what brand of stove did start with and how long ago

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JHall said:
My family has been burning with wood my entire life... Both my grandparents in the Appilachian Mountains of western North Carolina heated with wood exclusively for their entire lives... This led my father to choose wood heat as well... I first remeber us having and upright cylyndrical type stove with a sheet metal body and a cast iron top and base that loade from the top front... Then we moved into another house and my dad bought a Franklin insert in the middle seventies which is when I was getting old enough to tend the fire carry and split wood myself... Then dad bought a ranch style house in 1978 that had a wood miser in it, dad removed it as it was in bad shape and installed a big Squire free standing stove in the living room that we heated with till we sold the house in 1991... I joined the military, got married and stayed away from wood heat for several years... My first house had a prefab fireplace in it that put out respectable heat, but as we all know was a wood hog big time... I wanted a wood stove bad, but being a young struggling couple just starting out we just could not justify it... Then we moved into a larger house (it had a pre fab fireplace too) and the winter heating bills with the extra square footage were just astronomical... So 2 years ago I took some of my bonus and bough and installed a Buck model 74 insert into my firplace and have not looked back... I never realized how much I missed heating with wood... It brings back so many childhood memories, getting wood, splitting, stacking etc... I am itching to start my first fire as I type, but its just too warm in Georgia still... Oh well, old man winter will be here soon enough...


thats a cool story, thanks. If i had my way, Id be in the NC mountians, log cabin fashion, out house, garden and wood stove, maybe a cow and some chickens. Mybe the old lady would even leave me. Ya right dream on henry
 
My first stove was a used Jotul #4 Combie I bought in 1980....used it for 7 years and then bought a used Jotul #1 Combie and burned that for 4 years. I did burn oil for the next 15 years and now I'm back to burning wood with a new Englander 13NC....But I wish I had my Jotul #1 Combie back. It was much more forgiving than my present stove, that insists on 20% M.C. wood.
 
My first stove was the Drolet Andriondack which was a little to weak to do the job.
I currently own a Harman TL-300 and have been burning 24/7 on low for about a week so far.
Been getting into the low 30's - 40's at night, though I do have to admit it does get a tad warm in the house during the day. %-P
Though my wife admits that I was right (something that very seldom happens) when I bought the TL-300.

I think my parents have a WonderWood which they got in the early 70's, they mostly burned pallets which my dad could easily obtain from his job. I don't know which is harder tiring to knock rusted 16-18 penny nails out of a pallet with a hammer or chainsawing a tree and splitting it with a maul. :-S
 
MishMouse said:
My first stove was the Drolet Andriondack which was a little to weak to do the job.
I currently own a Harman TL-300 and have been burning 24/7 on low for about a week so far.
Been getting into the low 30's - 40's at night, though I do have to admit it does get a tad warm in the house during the day. %-P
Though my wife admits that I was right (something that very seldom happens) when I bought the TL-300.

I think my parents have a WonderWood which they got in the early 70's, they mostly burned pallets which my dad could easily obtain from his job. I don't know which is harder tiring to knock rusted 16-18 penny nails out of a pallet with a hammer or chainsawing a tree and splitting it with a maul. :-S

Take it from a an Ex-Master Union Carpenter...pallet slats are usually fastened with a 6 penny box nail, which has half the shank of a common nail. Small stuff if you have 2 of the right tools. I have burned several hundred hard wood pallets and have yet to see a pallet built with 16-18 penny common nails. I'd much rather dissasemble a hardwood pallet than attack a 36" oak or maple tree....Unless it was free of coarse....I know my wood and i know my pallets. Seems you have joined the wood burning club....so don't gripe, that is the responsibility you have taken on. Cut and split with with joy in your heart and it will never seem like a task...
Joey Chang
 
1977- Riteway Model 37 with an internal one gallon stainless steel tank for domestic how water passively heating 80 gallon tank.
 
My first and only stove is a VC Winter Warm Large installed in the family room of the house I built in 1995. If the internet and this forum were available back then I would have opted for a different stove, but back then information on stoves was hard to come by in this area. We picked the WWL because we love the look. In fact, we designed the fireplace/hearth around it, so it would just fit without a surround. This is the first year I've burned regularly. Up until now I was basically a "recreational" woodburner. Now, if I let the fire go out, I hear howls of protest from the entire family.
 
Started out in '77 with a Franklin stove, it had 8 small isinglass windows in the front. Pretty stove and OK heat if you were there to keep loading it. Back then my kidneys could go the night...many mornings we'd awake to a cold stove. About then airtight stoves were just coming on line so we got a Shenandoah stove a few years later ...I'm thinking in '80. What a God send that stove was compared to the Franklin. That's when we thought we were living large.

...just sayen it got much colder back then so we'd fire that Franklin up in the unfinished cellar on below 0 days. After a season we gave up on that ...what a waste of effort and wood.
 
I grew up with a Fisher in the house, which dad still uses faithfully every winter. It will run you out at times! :) My first stove is my new Lopi Endeavor which we purchased in November 2008.

My aunt an uncle had an Ashely, I recall. I'll post a pic below. What's the story on those things? They just look...odd. Or dangerous. Or both?

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Quad - Isle-Royale, Got it two years ago when I moved into the house. Always learning, always evolving. I sometimes put a metal fan on top of it, but no one asked that question.
 
My first stove was in 1984, an Arrow with catalytic converter. The stove did not have a window, and I had a heck of a time trying to keep it running right. I also had the single wall pipe installed upside down, so creosote was constantly running down the outside of the pipe. Oh, what a lovely smell!
 
I had an Ashley that I bought used back in 82 for $75 & burned for three years in an 1850's farmhouse up in the Grafton Hills in Eastern NY...
Was more like a 25 gallon drum with a front & top load door...
IIRC, it was built kinda like a double-walled stove pipe...
Used to burn board ends - oak & maple - from a sawmill in Berlin, NY...
$15 for a full bed in my 76 Chevy Luv truck...
I used to fit the ends in like I was building a 3D jigsaw puzzle, so I could get my $$$ worth...
Definitely had power steering on the way home...front tires were almost airborne!
I hadda climb a BIG ole hill to get back up to Grafton...
In order to make it I'd hafta go part way up a hill in the opposite direction & get a running start...
By the time I got er to the top of the hill - maybe 3 miles, I was probably going about 6 - 7 MPH!
Used to fill a paper grocery bag with the ends, drop the bag on the bed of coals & get maybe a 6-hour smoldering burn...
AHHHH the good ole days...
 
Started in 1989 when we bought our house which had a Godin stove that could burn wood or coal. It was a top loader with just a little door on the bottom with a small piece of "mica" (not glass). It was a very good stove that heated up quickly; I sold it in 1993 and sometimes wonder where it is now.
 
We had an old pot belly when I was a kid. In my own home, we started with a single door Timberline steel box stove in 1981. Not only was it a "smoke dragon", it was a creosote monster. We used that stove for 26 years. It was a good stove. Last fall, we bought a Jotul Oslo and am extremely happy with it. More heat with less wood and the fire is a pleasure to watch.

Jim
 
A potbelly in the shop at the farm. First time I was allowed to tend was about 1976. Had stoves one place or another ever since. First power splitter came about 1988, home built by me. Hand splitting got old.
 
Like many others my first stove was in the late 70's. 1977 and was a cast iron Franklin. Stuck with it till 1982 when we switched to a Decton Iron Works Blaze King wood furnace - WOW what a difference. My father-in-law and I built wood splitter in 1978, it is a beast...I still have it and it works as just as good as it did back then.
 
Fireplace in the mountains when growing up in California.

Fireplace in our house here that we bought in 1990. Used only occasionally. Not for serious heat.

First insert, 2002 (I think), a Napoleon 1101. Used daily for primary heat. NG only when below 10*.

Jotul 550 insert replaced Napoleon in Jan. 2008. Still burning daily with NG back up if needed.
 
the first real stove was a nashua 20 in 1980. still have it. gets passed around to new burners here and there .i don't count the franklins or barrel stoves we used in the 70's. but there is never been a stove i've liked more than my hearthstone 82' still burning.
 
My first wood stove was a wood/coal Petite Godin parlor stove, purchased between 1978-1979. That baby was a beaut and boy! ...could she crank out the heat. We used wood because we had it from the land, but I understand it operated more efficiently on coal.
 
My father had an "All Nighter" with a water jacket to heat water. I purchased an "All Nighter" for our first home in 1975 and moved into our current home in 1987. Moved the wood-stove with us and still have it in use. Have only had to replace a few fire bricks over the years. Took a few years to add the water jacket, but it helps to keep cost down.

Stove
 
My first stove

Hampton HI300 installed into Family Room Fireplace on 12/26/2008 and first breaking burn on 12/30/2008! Havn't used oil to heat since 12/30/2008.
 
My first experience with wood heat was at my grandparents farm where I roasted on one side and froze on the other in front of their pot-bellied stove. This would be just over 50 years ago. I never could understand why they even bothered to carry in wood for all the good it did. The kitchen stove burned wood as well. Between the two stoves granddad cut an incredible amount of wood. For most of his life it was cut and sawed with handsaws and he likely never saw a hydraulic splitter.

We used a fireplace a fair amount at home when I was growing up. At least once every summer mom used to have me restack the firewood by carrying it from one side of the yard to the other, just to give me something to do, I've always supposed.

My wife and I entered our married life (during the first Nixon administration) in an appartment cut up out of a huge old house. The main fireplace ended up in our bedroom. We used it very little, but it was very romantic!

Our first house had been built in the 20's and it included a fireplace with a built in convection style heatilator. While I've never been much on standard fireplaces for heat, this actually worked pretty well. By '81 we had moved and bought our first wood burning stove. I installed it by sitting it on the fireplace hearth, punching the six-inch single wall flue through a home made blockoff plate right into an eight inch masonry flue! Over the next six winters I only had one flue fire which, looking back now, was pretting good considering I probably should have burnt the house down. That stove was a tiny Effel welded steel stove with a series of glass strips in front that allowed you to view the fire for maybe an hour after cleaning. I broke so many of those glass strips that I had a glass company cut me a dozen or so to keep on hand. It also accepted only 16" logs, and I don't mean 16 1/4". Other than that, though, I really loved that little stove. Since the house was a 2000 sq. ft. ranch I only ran it at two levels - hot or really hot.

Now I have two stoves - a Dutchwest Large cat out in my shop and a new Jotul 500 here in the house. So far, the Jotul has provided 100% of the heat in our new 2500 sq. ft. house.

Mark
 
Our first stove was in 1975, a cast iron Franklin. Saved us during a blizzard and power outage and then it promptly got replaced with an Earthstove, which was so great we bought another when we moved and built a home, no furnace in that house for 9 yrs when we finally put one in for A/C and to sell.
 
First Stove King from US Stove Bought at TSC farm supply store for $500 . Throws a lot of heat for 2-3 hours and its out or time to reload,has a damper at the top of the stove that can not be closed to far as not to creosote.Definitly not a 24 hour source of heat and fairly small fire box.

Then i got serious and bought a Harman Tl-300 ,like going from a Yugo to a Rolls- Royce , After using the harman for a few months i think it uses way less wood ,i guess its more efficient to burn the smoke for heat instead of letting it mess up your chimney.
So you get what you pay for ,but the Tl-300 will eventually pay for itself by getting more heat from less wood.
 
Our first stove was a small Waterford back in the late 90's I think I paid 600.00 for a floor model and installed it myself ( I'll never forget the fear when I cut that hole in the roof). When we sold the house the new owner took it out because he feared his small kids would get burned, I was visiting my old neighbor one day and was on his back deck and I looked over at my old place and saw the little stove sitting outside all rusted, almost cried. We now are the proud owners of an Jotul Oslo which I didn't install (too old to be climbing on roofs) we just love itand the savings not having to light off the oil furnace.
Hank
 
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