There seem to be several makers out there that produce vented units requiring no electricity. I thought that if I'm going to have a propane stove it might make sense to use the same source of propane to run a heater.

Thanks for the pointers begreen. I was just checking Craigslist. Besides being cheap, the older gas stoves seem to not be reliant on electricity to run- I'll keep my eyes open for one, and fall back on a new Premier stove if need be.

The baking advice makes sense. When I spoke with the tech at Premier stoves I asked him about baking in a small, well insulated house. He said that officially gas stoves do not need to be vented in the US, but if I did something like heavy baking all day long in an air-tite house to use common sense and let fresh air in.

Hi Guys,
So here it is 4 months later and I wanted to give a follow up. It's been an interesting past month. At one point we had a week of night time lows of 0F. During that time I was heating our place with one, or sometimes two Kerosun heaters of about 10,000 btu's each. These, along with an unvented propane stove we installed and a couple of Kosmos kerosene lamps kept us comfortable.
I learned a lot from the experience- Kerosene heaters are great for short durations of heating (a few hours), but are not a good long term plan for our tight house. There were virtually no fumes (using K1 Sunnyside), but they put off a ton of moisture- the doors and windows were always bathed in condensation. We kept three windows opened 1/2" each and were able to keep the CO meters under 30PPM, but burning all that unvented kero and propane in the house would use up our oxygen in about 4 hours (the lamps would start to die out) and then we'd have to open the windows a few more inches (letting in a cold draft).
So last week I installed a vented propane heater- it works great. Warm, dry and can be left running at night or when where not there (something I never did with the kerosun units.
After doing the math I've calculated (from our propane heater usage and rating) that we need to add about 8,000 btu's of heat per hour, every hour to the house in order to keep it between 55F and 60F inside, when outside temps range from 10F up to 35F.
The only disadvantage to using the propane heater is that it's expensive to run - I've calculated an average cost of $180 per month with propane at $2.50 a gallon. This brings me back to my wood stove idea. I have dismissed the idea of using a wood stove for cooking - our propane stove works so well and uses so little fuel that cooking on wood is not that important anymore. I would still, however, like a wood heater. As a lot of you pointed out most wood heaters will cook us out. So if I need 8,000 btu's/hour of heat, how does this translate into wood heater ratings? Should I try and find a unit that is rated at 8,000 btu's? I'll be burning larch, tamarac, and other soft pines. It doesn't seem like anyone makes a unit for my needs that is small enough. Ideally I'd like to find one that has a direct air inlet to the outside. After using up the oxygen in the house on several occasions I am a little paranoid now of running out of air again.
I've looked at some of the marine stoves as mentioned, but they don't seem to offer much bang for the buck. It seems like most of the cost is for the nautical motif cast into the heater and the enamal finishes. That might end up being my only option, but for now I want to try to keep looking for the best unit for my needs.

Thanks Guys