Cant keep up -20C windchill -38C

This past spring we had a local hearth store install an insert in our living room thinking it would have been able to keep the whole house warm. boy oh boy was the dealer and me wrong. The insert keeps the living room and kitchen somewhat warm but the rest of the house we need to run small electric heaters. with the latest cold snap were even having a hard time keeping the main lvl of the house warm. I find one of the biggest problems is the coal bed gets too big that i can only fit 3 splits in the already small insert. I find the stove gets hotter with the air closed off fully but the coals last so long. Do you think it would be better to open the air fully after the stove starts to cool to burn of the coals faster? Im really wishing I would have either put a big free standing stove in the finished basement or even went with a heat pump. On a positive we have still only used half tank of oil so far this year but I was hoping the stove would have made the house warmer. Before anyone asks most of the wood I have been burning is very dry it has been left from the previous owner 3.5 yrs ago.

Yea what I have learned here and after being around is just get the BIGGEST stove that you can "insert" or the biggest freestander. You will always be glad you did. NO one ever seems to want to go with a smaller stove.

Not so! I've picked smaller stoves in the past knowing full well they wouldn't cover the entire house on the coldest days. I chose to be more comfortable in the shoulder season and have the furnace kick on when needed. I had the thermostat kick on at 55. It would take 4 days in strong wind for the furnace to kick on. I only know this because I had to turn it off to start the fire and forgot to turn it back on. It took 4days to notice.

You can always put less wood in the stove and a lower btu wood?? I do this myself. I load it entirely different on the warmer nights than the below freezing nights. If I put 1 split in my stove and its pine it will hardly do anything. I don't load it to the top with 17%MC oak, I may get a kindling fire going and then maybe put 2-3 splits of pine in and cut the blower down and the air down. I could easily make it 90f in the stove room on those nights in the 40s and 50s but I just change how I load the stove and when and what I load it with.

I do live here in the south in mild climates to most of you, but I also live in an uninsulated house that only has r19 ceiling insulation and that's it, so its more like having an insulated house in a cooler climate the way it reacts. But I have a 3.5cuft stove which is on the larger size as far as EPA stoves go.