Trying to chose a new stove for heating entire house

We currently have a Hearthstone Phoenix that we purchased new in 1999 and we are having a problem with it this season smoking only on cold start up, it started doing this the end of last season. We are puzzled as to what is causing it, as we also have an Exhausto fan on the top of our stovepipe and obviously smoke is escaping this fan which astounds us. We have had a lot of problems with the door not wanting to latch properly and we replaced the hinges, and the latch, as well as the roping. The door now seems to close easier/better but we still have the smoke issue. We do not see the smoke, but I can smell it when I am across the house working in my office. I am asthmatic and very sensitive to smoke, hence the Exhausto fan.

We are looking at replacing the stove and are unsure whether to go with a pellet stove, another Hearthstone (but this time the larger Mansfield model), or a steel stove, or something else we are overlooking. We have heated with auxillary heat sources for years, first having a Ben Franklin stove during the blizzard we had in the '70s immediately replacing it with a Earthstove and installing a second Earthstove when we moved. We installed a cornstove in the '80s, moved again after two years and have been using the Hearthstone for 9 years.

We have looked at the Buckstove, and have seen one Harman pellet stove burning but our concern with the pellet stove is that they talk about a sensor that regulates the output of the heat in the room, but we are not trying to heat just the room, we want to heat our entire house and this sensor seems contraindicated to that.

We have an 1800 sq ft ranch house. Our Hearthstone is currently at one end of the house on the exterior wall (small family room that is not used at all) and the bedrooms are at the other end of the house. Thermostat is in the center of the house in the hallway with the bedrooms. The room the woodstove is in is adjacent to the kitchen that is pretty open to it then we have a typical doorway from the kitchen to an entry and then the hallway leading to three bedrooms. Currently our Hearthstone has kept the house very comfortable with the sleeping areas cooler (usually at 65 degrees). Sometimes the kitchen is so warm I have to open the window to prepare meals. My office (the first bedroom into the hallway) stays about 70 degrees.

My concern is if we replaced the Hearthstone with a pellet stove would it be able to carry the heat through the kitchen and down the hall to the bedrooms? Our house is one of those that you can walk around in a circle as the dining room is next to the woodstove room and the living room behind the kitchen with a basement stairwell between them. We do have ceiling fans in all the rooms except the kitchen, but we have not needed to use them to get the house heated with the Hearthstone. The hearthstone does not have a blower on it, and we have never had a blower on any of our stoves.

If we chose to purchase a pellet stove there is one other alternative. We have a gas fireplace in the living room. We could remove the mantel and the shut off the gas in that area and install the pellet burner in that room but it would be facing away from the bedrooms and I wonder if it would be able to send heat to the bedroom end behind it?

We are looking for a longer burn time. Joe currently loads the stove at 9:30 at night and when he gets up in the middle of the night he puts more wood on it and then loads it again at 6:15 a.m. and I have to add wood again at noon. It seems to not get a longer burn than 6 hours but I am not sure what the size burner box is that it has. We burn a mix of soft and hard woods, sometimes more hardwoods than soft. On their current Phoneix they show the firebox to be 2.2 cubic feet , so I am guessing it is about the same.

We are looking for a larger firebox. The pellet stove sounds intriguing because I have heard that you can load the hopper and get a 2-day burn in some cases, but will it heat our entire home? And would the best case scenario be all the way at the end of the house but still having a straight shot to the other end through the hallway, or better centralized but facing away from the bedrooms. I do work in one of the bedrooms all day as I have my office set up there, so it does need to be comfortable to work all day.

We would appreciate your thoughts

Thanks for your replies.

I did search last night on this site for info about the Hearthstone Mansfield but didn't find what I was looking for.

Mainly I am trying to figure out with the configuration of our home which type of burning device would heat best or won't likely do the job and where the placement would best be.

I think two story houses are much easier to heat with a woodstove than is a long ranch because heat rises. I think a central location is best generally if you have a nice open hall on both sides but in our case I am not sure the living room location is as condusive to heating the bedroom end since it is actually sort of behind the wall where the stove is....the heat would have to go around a corner.

The smoke that is escaping out of our stove is actually not coming from when we open the door! The Exhausto fan turned on high completely eliminates that issue. The smoke is rather either escaping from between the soapstones on the Hearthstove due to a crack or the adhesive cement they use no longer being any good, or we also are wondering if it might be coming from the connection where the pipe goes into the stove.

My husband tonight took a long match and, having the Exhausto fan on and the door shut on our stove, walked around the stove with the flame to see if the fan would suck in the flame from outside the stove, he said the door appeared to be completely sealed as the flame never waivered. But when he got around to the back of the stove the flame was drawn in and in one particular spot it not only drew the flame towards the stove but it put the flame out!

We are thinking maybe, depending on how the logs are stacked in there, the exhausto is not able to pull smoke out of a faulty area and it leaks. It will do this on a cold start only. The stove is not going at all, so when the door is opened there is no smoke to even come out. Although Joe still has the Exhausto on to help with the ash smell from coming into the home. He will build a fire, shut the door and I will know within 20 minutes of him lighting the fire that he has done so because I am already smelling smoke and it continues for about 2 hours and then the smoke smell goes away...another reason we are maybe suspecting a crack in the stone/stones. If it is cold the crack is more evident and as the stones heat up they expand and tighten the stove stopping smoke emissions.

We have not done a flashlight test yet, that we have been told to try.

We have very much liked our soapstone/Hearthstone Phoenix stove but for the price, they sure should last more than 8 years!

Todd said:

Joe may have found the secondary air supply with that long match. Hearthstone stoves are non cat stoves with a secondary air supply for those burn tubes under your baffle in the stoves firebox. There is no way to control this unless you jury rig it somehow.

My guess on the short burn times is the exhausto fan creates too much draft so it burns the wood to fast. Why an Exhausto fan? You may have a negative pressure problem? How does the stove burn with a window cracked near it? The best way to solve that problem is to hook outside combustion air to the stove.

As far as heat distibution, have you tried using a box fan on the floor pointed towards the stove? The cold air will be pushed from the far side of the house and warm air will move in to replace it. A blower for your stove may help also.

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I think I will bring Joe in on this one tomorrow. He is already in bed for the night. He can comment on your first paragraph.

Our Exhausto fan is on a reostat and we can set it anywhere from 1-10. We turn it on 10 (highest) just before we open the door to load the stove and when it needs to take off and get the fire going, but within 20 minutes we turn it back down to usually 3 or 4 depending on how cold it is out. We never burn it over 4 as it would burn the wood too fast. 4 if where we have burned when it is in the teens out thinking it will put out more heat, maybe that thinking is wrong.

We have not tried box fan on the floor, we do have a ceiling fan in that room in all the rooms except one bedroom that we don't use and keep shut off. Would they do the same thing as the box stove?

jtp10181 said:

I joined in from this thread: https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/16786/

pwdohio said:

jtp10181 said:

Do you get a lot of smoke out of the cap when burning?

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We do get a fair amount of smoke out of it on occasion. I thought it was more when the air is what I call heavy, not sure if that is when the humidity is high or not. Joe said he doesn't think the air has anything to do with it and he says it is only when he loads the stove. I do know that there are times I can tell when he has loaded the stove because I will be in my office and sometimes the doggie door will allow the smoke to come in. The smoke will stay low in the air and congregate under the awning over the dog kennel - I think on the night the air is thick. Again this doesn't happen all the time and I do think it is related to the air, but if Joe doesn't think the air has anything to do with it, then maybe he thinks it is the quality of wood he may have used on that night.

There are many night that the dog goes out and comes in fine, but other nights that she goes out and comes back in smelling of smoke. Usually we can see smoke coming out of our stove, but not always, usually it is a light opaque smoke, but sometimes heavier/thicker.

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You might be smelling smoke that has gone out the chimney and then leaked back into the house through windows, doors, etc....

Is there a real reason for the Exhausto cap besides trying to prevent smoke in the house? What I mean is, was there some sort of problem without that prompted you to install it?

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The only reason we installed the Exhausto was to prevent smoke from escaping through the door when it was opened to reload the stove. With my asthma (I wheeze daily even on meds) we felt that the only way to really be able to have a stove and it not bother me was to have an Exhausto fan. We have been using this stove and that fan effectively to heat the house until last season when the smoking started, and it has carried over to this season....but like I said, it is not all the time. It is maybe 2 to 3 times a week, and then only on cold start up and only for about two hours and then it quits. It is just the strangest thing.

jtp10181 said:

I believe the fan is on the end of the pipe on the roof, which would create a greater negative pressure in the vent, not positive.

If the problem has not always been there something must have changed. Either the wodd supply has changed causing more smoke than in the past, or the chimney has changed somehow and it has more restriction than in the past. I would also seal up those pipe joints just to make sure thats not the problems.

Also, once the fire is going you should be able to burn just fine with the fan OFF. You shuld burn less wood and get longer burns with the thing turned off. Unless it has to be running for smoke to get out? Then I would put it on the lowest setting.

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Yes, I was thinking about this, this morning, something had to have changed because we have burned using the exact same stove, pipe, and Exhausto and only started encountering the problem last burn season. I was wracking my brain this morning trying to think what has changed and the answer is nothing with the house. But, maybe Joe is loading the stove differently, tighter and really packing the wood in, or maybe it is the dense blocks of wood that we learned about that we could purchase and we did just start burning those the first season we encountered the problem.

Joe got up on the roof this winter and checked up there to see if something could have been blocking the cap and there was nothing. He gets that stove loaded all the way up to those pipes up on the inside. He wears welding gloves and takes his time loading it full. I don't know how he gets it so full!

Those dense blocks of wood that he has been burning burn a long time and we have really found them to help with burn time.

I, too, wondered about using that Exhausto fan while burning, thinking it was utilizing the wood faster, but I think we were thinking that it helped it burn hotter and, hence, would heat the house better.....but maybe that is not the case? I believe it can be completely shut of. It is on a reostat, so I think we can push it in -- I think (I could be wrong) and it will shut it down. The real purpose of it was to turn on to pull the smoke up the pipe when we open the door to load. I think we then got to using it because our damper seemed to be stuck and it was very hard to work, but this past week Joe got behind the stove and was able to make some adjustments and it is working better now. So, I think we were also using the Exhausto as a damper sort of to get the fire going on initial start up of placing new wood in.

I think we will play around, we still have a bit of the season left to try loading the stove with none of the dense blocks and see if that makes a difference, or not loading it so full. Also, experiment with the Exhausto being off and using the damper. But, I think the cement is also extra insurance against smoke getting out into the house and affecting my lungs.

Thanks so much for everyone's thoughts. I am so glad I found this site!

Here. I thought I would post a couple of photos of the Exhausto fan. It has not started raining here yet and it is not quite very bright outside but they turned out okay with lightening them up a bit.

Ken45 said:

The temperature control on the Harman can be set for manual control, or via the "room" thermostat. If you wish, you can lengthen the wire and put the thermostat anywhere you want, just like you would for a regular furnace. If I set ours around 75, it keeps the living room warm and the rest of the house where we want it.

Which Harman are you looking at? We have the Harman Advance with an 1800 sq ft ranch and it certainly does not put out the heat that a good wood stove will put out. We use ours primarly during warmer weather (like now). Even now, we are burning a full bag a day. If the temps were in the 20-30 degree range, it would use a lot more. Yes, there are larger pellet stoves, but you probably will burn more than a bag a day in below freezing weather.

One big issue with Harman is that they only provide support via the dealer and quite frankly a certain dealer (with multiple stores) in SW Ohio is absolutely horrible with warranty support. Our stove was dealer installed, they did not follow the Harman requirements and even violated code requirements. I've called Harman, they say they will talk to the dealer and I never hear anything more. I would never buy anything from them again. PM me if you'd like more details.

Bottom line, we have not been satisfied and have purchased a PE Summit wood stove for next winter.

Ken

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Thanks Ken for your comments. I did not realize that the thermostat could be lengthened, that would work as far as bringing it around the corner and having it sense the temperature of the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

We have not looked a lot at pellet stoves. Our daughter has an older, smaller model, pellet burner that they were given by her mother-in-law after her husband passed away, I don't know the name of it. But it heats their small 1200 sq ft house well.

We saw one burning at a dealer in another town near us and I don't know which model it was of the Harmon but it seemed to have a lot of bells and whistles on it.

We also got to go to a friend of our daughter's and her husband's, and they had a Harmon insert pellet stove that they said heated their 1800 sq ft home pretty well. The bedrooms were behind the wall that their stove was on. But their stove was centrally placed in their house.

I printed off literature on the Harmon P61A and the P61. Those were the two that had caught my eye on a Harmon site as to what might fit out desires/needs.

Also looked at the Quadra-Fire 4300 Millennium and the Harmon TL300 wood stoves. We also were looking at the Buck stove models 74 and 81, and considering another Hearthstove but upsizing to the Mansfield.

The only other stove I wanted to see but thus far found no dealer for was the Lennox/Country Cellection, specifically the Performer ST210 and SS210. I brought up Jotul to my husband, Joe, but I think he is not wanting cast iron.

At this point we have some talking to do since we found out that our stove is fine and it is the pipe that is the issue. So, whether we upgrade to a stove with a larger firebox or not....I am not sure. I think we need to play more with our damper and turn the Exhausto off and see if we can extend our burn time in our present stove.

Are you keeping your pellet burner and using the woodstove also? Or giving up on the idea of pellet? Had you burned with wood prior to getting the pellet stove? I hope you find that the new stove is everything you hoped it would be.

Barb

We bought some stovepipe cement yesterday. We had to go to a woodstove dealer to find it. We did more talking to him about the problem and he, also, could not figure out why we have this issue in light of the Exhausto on top of the stovepipe.

He did suggest that Joe open up the pipe where it connects to the back of the stove and there was a lot of ash and some creosote there, underneath it was the insulation. So the stove got a second cleaning and I don't think Joe has ever done this before when he cleans the flue.

He used the cement last night and sealed the joints/sections of the pipe, let it sit about 2 hours and then fired up the stove. It smelled horrendous for a long time and we went to bed with the sliding patio door open about 2 inches and the bedroom door shut. When I woke sometime in the middle of the night it still smelled but by 7 a.m. the smell is gone. There are red coals in the stove and the top temp is 200 degrees. Joe said he left the Exhausto on 2 last night and at 4 a.m. he turned it off and threw a few logs on.

The smell of the cement curing is the same smell I smell the first burn of the season coming from the stove, it is different than the smoke smell we have been getting. Maybe that smell has been the cement on the inside of the stove itself sealing the stones where they meet.

Anyway, it seems that the stove/stovepipe did not leak any smoke last night at all.

We also ordered some smoke candles from the stove shop. When they arrive we will burn them in the stove and see if they might created an even denser smoke than our wood does to see if we get any leaks.

But, I am hoping that we solved the problem and maybe also learned that every so often Joe needs to not only run the wire brush down the flue but to check that back area where creosote and soot can settle on top of the insulation.

Tonight we will burn again, leaving the Exhausto off and damper it down and see how it does.

Thanks again for all your suggestions.

BeGreen said:

Hi Barb, this sounds like something is plugging up. How was the wood you burned this season? Was it completely dried and seasoned? Has the fan assembly been removed for cleaning and checked for plugging? How tall is the flue (from stove to the exhausto fan)?

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The flue is 13' from stove to exhausto.

We have been way ahead of ourselves with wood. We have about a 3 yr supply and have had for a while. So, the wood we are burning is very dry. Joe keeps the current burning season's wood under a lean-to off our garden shed where it can stay dry.

Yes, Joe said he does clean the Exhausto and he checked it about a month ago, no issues with it.

The only thing he has never done before is remove the insulation (where the stove pipe fits into the stove) and clean around that and there was a lot of soot, dust, and some creosote there - hopefully, maybe, that was the issue.

Thanks BeGreen and jtp10181, I think Joe learned more through this experience about going the extra length when cleaning. Hopefully this will have solved our problem.

Barb

We started another fire in the stove last night (after having cemented the stovepipe and letting that burn off on the previous burn). Joe loaded the stove at 9:30 and got it going good then turned the Exhausto off, and dampered it down and when he got up in the middle of the night he did throw 2 logs on, then when he got up at 6 he loaded it again. The logs are still burning and the house is warm. At 1 a.m. the house thermostat at the far end (bedroom end) was reading 76 degrees....it has never read that high before! I think coming here and learning that we really needed to turn off the Exhausto and damper down the stove has really shown us what this stove can do! I hate to think how much wood we have burned needlessly in the past 8 years!

Thanks for all the tips from all of you.

Barb