Avalon Olympic opinions

There has been more than a little discussion about the Olympic, most of it very complimentary. I heated my house with one last season. It's a great and well made stove that puts out a tremendous amount of heat very efficiently. It's very big, and burns a lot of wood. It turned out to be a bit much for my needs but other than eating a lot of wood I love mine. Were it not for the tax credit I'd still be happily burning it.

This is my first winter using the Avalon Olympic. I have had many friends who have experience with various type of wood heating appliance but I have not had any experience heating with a wood stove for long periods of time prior to this. I have to admit this stove was not my first pick as I had conducted a lot of research and was leaning towards the Lopi Freedom. For some reason I had overlooked the Avalon Models and it was not until someone on this site pointed out the models manufactured by Travis Industries that I took notice. I am very happy with the stove and the family loves the heat that is produced. I heat over 2,000 sq ft of fairly open tri-level floor plan comfortably. The large fire box enables me to use up to 24 inch splits with plenty of coals remaining in the morning for restarts. Hope that helps!

I installed my Olympic insert back in Aug/Sep timeframe. We really enjoy this stove Unfortunatley, the wood that I'm burning isn't really as seasoned as it needs to be, but I can still keep temperatures in the 400-500 degree range. On the occasion that I've had dry wood, the stove can reach those optimum burn temps quickly, have the air turned down, and enjoy secondary burns for a long time. We've gone through about 2.5 cords of wood so far, and I'll probably use 2 more. Our house is about 3400 sq ft, and we heat around 1800-2000 with the stove. Our stove is at one end of the house, so we use a few oil-filled radiator heaters for some of the back rooms. Our central heat is propane, and we've only turned it on a couple of times this season. I'll probably end up needing 4-5 cords/yr for future heating seasons, and hope to use less than 100 gallons of propane.