woodstock or hearthstone

Lots of help available. My Hearthstone is smaller so won't weigh in on your question - but there are others out there with the expertise you need.

woodstock wont heat a giant house

Woodstock may be the "better company" but if you need a larger a stove, go w/ the EQ. Make sure you get in w/ a good dealer/installer - they can really make the difference... Hearthstone will take care of any issues - just not quite as customer-centric as Woodstock. More energy spent on various stove models, perhaps?

If only woodstock made a bigger stove..... I wish they did too. Their largest stove is a real gem but is only rated to heat 900-1600 SF which is about the size of a double wide trailer house.

I have a similarly rated (a tad higher) hearthstone and have been quite happy in my smallish 1700 SF house. The biggest difference you will find is that all woodstocks are cat stoves and all hearthstones are non-cat, the second biggest difference is that you can get a large hearthstone rated to heat 3500 SF or a small one rated for 1300.

Your two options for soapstone are Woodstock and Hearthstone, but if it's a CAT stove that you want in non soapstone take a look at the Blaze King CAT model. They have a stove that is large enough to heat your home and the burn time ratings are positive.

jshort said:

to give a bit more info house is 3800 sq. old 6 bedroom farm house all electric base board heat but not for long have heated with wood in past so im no rookie but not in this house and not with soapstone we have setteled on either a fireview or equinox as they are largest i know of ,electric bills this winter have averaged 1600. mo. keep in mind this is a dairy farm and 1000. is for farm,still 600 is too much for me.

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My Eq. keeps my 2400sf warmer than my old DW cat, but to be honest I thought it would be much more powerful than it is. Don't get me wrong, if it's below 0 I can push indoor temps above 75 but I was hoping the stove would do this with ease. Fact is when I want this kind of heat, I have to pull out the best wood and push the air to make things happen. I'm not totally sure I am getting max. performance from the stove but I think I'm close. I may try a pipe damper next year. Soapstone is a soft heat and with that in mind it may be best suited for use in a well insulated home. To heat all 3800sf you have, heat loss and moving that heat around will be your biggest problem. My log home is not that good, kinda drafty but soon to be better as I have big plans to tighten things up.

As far as cat or burn tubes, a cat stove uses less wood. My wood consumption has increased but not by much. I thought going into this winter with this stove I might burn less than the DW which I pushed pretty hard for 12 years but not so. My feeling on this is more btu's=more wood burned.

The Woodstock sounds like a really great unit, but lacks the umph you will need. The Equinox is a beast and given good fuel and the correct conditions, it may do the trick for you.

Woodstock makes a great stove, but they will not heat a large area. You do get great burn times with the cat in the stove and it does not eat wood like some stoves. If you want to heat an area bigger than 1800 sq feet that is not that well insulated, you need to go with the equinox. That stove will put out some heat but it also eats lots of wood. In my case, I bought the Fireview and it can heat approx 1800 sq feet of my house that was built in 1952, but only if the temp outside is over 35. It has cut down on the amount of oil that I am using, but my house is not that well insulated. There are some people that say a Fireview can heat 2200 sq feet, but they have a well insulated house.

My EQ is also doing the job for about 2800 sq feet of House. It is open floor plan on the lower floor which definately helps. We are all wood this winter (furnace has not come on except to heat a separate guest room over our garage) and I expect by the end of March we will be through about 5 -5.5 cords. I am not convinced I am getting maximal performance out of this stove and I know I wasn't a month ago but learning the stove is part of the deal. I have a tall exterior chimney and might benefit from insulating the liner and installing a damper. The plus side of this stove is that even when stove temps are 500 plus I can sit on the couch 5 feet away, my wife routinely sits down right next to it when she comes in from outside - it really is very "livable heat". We previously had a Quad in our old house and when that was ripping it became unbearable to get too close, though ceratinly would warm the place up in a hurry - just one of the tradeoffs. We have had no quality issues with seals, stones or latches though some have.

I prefer a cat myself. Add in a an overall excellent stove design, good reliability, plus their superior CS, and Woodstock would be the easy choice IMO. With that said, there's nothing wrong with HS products either.

BUT... while I prefer the Woodstock over the Hearthstone, they just don't offer a stove large enough for a larger size house. There are a lot of houses out there over 2000 sq ft and I cant for the life of me figure out why they don't fill this gaping void in their lineup, but the lack of a large stove in the WS is a reality so you only have once choice if you want a soapstone stove.

No mater what, you're going to need a lot of wood to heat an area of that size, so you should look for something as efficient as possible (cat). Myself, I'd forget the soapstone stove idea and go with a large proven heater with a cat. The BK "King" sounds like a perfect fit for your application. My second choice would probably be the Buck 91. Anything after that would be a distant 3rd choice.

Another option might be, depending on your layout, to go with two smaller stoves. Two WS Fireviews would likely do a better job of heating an area of that size (plus give you more even heat distribution), but this also means you'd have to tend to two stoves as well. If this is doable, then I suspect it would give you the best results.

Have you looked into a wood furnace? I don't care how big a stove you get, they are all space heaters and with 3800sq ft there is no way you will even out the heat throughout your house burning one wood stove. I would recommend either two stoves or one wood furnace.

Welcome to the forum jshort.

Somehow, with both my wife and I growing up on dairy farms we just have the picture of you trying to heat that big house with a wood stove....and we sort of shiver! The big reason is with that old farmhouse, with 6 bedrooms, that says it is not a very open floorplan and I'm not so sure any woodstove will do the job really good. For sure you could put a Fireview in and it would heat a big area of the house but I highly doubt it would do justice to the entire home. The same goes for a Hearthstone.

A couple of the big differences I get between the two stoves you've mentioned is that the Hearthstone apparently gives 600 degrees as the top for heat. Now 600 degrees is a lot, but if that is the maximum, then most folks will run the stoves closer to 500 to keep from overfiring. And I can't see a big rock of only 500 degrees heating that great of an area. Of course you would have a larger firebox but that would only mean the fire would hold for a longer period...in theory at least. Also I hear that you have to fill the firebox on the Hearthstone and burn it hot all the time. Not so on the Fireview with it's cat. You can turn that baby down and not have to fill the firebox if you don't need that much heat, like early fall and late spring.

You must also realize that even with the Fireview, when we get the stove up to 650 degrees or higher (or the Hearthstone at 550 degrees), it will not stay at that high of a temperature through the entire burn cycle. After 3 or 4 hours that temperature starts to drop.

As for wood useage, we cut our wood needs by a lot! We used to burn anywhere from 4-6 and sometimes 7 cords per winter and last year we burned less than 3 cords after installing the Fireview. I'm not sure how it will end up this winter but it does seem like we did burn more in January.

I used to be afraid of the cat stove but now I am really sold on them, or at least the Woodstock. If you have good dry hardwood, it is amazing how much heat you can get from a little bit of wood. Not only that, but you don't have to worry much about the chimney. We burned all of last winter and this winter and still have not cleaned the chimney. The wife did knock down maybe a cup full or a part of a cup full of soot one day. Other than that we haven't even had to clean the cap! This is on a SS chimney outside without a chase. (Our pipe runs horizontal through the wall and then up the outside wall.)

I hate to say it, but that old farmhouse might be better suited for an outdoor boiler, but you must be very careful if you get one because some have had major problems. One nice thing would be that you could heat both your house and the milk house.

3800SF of old farmhouse with 6 bedrooms in wisconsin. The good news is that you have individual electric heaters in each room because there is no woodstove that will heat the whole thing. I am actually impressed that it only cost you 600 for all of your hot water and heat needs for that house. Since you have the individual electric heaters you will be able to make up for the inability of the stove to heat the home by engaging the electric heat in those remote rooms.

You only have two choices with soapstone and that is woodstock of hearthstone. Do you require the soapstone? When the power goes out, does your farm have a generator to keep power to the house?

If you are against any sort of wood furnace or wood boiler then you need the biggest stove made in terms of output. The biggest of the biggest and the soapstones are not going to get you there since a soapstone stove is a radiant heater and is designed to warm the contents of the room and not the house's air. The Blaze King King or that big buck each have monster fireboxes and long burn times. They each have blowers that act to produce hot air which will move through the house easier.

Look at Buck or BK for a stove. If you want a soapstone stove in the living room for a supplemental decoration and a "hot spot" then both woodstock and hearthstone have a product for you.

I agree. Unfortunately it sounds complicated to heat that set-up unless you are sealing off some of the rooms in the winter. Two good stoves might do it, but if you've never burned before I wouldn't recommend that. Look at a masonary heater. They are more money but are supposed to me much more efficient. Way better for the air than outdoor boilers, I believe.

We've seen lots of neighbor complaints about some of the outdoor boilers.

Try this link for photos of masonry heaters, then click on that page's logo to learn more:

http://mha-net.org/html/gallery.htm

Good luck.

Just got done installing the EQ in January. It is my first stove. We have a two story 2800 sq ft. older home. It is definitely not tight. We are very pleased with the way it is performing, even though I think my performance as a fire manager is very poor. I know that the wood we are burning is not properly seasoned, but, I am using this time before spring to learn as much as possible. I can honestly tell you that our temps have been aoround 450 and that does the job. I have fired it up to 600 once and 500 on a few occasions to burn out the crud. It is located in our family room (800 sq. ft.) and it is very toasty in the evenings (75-80) . I have many trees that are down and will be seasoned for the next couple of years. I do believe that the wood is a real issue. I have been told that every house reacts different and it takes time to learn. I am looking forward to next year when I can get the maximum out of our EQ. This site has helped me more thanI could ever express.

Jeff

I just started heating my 2000sf log home with the hearthstone equinox. So far I am very pleased with its performance ,once I became aware of the differance between the old barrel stove vs soapstone. The soapstone heats up the house more even, you can sit in frount of it with out gettting blistered and the stove holds heat very well with just ambers left. I wish i had a hard wood supply all I have to burn hear in Alaska is Black Spruce, but this stove has kept my house 75 degrees with outside temps coldest dec 31 was 54 below, and i can load it at 11pm and will have ambers at 7am just fill it back up and she takes off. I have a valted ceiling running 28 feet of 8in pipe streight up I have no draft probblems no puff of smoke when I open the door (either frount or side).As far as the ash pan goes it seems to work great for me, I have heard of the otherstoves being to small.I dont know about them but its a very easy chore just open the door push shaker handel a few times slide the pan out on its tray slide the lid on and take the ashes to the ash pit, lid keeps ash from blowing arround the house. This stove cost a bit of money I am glad i got it last year before the freight charges hit the roof, and it is very heavy you need some help to move it ,comes in a crate at 800lb.The stove is beautiful and has so far been a great tool to heat the house

jshort said:

now where to bye the eq. they dont give em away.

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OK sounds like an EQ isn't the worst choice - you should definitely be able to put a big squeeze on those high elec heating bills w/ the big boy running in that setup.

2 concerns:

- Fireplace is amenable to the 8" top exhaust from the EQ?

- Your quote above - startup costs vs. "savings"

You have likely over $4000 to drop for the stove and installation kit - that'll still take a few years just to begin recouping losses, if you save $300/mo from Oct to Mar. And that's not counting one penny or second of your time spent in collecting, preparing, hauling, and cleaning up after your wood supply. That is a non-trivial expense of time, if nothing else. You run a full-bore dairy farm now? Hope those kids like to split and chop and stack and haul firewood when they're done milkin'

Seriously - good luck w/ your future install! W/ your size house, and the demand for soapstone, don't think of anything but the EQ. You've narrowed your choices down to the only option available.

jshort said:

to clairify a couple things,first my floor plan is rather open living room area is 28x30 large kitchen 4 beds upstairs 2 down chimney runs right down the middle and is 35ft. tall if i could just cut bill in half i would be happy soapstone is my only choice because outside boiler cost of instalation and life of burner make it imposible for consideration i figure by the time i pay for all involved cost of that unit and it begins to pay for itself i could have heated my house with electric for 5 yrs. by then it could easily be wore out or on its way remember there is no existing boiler,also a furnace would do it had one before in different house but i want to watch surely you all can appreciate that and no existing duct work,there is a large floor grate upstairs right over top of where stove will sit so heat should rise up stairs well,this house used to have just what i want to do but probably was 70 yrs ago ,thanks for all the help!now where to bye the eq. they dont give em away.

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Sounds to me you have made up your mind, good for you, I think you have made a good choice. It's also good that going into this investment you know that on cold nights the electric will be running a little but you will be saving plenty burning wood. I also read just a few days ago the cost of electricity is going to go up over time, now there is a suprise.

Regarding the ashpan on the Equinox, I use mine and yes every time you open the ash door you leave some ashes under the stove which for me is no big deal. The pan is plenty big and I have no problems using it. Heck I think it works good, not sure what all the fuss is about.

I run a oil burner (hydronic) to supplement and I also considered wood boilers including this less expensive but proven design. The 2500 was the right size for my home and would have cost about the same as my Equinox and would have worked in tandam with my oil burner in the basement. I have no regrets with my decision.

http://www.thermocontrolheating.com/standalone.htm

Here's a site for the soapstone with pictures, specs, and prices. The owner of the business is a member here. The price is an interesting point since it isn't chump change.

http://www.chimneysweeponline.com/hsequinox.htm

Looky there, there is a sale on until the end of the month. Dairy farmers in my part of the country are milking at a loss these days. Been a hard year.