Proud Owner of a Progress Hybrid

My wife and I visited the Woodstock Soapstone Company yesterday and purchased a beautiful Progress Hybrid wood stove. Ron was fantastic to work with--he helped me figure out the best stove for our situation back in the summer/fall when I first dropped by the factory and got the tour. He is extremely knowledgeable and whatever the polar opposite is of pushy, that's him. Woodstock products sell themselves and I think he knows that. He's just there to help, and we both felt that. He even helped us look through the bit of inventory they have right now due to the sale and select the unit with the soapstone we liked best.

The CSIA sweep will be out next week to rebuild our chimney above the roofline and drop a nice new insulated SS liner in for us. He's also building us a hearth that meets the stove's requirements. Two days after he's finished, we'll have the Progress Hybrid installed. Very excited to have wood heat as a part of my life again and almost as excited to take a flying leap off the propane/electric bandwagon we've been on... with NH winters, it's been bleeding us dry!

Thanks to all for the guidance, help, and thoughts you've contributed towards helping my little crew get started with wood heat again. I came to this forum in the process of purchasing a Hearthstone and its through the advice and subsequent research that advice caused that I decided to go with a Woodstock stove instead... and I have no doubt I made the right call, even given the fact that I haven't actually started using the stove yet.

I'll sign off with some shots of our stove from the factory floor:

Thank you both! I'll be sure to share our experience once it's installed and in use. We looked at the color options and liked the contrast of the matte black against the soapstone best, too.

We're taking your advice to heart, begreen. I'm buying some cords that have already been seasoned to season them further for next year, and I'm researching chainsaws and such so I can begin processing all of the fallen and dead wood on my land. Some of my fallen trees are enormous and I'm hoping to harvest a lot of useful wood from them.

Some kind folks in town donated maybe half a cord of fully seasoned wood for us to use right away, so I have that stacked in the garage on some pallets awaiting the arrival of the stove.

weatherguy said:

That's a great color combo, first time I see that. Your gonna love the stove, really throws some heat when you need it and burns pretty long on days like today. Make sure you post pics when it's installed. You doing a fireplace install like I did?

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Thank you, we like the color combo too! I'll be sure to post more pics once the install is complete.

From what we can tell, our old home was originally built around a wood stove. The chimney doesn't appear to have ever had a fireplace, in spite of its age. The extra joists (tree-trunk sized joists) supporting the area where it makes the most sense to locate the stove seems to support that theory. We'll be running the Progress Hybrid through a thimble in the chimney wall.

Thanks all! I'll definitely post more info as I can. They're forecasting rain early next week so we're having to delay the chimney work by a few days, but I'm still hoping to have it installed soon, hopefully by the end of next week.