How many burn two stoves?

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mainstation

Feeling the Heat
Jan 4, 2009
344
N.Ont.
I have a drafty old stone farm house, and currently have an Regency R14 insert for the main living room house part. The house has a south facing sun porch room, approx. 300sq. ft.. I am considering a second stove for this room. I am looking at something small, yet mighty. First any recommendations for this stove, (I would love to pick up a small PE). And second, if you burn two stoves regularly during the winter do you burn twice as much wood or does the wood heat just diffuse better throughout your house.
Years ago I rented a place way out in the sticks that had a basement stove and a main floor burner in the kitchen--great setup.
 
We did for awhile, but it got old. When it is cold outside, you will go through a lot of wood. I finally bit the bullet, beefed up insulation and caulking, then relocated a bigger stove in the center of the house. That did the trick for us. If your handle is BroBar then 3 seems to be the magic number.
 
We have a Fireview in the house and I have a Classic in my shop. I have used the Classic as the primary heat source for the shop, but since there are times when I don't have something "on the grill" I will often let it go out and simpy use the oil-fired furnace to bring the space up to a comfortable working temperature, as I restart the stove.

The stove in the house is not the primary sourced of heat, although when we've lost electrical service for days it's been up to the job and has really saved our bacon.

Personally, I like having a boiler and a furnace to keep the spaces at a minimum temperature.
 
The main heat source is the "vintage" stove in my basement workshop, but I've been thinking of getting a small EPA stove to put in the living room fireplace for shoulder season heating. I think I could do what I need to do for the last half of October, through the first half of December and the last half of March to the end with something like a Jotul F3. We'd leave the electric baseboards set to a minimum and use the small stove on the coldest nights. We have lots of south facing windows, so in sunny weather the passive solar heat does the trick all through the day. My electric bill might go up a tad, but we've been practically running the place on AAA batteries this past year, so I think I can afford to eat a few kilowatts hours. During the very coldest nights in the dead of winter, I might fire both up at once, but I'd have to be desperate. I get confused enough running one.

Problem with the whole idea is that for 20 years now I've been relying on the blazing hot basement to speed dry my wood, and it's too late to get fresh stuff dry outside. If I can get my wood guy to get me 4 cord of ash and cherry right now, the plan might work. He's been busy fishing and turkey hunting, so I may not get it until the end of June.

As far as running multiple stoves simultaneously like BBar, God bless him. I need a life.
 
I have 2 Regency R-3's. My 1900 sq ft house is located all on one level, so I have a stove in either end. Normally I only run on one stove until the temp gets to zero or below or there is strong NW winds.
Keeping the entire house around the 70-72 degree mark, I use 5 to 7 cords a year depending how cold of a winter it is.
 
i run 2 as seen in the signature, but hearthstone 2 runs in the finished basement on weekends when we have more time to spend down there. yes you urn a little more wood, depending on how you run it. if i were to run both at the same time it would get awful warm in the upstairs part of the house. more so in the livingroom because of the basement stove being below the livingroom
 
Burning two stoves isn't to bad, but more than that gets to be a pain, especially when they aren't all efficient ones. One year we had two Fireviews going on the main floor, an old smoke dragon that kind of reminded me of a barrel stove, in the basement, and an old Tarm boiler going all at once. I couldn't get them all on a schedule because they needed stoking at different times. We went through a lot of wood that year, but at least we stayed warm. We have an old drafty farmhouse that used to have all these different rooms. Every time we do remodeling my husband figures out how to take out a wall, so it is opening up a lot. :) We have added insulation and replaced windows. That has made a lot of difference, but so has replacing our old Tarm with a new efficient wood boiler. Now I am down to stoking just the boiler unless it gets too cold, then I fire up the Fireview. Of course sometimes I fire up the Fireview when we have company, it becomes the place everybody gathers, plus it's in the kitchen. ;-) If that doesn't do it I turn on the pellet stove to help.
 
BeGreen said:
We did for awhile, but it got old. When it is cold outside, you will go through a lot of wood. I finally bit the bullet, beefed up insulation and caulking, then relocated a bigger stove in the center of the house. That did the trick for us. If your handle is BroBar then 3 seems to be the magic number.


Damn right! :)
 
mainstation said:
I have a drafty old stone farm house, and currently have an Regency R14 insert for the main living room house part. The house has a south facing sun porch room, approx. 300sq. ft.. I am considering a second stove for this room. I am looking at something small, yet mighty. First any recommendations for this stove, (I would love to pick up a small PE). And second, if you burn two stoves regularly during the winter do you burn twice as much wood or does the wood heat just diffuse better throughout your house.
Years ago I rented a place way out in the sticks that had a basement stove and a main floor burner in the kitchen--great setup.


I too have a drafty, old stone farm house (built in 1741). Here are my answers to your main points:

"I am looking at something small, yet mighty"
My main recommendation is; do not go small. The loading frequency will grow old. It is a mistake I made with the Intrepid. I will at some point replace it with a stove about the size of a Jotul F3CB.

"And second, if you burn two stoves regularly during the winter do you burn twice as much wood or does the wood heat just diffuse better throughout your house."
Short answer is 'no'. I burned 1 stove in '08/'09 and two stoves in '09/'10. With one stove I went through 4.5 cord of wood. With two stoves I went through a little less than 6 cord. With the third stove being installed in the next month or so I have 9 cords set aside to be sure I have enough as I am not sure what to expect. Most likely it will be about 8 cords.

"Years ago I rented a place way out in the sticks that had a basement stove and a main floor burner in the kitchen--great setup."
All of mine are on one floor. 2150sq. ft. two story 'L' shaped floorplan. No basement.
 
I burn 2 when its below zero but one handles the load generally. Sometimes on weekends I fire the other up, if I feel like sitting around in my underwear :cheese:

Both of my stoves take 2 foot sticks
 
BeGreen said:
If your handle is BroBar then 3 seems to be the magic number.

Backed down to just one burning this year. Lot less work and wood.
 
BrotherBart said:
BeGreen said:
If your handle is BroBar then 3 seems to be the magic number.

Backed down to just one burning this year. Lot less work and wood.


Good, send me the F3CB.
 
Ah good, the two BroBars are on the thread. Maybe #2 can share his experience running 3 stoves.
 
We have a 2,500 sqft split level type house all on a slab. We have a Pacific Energy Super27 on the "ranch" side and a Breckwell P-24 on the other. The Pellet stove (3 tons) runs usually 24/7 in the burn season and the wood stove (2-3 cords of slab wood) when we need heat on the other side of the house. I am replacing both stoves this summer but going to keep wood and wood pellet. Have not ran the LP furnace in 4 years.

Eric
 
We have the Quad Isle Royale in the walkout lower level family room and the small Quad insert upstairs in the living room in a
2400 square foot house. This will be my first winter with the added insert. I'll let you know how it turns out. I'm planning on
running the insert on the warmest winter days (alone) and the coldest days (together).
 
I run the GW boiler from Dec. thru Mar. and the Liberty in the family room. The boiler takes care of 75% of the household heat and hot water. It does not keep the house as warm as I like it when the temps are below 0*. ( It might if I ran it wide open and stoked it every 4 hrs) It is easier to use the Liberty to moderate the temps in the house. Then I get 8+ hr burns from the boiler. When the boiler dies, I am considering another stove in the kitchen which is on the N side of the house opposite the Liberty. Its either that or a Garn. I really don't know how much wood I will want to cut, haul, stack, haul, stoke, when I am 65.
Doug
 
We started burning two last year. A friend gave me the second which is a Buck 91, the first I installed which is a Hampton HI300. The Hampton is on one side of the house in the family room which is an open floor to the kitchen, the other in the living room which opens to a central stair well upstairs. We have a 4500qft colonial that is pretty efficient, though not as air tight as I would like. We have heat pumps, but in VA they are pretty efficient when its not too cold. In the shoulder seasons, we use the Hampton to keep the main floor living areas warm - heat upstairs generally kicks on in the morning. But in the winter, I use both and they keep the house good and warm. I used about 9-10 cords last year, but a good amount was poplar. This coming season we will have much more seasoned oak which I suspect will drop my numbers by a couple cords.

I agree that I would go bigger then you think - less loading and it could double as a back up down the road if your other fails.
 
I burn two. The Quad (augmented by passive solar) heats the upper (ground) level where I live, and the Nestor Martin heats my lab and work space in the basement. It's rare that they're both burning at the same time. This was my second full winter with this arrangement and it's working well. I plan (hope?) to more than double (to over 100k btu/hr) the passive solar heater size this year, which should shorten the wood-heating season and lessen the wood use upstairs.
 
The Biltmore mansion in Asheville, NC has 65 fireplaces. So, if you converted all those to stoves or inserts, .....

Of course, the original owners probably had a little help keeping a few of those going at once. ;-)
 
grommal said:
The Biltmore mansion in Asheville, NC has 65 fireplaces. So, if you converted all those to stoves or inserts, .....

Of course, the original owners probably had a little help keeping a few of those going at once. ;-)


You can take a tour of the Perry Mansion in New Hope, PA. The first floor has a large main hallway down the middle of the mansion with entrance doors at each end. Off the main hallway is a kitchen, dining room, living room, and a family room/sitting room. Each room had a Franklin stove in it. Upstairs are the bedrooms where there are Franklin stoves in each room. A total of 8 stoves in the main part of the house which was no bigger than 2,400 sq ft.
 
BrowningBAR said:
grommal said:
The Biltmore mansion in Asheville, NC has 65 fireplaces. So, if you converted all those to stoves or inserts, .....

Of course, the original owners probably had a little help keeping a few of those going at once. ;-)


You can take a tour of the Perry Mansion in New Hope, PA. The first floor has a large main hallway down the middle of the mansion with entrance doors at each end. Off the main hallway is a kitchen, dining room, living room, and a family room/sitting room. Each room had a Franklin stove in it. Upstairs are the bedrooms where there are Franklin stoves in each room. A total of 8 stoves in the main part of the house which was no bigger than 2,400 sq ft.

wow there wasn't any time for anything but dropping trees and getting them split and stacked. my back hurts from the thought.
 
We'll I see this thread has "varied" a little but I burn two. The insert gets used much more than the 602 in the kitchen. Actually yesterday and tonight the insert will be burning low thirties tonight.
 
I run 2 stoves:

The Olympic gets run 24/7 from Oct/Nov to Aprilish. Uses about 4.5 cords of wood.

The Jotul Castine runs when it gets cold out - sometime in December until March or so plus an occasional fire whenever we want. This stove uses about 2 cords.

A second stove is more work but sure keeps the house cozy.
 
I've burned two stoves in a previous house in Michigan and it wasn't a big deal since the basement stove supplied 75% of the needed heat and the main floor stove was fired for the colder days. Probably burned an extra cord or two.

In my current house my basement stove supplies about 95% and I have a large heatform fireplace on the main floor that I might burn 1/2 cord per winter.
 
We used to use one stove, then later I added another one in the kitchen [opposite end of the house from the other stove] that has an oven in it which I use to bake our bread and etc. I bought it to bake. However, it is a great heat stove and once I began using it, the house was much more balanced, heat-wise, and I didn't have to burn the original stove nearly as much or as hot. So, in our home anyway, we do not use anywhere near as much as double the wood for twice the stoves. We do use more, of course, but nowhere near twice. And the house is much more comfortable now in the winter. It was acceptable with one stove; it is nice with two.
 
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