Cast iron stove advice

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BuildingHugger

New Member
Jul 22, 2014
2
Akron, OH
Hi all. Maybe this has been asked 1,000 times but I did search the forums and didn't find exactly the info I was seeking. We would like to install a wood stove (not an insert) in our existing fireplace. Our house is 1700 square feet but we don't necessarily need to heat the whole thing with the woodstove... it is more for supplementary heat and ambiance. I don't think we need catalytic. The front opening dimensions of our fireplace are 36" wide x 32" high and the depth varies from 19.5" at the bottom to 14.5" at the top. Some of the models we like as far as aesthetics go are:
Hearthstone Craftsbury and Shelburne
Vermont Castings Resolute Acclaim and Intrepid II
Efel Harmony I or III, S33
Pacific Energy Alderlea T4 and T5
Jotul F400 Castine
Napoleon 1100C and 1600C
Lopu Leyden

There is a huge range of prices and of course we want to save as much money as possible, but we don't want something that is cheap and bad. I am clueless about brand reputation. Does anyone have any experience with any of these, or have any thoughts or recommendations? Thanks.
 
You mentioned many fine stoves there. The HS Shelburne, PE Alderleas and Jotul Castine are prob the front runners, I think most would be about the same price too. I do believe the 1600C Napoleon and Lopi are both pretty stoves, but not much experience with them, the others I can attest for. For your fireplace, you need to consider clearances for the hearth and mantle if combustibles come into play. The 4 stoves above all are about 6-9 hour burning stoves and are the appropriate sizes. Run a liner down the chimney and get good dry wood, the stoves will do about the rest for you. Good hunting.
 
Often it takes a hearth extension when installing a stove into a fireplace. Make sure you have your measurements taken and take that into consideration when looking at stoves. Even the depth of the stove can make or break an install unless you are willing to make changes.
 
There is a notable difference in the depth of some of the stoves mentioned. That will affect how much the stove projects out onto the hearth and how much of a hearth extension will be needed. Also, some of the stoves have the option of being rear vented instead of top vented. That will also affect placement. For better heating you want the stove to project somewhat out onto the hearth. You will also want to have installed a damper sealing block off plate to keep the heat in the room and not up the chimney. Of the stoves mentioned I would recommend the Castine or the Shelburne.
 
The castine or the shelburn get my vote. The Lopi Leyden is a very problematic stove. You don't want it, believe me!
 
Nice list. Since you don't seem to want a catalytic stove the VC Intrepid would be out. I also suggest to take off the VC Resolute and Lopi Leyden. Both use a different mechanism to achieve a clean burn than the other non-catalytic stoves. Both stoves usually have a steeper learning curve, can be prone to costly repairs and are better suited for full-time burners which does not seem to be your intention. After that, the other stoves can be roughly divided in 4 groups according to firebox size and venting options:

Small top-vent: Efel Harmony I and S33, PE T4, Napoleon 1100
Medium top-vent: Efel Harmony III (almost a large stove), PE T5
Small rear-vent: Hearthstone Craftsbury, Jotul F400, Napoleon 1600
Medium rear-vent: Hearthstone Shelburne

To install a top-vent stove, you would either need to push the stove back into the fireplace or connect it to the chimney above the fireplace like this: http://www.rockfordchimneysupply.com/images/DSPfrontview.jpg. I doubt you like the look of the latter. For the first way you need to make sure the stove is not too tall. The Efel Harmony III and S33 are 32" with flue collar for example; that would be a really tight fit. Even when you push a top-vented stove into the fireplace, the flue outlet would need to be far enough under the damper that you can connect a liner to it. A rear-vented stove can have a short horizontal run before going up into the chimney. That will be much easier to install and I would recommend to go for one of those.

Firebox size: That will determine how much heat you will get out of the stove and especially for how long (burn time). If the stove is simply for ambiance and supplemental heat, a small stove with a firebox of 1.4 cu ft to 1.8 cu ft will be ok. However, those produce heat for about 4 to 6 hours and overnight burns will be out of the question. Should you have power outages sometimes and would like to rely on the stove for heat, then I would highly recommend going to a medium size stove with a firebox of 2 to 2.5 cu ft. That should give you burn times in the 8 to 10 hour range and probably enough heat to keep your house comfortable. Let me also say that when I was shopping around I also was mainly looking for supplemental heat and ambiance plus a backup heat source during power outages. However, my family quickly started to like the wood heat so much that we are now burning most of the time. Fortunately, we got a stove that was big enough to fulfill most of our heating needs.

Long story short: For just supplemental heat look for a small rear-vented stove. For potentially heating the whole house consider a medium rear-vented stove. Let me add a few more to those categories:
small rear-vent: Quadrafire Yosemite
medium rear-vent: Quadrafire Explorer 2, Morso 3610, Jotul F500
Reviews for most stoves can be found here: https://www.hearth.com/talk/link-forums/stove-reviews.35/ or through a search in the forum. (Except for the Explorer which very recently replaced the Cumberland Gap.) Make sure the hearth is deep enough in front of the fireplace and has sufficient thermal protection if needed (e. g. the Shelburne needs a r-value of 0.8).

Last but not least: Any stove mentioned here will need dry, seasoned wood. Usually, the wood needs to be split and stacked in a sunny and windy spot for 1 to 3 years depending on the wood species to achieve the required moisture content of less than 20 %. Most wood sold as "seasoned" does not fulfill that requirement as most firewood sellers don't have the time and space to stack up wood for that long.
 
FWIW Jotul lists the F400 on their website as a medium-sized stove. At 1.5 cu ft usable it falls in the medium-small category. The Castine, Morso 3610 and Shelburne are both top or rear venting stoves. That increases installation options. The F500 is primarily a side loader which means that the stove would need to be enough forward of the fireplace opening to take advantage of this feature.

We heated our 2000 sq ft old house easily down to about 20F with the Castine. Below that it still did well, but I was feeding it with softwood every 4 hrs or so. For supplemental heating it should do fine and it has a nice big fireview. The Shelburne has a bit larger capacity and would also work well given the requirements.

Can you describe the stove room and how open (or not) this room is in relation to the rest of the house?
 
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A word of advice from someone who had similar thinking 6 years or so ago. I wanted a wood stove for "supplemental" heat and even though I didn't buy the smallest Jotul, I did buy a smaller one than the Castine. I can't blame the F3, as it does an admiral job but if I had to do it again, I would have gone for a bigger stove, one that could in fact heat the entire house. The first power outage in the middle of winter, it quickly became evident that the F3 couldn't keep up without getting up to put wood in it every couple hours.

Moral of the story, it's harder to go too big and far too easy to go too small.
 
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