Bis Panorama

There's a few of us happy with the BIS Ultima, so I imagine the larger and more-upscale Panorama is a nice unit. Make sure to get a blower.

I did some research in the BIS stoves when I was in the market. all-in-all I think they looked like very nice units.

I think the Panorama was just hitting the market when I bought. It is a very nice looking stove for sure... being a CAT stove you shouldget a little longer burn times and also some top of the line efficiency with it too.

Kepp us up to date on your decision-- and add some pictures if you get one!

I do not have anything hooked up to the gravity vents (the larger knockouts on top of the unit). I do have the "central air kit" (or some such), which is pretty standard-looking insulated 4" or 5" flex-duct hooked up to one of the smaller side knockouts and routed down through the floor to the basement and the decent-sized inline blower that comes in the kit. My original thought was to run that to my central air plenum and use that to distribute the heat. However, not enough of the heat can be extracted with just one 5" flex duct, and most of it gets lost in my unsealed and uninsulated ductwork. So right now the duct/blower is not used; when I finish my basement it will be used to heat the basement. Instead I just have a standard tangential blower in the base blowing out the top louvres; the layout of my house actually distributes heat quite well and I could heat the whole house at the time (2000 sqft) as long as temps stayed in the high teens and up. Recently we added 250 sqft upstairs and this wasn't going to heat well, so I added a second small stove (the Napoleon 1100C). Now I can heat right down to 0 if it ever drops that low here (was about 10 last night). In MI though I wouldn't try to heat more than 1500 or so decently insulated sqft with the Ultima, unless you like constantly loading it. In terms of burn times I get maybe 4 hours of high heat (secondary burn) and several more of moderate heat (coals), after 8 hours there will still be coals but it won't be providing much heat.

The Panorama is catalytic and it's almost twice the firebox as the Ultima (3.8cf vs. 2cf), so it should have better burn times and put out a lot more heat. Although, the pictures suggest that the firebox is tall rather than deep or wide (presumably why it uses a catalyst rather than secondary burn), so there's some question as to how much of that 3.8cf is usable. So a lot of your choice will come down to total heat and burn-time requirements.

There's a bunch, Quadrafire and Vermont Castings come to mind, but there are more. Search "zero-clearance" or ZC on here.

there are several posts that discuss alternatives.

RSF and Kozyheat have very similar offerings that let you duct off heat...