Quad Santa Fe vs. Harman P38 vs. Englander 25-PDVC

Here is the stove in action. We are very happy with our Santa Fe.

My Sante Fe is not noisy at all. I turned it up to high a few minutes ago to test the noise level. It is quite nice. Also....There was someone saying earlier about the stove not putting enough heat out. My stove puts out plenty of heat. I have approximately 500 square feet downstairs and the stove does fine with it. I never put it on high. In fact the only time I have ever had it on high was when I first started it and just now.

fireitup said:

Here is the stove in action. We are very happy with our Santa Fe.

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The stove looks like it is listing to the right.

bad picture

fireitup said:

bad picture

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I was just joking. I can see the picture is crooked.
It sure is a nice looking stove though.

For those prices, I'd probably go with the bottom feed (Harman) myself, just because I have seen them put up with really poor quality pellets - and have also ripped apart the innards and been impressed with how heavy they are.

Usually folks are not comparing a Harman and an Englander because the price is often double or more......

Yeah, that is close....a Kia or a Honda Accord, etc.

BTW, I rented a Kia last time in FL and was very impressed with the little thing......

I do like bottom feed - for certain things, including reliability and the low quality pellet capabilities. Since Harmans are usually much more expensive than Englanders, the comparison is rarely made.

I am very disapointed with my Quadra-Fire Sante Fe. I have changed over to electric heat and it is half the cost of running the Sante Fe to heat my home.

It only took 14 feet of hardwired electric baseboard heat to out perform the Sante Fe in usable heat output.

I have tried every combination to use the Sante-Fe to heat my less than 700 square feet and It just tosses at least 70 percent of everthing that is burned in it up the chimney.

It is very nice to watch while it is tossing usable heat up the pipe.

I have caluculated this with every available formula and it is less expensive to heat any given space with electric heat than to use a Sante Fe for the same space. I did not include the lugging of pellets and cleaning of the stove. At one point I had stacked one ton of pellets within my home.

If you want a nice stove to look at and need something to do in the winter then purchase a Sante Fe. If your going with Quadra-Fire then purchase the next higher output stove. The Sante FE is just a very nice looking easy to use toy.

If someone wants to get started with a pellet stove my best advice would be...... Purchase anything that Englander sells that you can afford.

4124elad said:

I am very disapointed with my Quadra-Fire Sante Fe. I have changed over to electric heat and it is half the cost of running the Sante Fe to heat my home.

It only took 14 feet of hardwired electric baseboard heat to out perform the Sante Fe in usable heat output.

I have tried every combination to use the Sante-Fe to heat my less than 700 square feet and It just tosses at least 70 percent of everthing that is burned in it up the chimney.

It is very nice to watch while it is tossing usable heat up the pipe.

I have caluculated this with every available formula and it is less expensive to heat any given space with electric heat than to use a Sante Fe for the same space. I did not include the lugging of pellets and cleaning of the stove. At one point I had stacked one ton of pellets within my home.

If you want a nice stove to look at and need something to do in the winter then purchase a Sante Fe. If your going with Quadra-Fire then purchase the next higher output stove. The Sante FE is just a very nice looking easy to use toy.

If someone wants to get started with a pellet stove my best advice would be...... Purchase anything that Englander sells that you can afford.

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I`ve fallen out of favor with pellets myself over their high cost but if you are heating with electric for less than pellets you absolutely have to have a faulty operating stove .
The BTU calculations simply don`t support your claim , not by any margin of error.

4124elad said:

I am very disapointed with my Quadra-Fire Sante Fe. I have changed over to electric heat and it is half the cost of running the Sante Fe to heat my home.

It only took 14 feet of hardwired electric baseboard heat to out perform the Sante Fe in usable heat output.

I have tried every combination to use the Sante-Fe to heat my less than 700 square feet and It just tosses at least 70 percent of everthing that is burned in it up the chimney.

It is very nice to watch while it is tossing usable heat up the pipe.

I have caluculated this with every available formula and it is less expensive to heat any given space with electric heat than to use a Sante Fe for the same space. I did not include the lugging of pellets and cleaning of the stove. At one point I had stacked one ton of pellets within my home.

If you want a nice stove to look at and need something to do in the winter then purchase a Sante Fe. If your going with Quadra-Fire then purchase the next higher output stove. The Sante FE is just a very nice looking easy to use toy.

If someone wants to get started with a pellet stove my best advice would be...... Purchase anything that Englander sells that you can afford.

Click to expand...

Honestly, that sounds like a far-out assumption. I'm not saying that you don't have a lemon or an anomaly......

But I would HIGHLY doubt that a modern EPA tested pellet stove would be expensive per unit of heat than most electric...and/or that it would be less efficient than a 10 year old Englander design.

Not to say your complaint about heat output in YOUR space is not accurate. That is another story.

But, just for fun,
https://www.hearth.com/compare

I did a worst case scenario.
Pellets at 300 a ton - 60% efficient
$31.00 per Million BTU of Heat delivered to home

Electric at 12 cents a KWH (I pay over 15)
$35.16 per Million BTU of Heat delivered to home

Once again, you may have very low electric rates or a stove that is a lemon or detuned or something else. But it is the rare case where electric heat will beat pellets in BTU per $$.

Of course the above example does not provide ENOUGH savings to make hauling the pellets, buying the stove, etc. worth while.....from a purely economic view. But there is often more to the equation. Personally, I like pellets at $220 or so.....where the savings can be larger.

Webmaster said:

4124elad said:

I am very disapointed with my Quadra-Fire Sante Fe. I have changed over to electric heat and it is half the cost of running the Sante Fe to heat my home.

It only took 14 feet of hardwired electric baseboard heat to out perform the Sante Fe in usable heat output.

I have tried every combination to use the Sante-Fe to heat my less than 700 square feet and It just tosses at least 70 percent of everthing that is burned in it up the chimney.

It is very nice to watch while it is tossing usable heat up the pipe.

I have caluculated this with every available formula and it is less expensive to heat any given space with electric heat than to use a Sante Fe for the same space. I did not include the lugging of pellets and cleaning of the stove. At one point I had stacked one ton of pellets within my home.

If you want a nice stove to look at and need something to do in the winter then purchase a Sante Fe. If your going with Quadra-Fire then purchase the next higher output stove. The Sante FE is just a very nice looking easy to use toy.

If someone wants to get started with a pellet stove my best advice would be...... Purchase anything that Englander sells that you can afford.

Click to expand...

Honestly, that sounds like a far-out assumption. I'm not saying that you don't have a lemon or an anomaly......

But I would HIGHLY doubt that a modern EPA tested pellet stove would be expensive per unit of heat than most electric...and/or that it would be less efficient than a 10 year old Englander design.

Not to say your complaint about heat output in YOUR space is not accurate. That is another story.

But, just for fun,
https://www.hearth.com/compare

I did a worst case scenario.
Pellets at 300 a ton - 60% efficient
$31.00 per Million BTU of Heat delivered to home

Electric at 12 cents a KWH (I pay over 15)
$35.16 per Million BTU of Heat delivered to home

Once again, you may have very low electric rates or a stove that is a lemon or detuned or something else. But it is the rare case where electric heat will beat pellets in BTU per $$.

Of course the above example does not provide ENOUGH savings to make hauling the pellets, buying the stove, etc. worth while.....from a purely economic view. But there is often more to the equation. Personally, I like pellets at $220 or so.....where the savings can be larger.

Click to expand...

Well I started with the electric heat for fun and backup at 16 cents for KWH. It is recycled baseboard from a home I remodeled two years ago.

I have worked the numbers every way possible. I have been lurking here for quite awile and other places.

The numbers include degree days, different pellets and the previous three years of heating my small space.

I have beat my brains out and have not recieved much support from the dealer who sold me the stove.

My electric bill tells the story though. I put the Sante FE at about 30 percent efficient.

The reason why a Sante Fe runs that way is so that anyone can run it. Not many people have the means to question the performance of any type of heating system. So Quadrafire has overfired the unit to keep customer complaint down.

Also installed in my home is a propane Rinnai 1001F. When I turn that on it can only be set at the lowest possible setting or the window would have to be open in mid winter.

The Rinnai actually cause me to question the Sante Fe in the first place. I kicked it on just to see what would happen.

What happened was that Rinnai on low fully heated the space that the Sante Fe never has.

So Craig I have been completly surprised by my findings. Your numbers are correct and are completely inline with what I expected one year ago when I purchased my Sante Fe. However, those numbers are just assumptions and have not worked in the real world. For many different reasons.

As near as I can tell the true output of the Sante Fe I own is 10,000 BTUs.

I did spend several hours yesterday examining Harmon Stoves. They have way more adusments than the Quadrafire.

Conclusion. Always purchase much more stove than you need. Never purchase the entry level.

Well, it sounds like you did some work there.....

and I will agree on one main point - that most pellet stoves are VASTLY less efficient in an actual installation than what the buyers or owners figure on.
Still, 30% is even below what I would consider a worst case. But I would not be surprised if a lot of stoves in the field operated at 50.........

I think there are very good reasons why the industry does not sponsor and pay for long term in the field tests. This was done many years ago, and the results showed from 42% to as high as 71%- of course, at the time the claims were just as high as they are today.

Strange about Quad...their first pellet stoves were the most efficient on the market because they made a unit with only ONE firing rate - which turned off and on to acheive the output. As we know, that is often the best way to burn solid fuel - nice and hot where it can be adjusted for max. efficiency.

But, that was before they got bought out, etc.

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Your gonna see the next Tom Brady in Joe Flacco