Pulled the trigger on a T6..........

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certified106

certified106

Minister of Fire
Oct 22, 2010
1,472
Athens, Ohio
So I made my decision today and pulled the trigger on a T6 this morning. I kept himhawing around and thought I might want a VC 2in1 until I looked at one this morning. After seeing it I wasnt that impressed at all. The dealer I bought it from threw in the free fan and stove pipe I will need. He also wrote on the contract that I have 20 months from the day I pick it up to decide of I like it. If I dont lilke it for any reason he will replace it with a new vc dutchwest. So I dont feel lile I can go wrong. Man after all this agonizing I really hope I like it!

EDIT dang cell phone keyboards
 
You'll only need about 20 minutes to decide you like that thing! Great pick, awesome stove, welcome to the PE club!
 
Great stove! I love mine and I am sure you will to.
 
summit said:
You'll only need about 20 minutes to decide you like that thing! Great pick, awesome stove, welcome to the PE club!
Click to expand...

Thanks, I have been in to this particular shop probably 6 times in the last few months and the owner has been more than happy to let me run it since it's a showroom model but I was still hung up on the whole non cat thing. So I was talking to him today saying I was really dissapointed with the VC 2in1 that I was looking at and so he asked me if I was happy with the Dutchwest I was currently running I told him I was and as of that point it and the T6 were probably tied as to which one I was going to buy. To make a long story short he told me he ran VC stoves for a long time but after he ran a PE he would be hard pressed to go back and was so sure I would feel that way that he would put it in writing that I could return it for a brand new Dutchwest if I didn't like it within the first 20 months I owned it (he wanted me to get a full seaon on it). Considering that price wise they were exactly the same how can I go wrong (at least in my opinion). Anyways I'm goin to go pick it up this coming Friday and I'm pretty excited to give this thing a try. I hope my learning curve isn't to steep but it's hard to break old habits sooooo I guess we will see.... :)
 
Congratulations. It sounds like a great offer and deal from a nice shop. It will be a different burning pattern, but simpler. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it quickly.
 
BeGreen said:
Congratulations. It sounds like a great offer and deal from a nice shop. It will be a different burning pattern, but simpler. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it quickly.
Click to expand...

Thanks BeGreen, I hope to find time to get it installed this weekend but I have school functions all day Saturday with my daughter and I will have to see if I can twist a few of my friends arms to help me with the stove swap on Sunday. I am not looking forward to moving either of the stoves as it's gonna be a bear considering that the dutchwest weighs close to 700lbs and has to go down 6 stairs. When I put the stove in years ago I took down the whole porch railing and used the loader to set it up on the porch. i'm not sure I want to do that this time around.

I'm trying to get my ducks in a row now since I know that as soon as I hook the chimney up I'll want to start a fire so I have a few questions for fellow PE owners considering this will be the first time I have ever burnt in anything other than a Dutchwest:

1) How do you normally load this stove North South, East West, or however you can cram it in there? What are the benefits of the different load directions as currently I have no choice how I load my stove ?
2) I have read alot of posts on the EBT and people talking about wanting to disable it (which I'm not planning on doing at this point) so I was curious who has disabled their EBT and why?
3) Since I will have double wall pipe all the way to the stove top should I consider putting in a flue probe for accurate flue temps.


Well that's all I have for now but I'm sure as I sit here pondering the change in stoves that I'm making I will come up with a few more. Thanks guys
 
certified106 said:
BeGreen said:
Congratulations. It sounds like a great offer and deal from a nice shop. It will be a different burning pattern, but simpler. I'm sure you'll get the hang of it quickly.
Click to expand...

Thanks BeGreen, I hope to find time to get it installed this weekend but I have school functions all day Saturday with my daughter and I will have to see if I can twist a few of my friends arms to help me with the stove swap on Sunday. I am not looking forward to moving either of the stoves as it's gonna be a bear considering that the dutchwest weighs close to 700lbs and has to go down 6 stairs. When I put the stove in years ago I took down the whole porch railing and used the loader to set it up on the porch. i'm not sure I want to do that this time around.

I'm trying to get my ducks in a row now since I know that as soon as I hook the chimney up I'll want to start a fire so I have a few questions for fellow PE owners considering this will be the first time I have ever burnt in anything other than a Dutchwest:

1) How do you normally load this stove North South, East West, or however you can cram it in there? What are the benefits of the different load directions as currently I have no choice how I load my stove ?
2) I have read alot of posts on the EBT and people talking about wanting to disable it (which I'm not planning on doing at this point) so I was curious who has disabled their EBT and why?
3) Since I will have double wall pipe all the way to the stove top should I consider putting in a flue probe for accurate flue temps.


Well that's all I have for now but I'm sure as I sit here pondering the change in stoves that I'm making I will come up with a few more. Thanks guys
Click to expand...

1. N/S for hotter, more complete burns. E/W for longer burns. sometimes I will N/S the bottom layer and E/W the top. And even diagonal if I have some splits that are over 22" . IMHO you get better airflow thru the stove and around the wood with N/S. E/W and the back rear corners will not burn sometimes with hardwoods.
2. EBT tinkering, only for tinkering IMHO I would check to make sure it is not jammed open and functioning as designed. But not critically important
3. Only if "anal" about monitoring stuff. Stove top does help with learning the cycles, I rarely look at it now.
 
We generally load N/S, but because some of our wood is too long for that, we also do some E/W burning. No problem here with complete burns either way, but that is with softwood. I've grown to liking E/W for shoulder season burning. I burn more at the back of the stove this way with a smaller fire.

Our EBT is disabled with a simple blob of aluminum foil. I found the timing a bit poor with the more volatile softwoods we burn. We would get occasional huge blooms of fire on reload and we seemed to consume more wood. But I think I am going to try it unblocked next season now that I know the stove better and see if my assumption is correct. If I was burning hardwood I probably would not mess with the EBT.

We have double-wall too and have a probe thermometer and a good quality stove top thermometer. I like having both and was surprised to hear my wife saying she uses both too and missed our stack probe when it did a trip to Pen. They are not necessities, but do help one judge the state of the fire and stove better, similar to having a spedometer and tach on a car. And they provide endless conversation material here. :)

PS: If you decide to get a probe, I would try to get an older style Condar 3-19 while they are still available. Recent tests on the new 3-39 probe indicate it reads quite high.
http://www.starbrickstoves.com/acatalog/Flue_Gas_Thermometer_CON-3-19.html
 
I think you got a pretty good stove. Hard to go wrong with the T6. I think these stoves are designed for N/S loading.

What are you going to do with the Dutchwest?

Good luck,
Bill
 
Congrats! Did you get the blower? Not sure about your install but made a huge difference in mine. I burn N/S mostly, and only use a stovetop temp; helps to decide when to cut back the air. Can you use the loader to lift it over the railing in a sling? We're almost needing a PE T-shirt these days to go along with the Englander one!
 
Gratz on the stove.

My wife and I love ours. We load NS or EW depending on the length of the splits. If you have the right lengths a real tight EW load will burn a real long time. We are burning mostly ash (because those are the dead trees we have on our wooded property). I am getting 6-8 hours on a full tight load of ash. We are using a stove top thermometer only. Also using double walled pipe. We are very happy with the heat output. Watch the temps until you get used to the cycles. The first few burns will most likely smell like #@s. Don't be worried about this much. The only thing i'm not sold on is the ash drawer, which seems a little cumbersome. But that is such a small complaint. My wife likes the warming pads and a full tea kettle on the stove running at full speed will boil in like 5 minutes. We even cooked on it once when the power was out this winter. Woot, just like living in the 1850s. . . with EBT.

Little Spark
 
Thanks guys for all the great advice so far I really appreciate it! I'm sure I will be playing with the whole NS EW loading thing to see how it effects my burn times. I'm still getting the whole jittery nerves thing going on every time I think about making this change but it's mainly because I know my old stoves habits like the back of my hand and don't even think about what it's doing anymore. I finally decided how I'm getting it in the house though and it shouldn't be to bad. The rental store has a 1200# capacity electric stair walking handtruck that they rent for $15 a day so I wont have to spend 3 hours taking my deck railing apart. I'll make sure I get some pictures of it in action since it looks pretty slick. Can't wait to start playing, errrr i mean heating my house, with this new stove to see how I like it.

(BeGreen) I went ahead an ordered the stack probe so i can check out my stack temperatures and it will be interesting to see how much higher they are then my Dutchwest.
(Moosetrek) I did get the blower as I tend to like my convection heat and our house does so much better with it.
 
I'm happy for you Certified, that is one beautiful stove! It will certainly be different than the cat stove, I'm sure. I look forward to hearing your future experiences.
 
Hey Cert best wishes on your new stove! Hard to say no when the dealer is willing to take it back and exchange it for the Dutchwest if you don't like it or is not what you expected.. That stair climbing truck sounds cool you'll have to post pics of it in action..

Ray
 
raybonz said:
Hey Cert best wishes on your new stove! Hard to say no when the dealer is willing to take it back and exchange it for the Dutchwest if you don't like it or is not what you expected.. That stair climbing truck sounds cool you'll have to post pics of it in action..

Ray
Click to expand...

Thanks Ray, I was so on the fence about this purchase it wasn't even funny but Sean kept trying to tell me I would love this stove so I figured with that kind of promise in writing I'll give it a shot. I will say that my wife who usually doesnt care one way or the other absolutely loves the look of the T6 and the huge clean glass window so even if I don't like it i'm only out about 3 or 4 hours to swap the stoves. Hopefully this one is slightly easier for my wife to run as it seems with the Dutchwest every time she loads it she either burns half a load of wood down and gets the cat to light or I'm coming up the drive and can see smoke rolling out the chimney and she shut it down to soon. As much as I want to harp at her about shutting it down to soon I have learned in the last ten years (with lots of errors :cheese: ) that it's sometimes better to just bite your tongue and walk away and appreciate someone giving it their best shot.
 
VCBurner said:
I'm happy for you Certified, that is one beautiful stove! It will certainly be different than the cat stove, I'm sure. I look forward to hearing your future experiences.
Click to expand...

I"ll definitely be sure to document the differences between my cat and non cat stove since there don't really seem to be many comparisons from someone who has gone from a cat to non cat. It will be interesting to actually see whether I really use twice the amount of wood to heat the same space like everyone around here with a cat seems to think I will. I never really get involved in the whole debate on which is better or worse however my take on it is there are only so many usable btus in one cord of wood it's just how quickly you release them and how efficiently you burn them so if the efficiency numbers are correct I should burn roughly .28 more cords than I currently do. However if you look at my post about my wife burning the stove we both no that my efficiency wasn't that great when she was loading the Dutchwest so hopefully this makes it easier for her to burn the stove correctly. I honestly feel that I'm going into this stove swap with some hesitation and caution so we will see how I feel about it as I honestly want to like it. I definitely think it will be much easier to load than the dutchwest and I love the huge viewing glass it's just a shame the old beast I have was needing some time and money that I wasn't willing to give it.
 
Hey Certified, for what its worth i started using a T5 last month after burning a intrepid ii for years, I love the PE its very easy to use and biggest thing for me so far is learning more wood is more heat, my T5 holds a fire for a long time. I have to keep eye on flue temps if i load 6 or 7 splits but once you choke it down you just let it go. they are awesome stoves.
 
certified106 said:
raybonz said:
Hey Cert best wishes on your new stove! Hard to say no when the dealer is willing to take it back and exchange it for the Dutchwest if you don't like it or is not what you expected.. That stair climbing truck sounds cool you'll have to post pics of it in action..

Ray
Click to expand...

Thanks Ray, I was so on the fence about this purchase it wasn't even funny but Sean kept trying to tell me I would love this stove so I figured with that kind of promise in writing I'll give it a shot. I will say that my wife who usually doesnt care one way or the other absolutely loves the look of the T6 and the huge clean glass window so even if I don't like it i'm only out about 3 or 4 hours to swap the stoves. Hopefully this one is slightly easier for my wife to run as it seems with the Dutchwest every time she loads it she either burns half a load of wood down and gets the cat to light or I'm coming up the drive and can see smoke rolling out the chimney and she shut it down to soon. As much as I want to harp at her about shutting it down to soon I have learned in the last ten years (with lots of errors :cheese: ) that it's sometimes better to just bite your tongue and walk away and appreciate someone giving it their best shot.
Click to expand...

I hear you there Cert I have seen the stove shut down too soon many times with smoke rolling out the chimney.. It's not difficult to run a cat stove you just need to be more aware and they run great.. What are your plans for the old Dutchwest now?

Ray
 
(Jetmech) hope my story is like yours
(Ray) I already sold it to a guy down the road for $400 and he plans on heating his shop with it. It had a couple of issues that I just didn't feel like living with anymore such as when dad moved it out to his garage he did it by himself without asking for help and to make a long story short he broke the ash door with a logging chain he rigged the stove with. Problem is you can't get the ash door for that stove anymore so he ordered one for a new stove. Apparently the doors changed slightly and the gaskets dont seal quite right so I have had to rig up gaskets for the door and have not been able to use the ash pan or ash door. This year the metal frames on the windows need replaced and all the door latches which you can still get but I just didn't feel like dropping anymore money in it and we have been saving for a new one anyways so it seemed like a good time to replace it. Hopefully I'm going to get off work a little bit early and go pick up the T6 tomorrow and I plan on trying to install it on Sunday if all goes well.
 
certified106 said:
I"ll definitely be sure to document the differences between my cat and non cat stove since there don't really seem to be many comparisons from someone who has gone from a cat to non cat. It will be interesting to actually see whether I really use twice the amount of wood to heat the same space like everyone around here with a cat seems to think I will. I never really get involved in the whole debate on which is better or worse however my take on it is there are only so many usable btus in one cord of wood it's just how quickly you release them and how efficiently you burn them so if the efficiency numbers are correct I should burn roughly .28 more cords than I currently do. However if you look at my post about my wife burning the stove we both no that my efficiency wasn't that great when she was loading the Dutchwest so hopefully this makes it easier for her to burn the stove correctly. I honestly feel that I'm going into this stove swap with some hesitation and caution so we will see how I feel about it as I honestly want to like it. I definitely think it will be much easier to load than the dutchwest and I love the huge viewing glass it's just a shame the old beast I have was needing some time and money that I wasn't willing to give it.
Click to expand...
Hey Cert,

I'm sure you won't use twice the wood for the same amount of heat! I think lots of people think that one or the other technology is better, but the truth probably is right along the lines of what you said, a load of wood only has so many BTU's and harvesting them efficiently is the goal no matter what kind secondary burn technology your stove may have. I've never had an EPA non cat stove. But, I don't think you'l have a problem with burn times with the EBT and heat output should not be a problem with over 97,000 btu's peak output. I'm sure it'll be more efficient than the old DW with the small problems you had. I wouldn't sweat it, I'm sure all the hesitation will wear off once it is keeping you warm next winter. But, it'll be a while before you really put it to the test. I'm curious to see how it turns out. Enjoy that beautiful stove!
 
certified106 said:
VCBurner said:
I'm happy for you Certified, that is one beautiful stove! It will certainly be different than the cat stove, I'm sure. I look forward to hearing your future experiences.
Click to expand...

I"ll definitely be sure to document the differences between my cat and non cat stove since there don't really seem to be many comparisons from someone who has gone from a cat to non cat. It will be interesting to actually see whether I really use twice the amount of wood to heat the same space like everyone around here with a cat seems to think I will. I never really get involved in the whole debate on which is better or worse however my take on it is there are only so many usable btus in one cord of wood it's just how quickly you release them and how efficiently you burn them so if the efficiency numbers are correct I should burn roughly .28 more cords than I currently do. However if you look at my post about my wife burning the stove we both no that my efficiency wasn't that great when she was loading the Dutchwest so hopefully this makes it easier for her to burn the stove correctly. I honestly feel that I'm going into this stove swap with some hesitation and caution so we will see how I feel about it as I honestly want to like it. I definitely think it will be much easier to load than the dutchwest and I love the huge viewing glass it's just a shame the old beast I have was needing some time and money that I wasn't willing to give it.
Click to expand...

I'll be doing a side by side (or end of the house to the other end of the house) comparison between my cat Woodstock Keystone and my Englander 30. I looked at the PE stoves, T6 and Summit. To me the Englander 30 is an ultra plain PE stove. We will be spending more time in the new den downstairs where the Englander will reside and I am already thinking how much better the Keystone looks - but, hey - for $649, I'll learn to like the looks of the Englander. I doubt it will be the long term stove down there just from a "looks" standpoint. One thing I liked about the PE stoves was that they were designed from the get-go for N/S loading. Sometimes we are in a hurry to get the stove loaded and it will be nice to be able to load a larger firebox than my Keystone and slam the room with heat sooner than later.

I think you got a nice stove. I'll be looking for your non-cat stove vs cat stove observations and comparing notes too.

Bill
 
leeave96 said:
I'll be doing a side by side (or end of the house to the other end of the house) comparison between my cat Woodstock Keystone and my Englander 30. Bill
Click to expand...
Bill,
When is the 30 going to be installed? I guess the question is also when is the addition gonna be done?
 
VCBurner said:
leeave96 said:
I'll be doing a side by side (or end of the house to the other end of the house) comparison between my cat Woodstock Keystone and my Englander 30. Bill
Click to expand...
Bill,
When is the 30 going to be installed? I guess the question is also when is the addition gonna be done?
Click to expand...

Both should be finished/installed late summer.
 
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