F55 or Quadra Fire?

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john84

Member
Oct 22, 2013
208
Mass
I am looking for some opinions. I had my mind made up to install a jotul f55 in my fireplace to replace a VC encore. But have now come across the quad explorer, which looks like a nice stove also. Just looking for opinions on the pros and cons of either.
It will be heating up to 2400 sqft but most of the time 2000 sqft. Any and all opinions welcome. I hope to have this installed by mid October.
 
The explorer is a nice looking stove. I think a slight bit better looking then the F55. I just can't find much information from owners on it. The F55 seems to have no complaints
 
The Explorer 3 came out just a few months ago. You won't find any owner's reviews yet. The heating capabilities of both stoves should be similar as they have about the same size firebox.
 
Grisu
That is what makes me a bit nervous being such a new stove. I made a mistake with my current stove due to Me not doing the proper research when I bought it a few years ago. I do not want to do that again.
 
I can certainly understand that but I highly doubt you will find anyone here who has burned for a while in the Explorer 3 and can tell you more than what is in the brochure. FWIW, the F55 is also pretty new so even there its long-term reliability is unknown. (That said, Jotul stoves are usually great in that regard but QF is not that bad either.)
 
I can't speak to the Quadra Fire but can tell you that I am very happy with my F55. We had it installed last October and have been nothing but pleased with its heating ability and ease of use. It is a low maintenance stove which is one of the primary reasons that I chose it over a few others. If you have any questions regarding the stove, please don't hesitate to ask.
 
I like the idea of low maintenance and easy to use. For me at least our VC encore is not easy to use.


Cuttingedge,

Does this stove seem to heat up fast? Due to our schedules starting a cold stove might happen 50% of the time. How many sqft are you heating? Lastly how tall is your chimney? Do you use or feel the need for a key damper.
Any information from you on your pros and cons, would be appreciated.
Pics are always great.
 
I like the idea of low maintenance and easy to use. For me at least our VC encore is not easy to use.


Cuttingedge,

Does this stove seem to heat up fast? Due to our schedules starting a cold stove might happen 50% of the time. How many sqft are you heating? Lastly how tall is your chimney? Do you use or feel the need for a key damper.
Any information from you on your pros and cons, would be appreciated.
Pics are always great.
The stove heats up pretty fast if you are burning dry wood. We experimented with it a lot last season and found that a top down fire worked best for us. The stove can be loaded E/W or N/S. I found that it burned hotter if loaded N/S but burns longer if loaded E/W. Our chimney is only about 15' and no we do not have a key damper. The stove has an effective burn time of approximately 10 hours. I can load it up before bed and when I wake up it's still going or at the very least has a good bed of coals. The air control is very easy to operate. If I had to do it all over again, it would be with the same stove.
 
I have an F55. I find it (with roughly 5' of DSP going into appx 18' of metalbestos HT chimney) loves to run N/S. In fact, with very dry wood, loading the firebox N/S can (in my experience) rapidly run into an overfire situation without the secondary air shut all the way down. Caught me off guard a few times where I loaded it up, went outside quick to restock my wood supply, and came back in to find my flue temps over 1200 degrees. Never had the stove glow though :)

Since the primary air inlet is in the center front of the stove, if you place a piece of wood directly in front of it, you end up with a "blowtorch" effect where the stove will burn a hole right through the center of the wood.

Once I observed this, I found my "ideal" operation for long burns seems to be the bottom row installed n/s (to facilitate primary air flow from the front center inlet to the rear of the firebox) and then all my subsequent rows installed e/w so the stove will not run too hot and will get a good overnight burn with a nicely stacked firebox.

I can't say I have ever gotten a 10 hour burn time... probably closer to 4-6 with a good bed of coals at 8. Usually (since I'm not home during the day) I will fire up the stove when I come home, and load it up before I go to bed. I don't reload before I leave for the day, but 99% of the time when I get home later that afternoon, I still have a decent amount of hot coals/ash in the stove to get another fire going quickly.

At times I do miss the top-load feature I had on my VC Encore 1450. I also wish this stove had andirons to keep the load from shifting against the front of the glass -- also has caught me once or twice, when, opening the door, i've had the wood shift forward and fortunately, I haven't had a log roll out into the house (yet).

Its definitely a different beast than my VC stove and has taken some time to get to know... just like a woman, you have to learn its sweet spots and how to massage it to get maximum output :)
 
Once I observed this, I found my "ideal" operation for long burns seems to be the bottom row installed n/s (to facilitate primary air flow from the front center inlet to the rear of the firebox) and then all my subsequent rows installed e/w so the stove will not run too hot and will get a good overnight burn with a nicely stacked firebox.

Interesting, I do the exact opposite although in a different stove. First, I rake all the coals forward towards the door. I drop 1 or 2 splits E-W behind the coal pile and then fill up the firebox N-S up to the baffle. I have found that this extends my burn times by about 1 to 2 hours and also burns down nicely my coal pile. And no logs rolling against the glass when loading N-S. ;)
 
This is coming from an F55 owner, so take this with a grain of salt, but unless you really love and trust the Quad dealer, I would go with the F55.Very forgiving stove, just does the job with no fuss. Overnight burns are easy. We heat a 1700 square foot cape. I'm not a fan of top loading or ash boxes myself, so maybe those features would swing you to the Quad.
 
Love our F55, I've always loaded it North South, I'll have to try this year and see if I get a longer burn East West. I love the solid feel of the door latch and overall quality of the stove. Only thing I don't like is that I couldn't get it in an enamel. :p
 
I've been debating the exact same two stoves for several months now!!! It's a conundrum. We waited for a local dealer to get an Explorer 3 in stock and went to see it. It looked too big. While we didn't get to see the F55 next to it (saw the F55 at a different dealer), the Explorer 3 just seemed too large, at least for where we envision it. Didn't get that feeling from the F55. Explorer 2 was next to it and it's what we're considering. Not sure if it matters to you, but F55 is ember-only protection for the hearth and the Quads require a bit more. For us it's coming down to my wife really liking an enamel finish vs. me worrying about heat output of F55 vs. Explorer2 and also preferring N-S burn.

Please keep us posted on what you get.
 
I have one. I suppose whether or not it is worth it depends on your installation.

My stove is in a corner on an interior wall in the center of my house (I have a circa 1738 cape, it basically sits where the original hearth of the house was before they ripped it out and retrofitted the house with central heat.)

In my case, I think the fan helps circulate air around the stove.

If I had the stove somewhere else, such as in the middle of a large room with lots of room to either side, I might forgo it.

I supplement the stove's fan with one of these as well, and closely monitor the flue temps to ensure I'm not forming creosote.
 
Anyone running a blower on the F55? Does it seem worth it

Having never run a wood burning stove before I purchased it to stack the deck in my favor for the first season. When the burning season got under weigh I set it to auto-start on the slowest fan speed (pretty much silent). Then over the course of the next few months my toddler thought it was fun to switch it to off. After going several days before noticing what he did I developed the opinion that it wasn't really helping much when you're running the stove non-stop.

I do appreciate it when we come back from being out of town and the house and stove are cold. The blower does seem to push the heat out into the room nicely in these situations. But for day in day out use the heat radiates and disperses just fine on it's own. In fact, we even got a couple box fans at first to help circulate the air under the assumption that we would need to do that. By the end of the season we had these in storage too. We really don't need any fans whatsoever with this stove.
 
I've been debating the exact same two stoves for several months now!!! It's a conundrum. We waited for a local dealer to get an Explorer 3 in stock and went to see it. It looked too big.
A 3 cu ft stove will look large, especially if it is replacing a smaller stove. The cast iron jacket makes it appear even larger. We had the same experience when the Alderlea replaced the Castine. Now it looks just fine. It's all a matter of what you get used to.
 
Just received a price from one local dealer for an F55. $2,499. Seems like it's a bit high. 5% off that price for cash.

Any thoughts on this price?
 
New Hampshire - no sales tax
 
With any luck I won't need service with this stove! Just looking for a decent price to try to save a few bucks.
 
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