Hello! I am interested in hearing about people's experience with the England 50-snc30lc model wood stove.
We currently have a cat VC Defiant Encore pre-1987 model that we bout reconditioned in 1990 from the VT Casting factory. We have loved it and it worked really great for us until the last 5 years. Apparently it had been leaking somewhere and must have been overburning in places and warping out pieces. (At a minimum, this year, I think we need to (again) replace the refractory casing and the cat combuster) Plus... the cat combuster hasn't been lasting as long as it should. So...with the help of this forum, we learned about and used a light to test for leaks and think we found it. But, while searching on a resolution to the possible cause of the leak I read about the England 50-snc30lc model wood stove and comments were from one poster who seemed to love it and another with a smaller version who also liked tht model.
I'm hoping to see if there are others out there as well that can comment along as the others that may have previously commented.... seeing as another winter is fast approaching and we have to decide if we want to invest $800 into a stove repair for the VC or just spend a little more now on a new England 50-snc30lc model wood stove. (Oh yeah, I should mention that my hubby is considering the rebuild as we plan to move in a couple of years and he thinks that if we rebuild it -now that we seem to have found where it was leaking and will have hopefully fixed it so that it shouldn't need to be rebuilt as a yearly project- that we could then leave it with the house when we sell it and it would add to the sale value... as it really is a nice looking and efficient stove when it's burning properly)... and then we can wait for the end of season sales and see if we can pick the England 50-snc30lc model wood stove up for a steal, like some of you seem to have been able to do....then we would have 2 stoves for about the same price as what the England 50-snc30lc model wood stove was at the start of the season.) (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the only other heat source option is electric heat...I'm not sure why anyone in their right mind would have built a house in 1978 with electric baseboard heat, but they did...and we put the woodstove in after the first winter as there was no way we could afford to heat the house with electric...that said, we try to effeciently use any electric as the price of it keeps going up, and up and up...we learned that we could comfortably unplug the waterbed heater for the summer by putting a foam pad mattress over it...and that saved us some money, although not as much as I would have liked...but I would miss the warmth of it in the winter if we ever decided to get rid of it altogether.)
Also, our house is a 2 story cape cod that's about 1400 square feet, and on the colder nights it doesn't always seem able to keep up with heating. It can get to 58 degrees in the kitchen on rare occasions when it's really cold occasionally at night/early morning. Typically it keeps at about mid 60's, but I wouldn't mind a little more heat being available. ie- the DR and the Kitchen which are on the northwest side of the house are typically cooler and not as comfortably warm...plus I'm usually bundled up with a turtleneck, sweater and a blanket. Also, we typically don't need to heat the upstairs as the heat rises up there and we still have a heated waterbed that we turn on for the winter, so we usually sleep comfortably enough without needing any supplemental heater. (But since we are thinking of adopting, we will need to heat another room up on the 2nd floor and we wonder if this model would work with our house's layout.)
Also, we are concerned that the England stove being steel might not radiate as effectively as the cast iron VC.
So...please tell me about your likes and dislikes regarding the England 50-snc30lc model wood stove as well as if you think this model would work well for us. Thanks!
We currently have a cat VC Defiant Encore pre-1987 model that we bout reconditioned in 1990 from the VT Casting factory. We have loved it and it worked really great for us until the last 5 years. Apparently it had been leaking somewhere and must have been overburning in places and warping out pieces. (At a minimum, this year, I think we need to (again) replace the refractory casing and the cat combuster) Plus... the cat combuster hasn't been lasting as long as it should. So...with the help of this forum, we learned about and used a light to test for leaks and think we found it. But, while searching on a resolution to the possible cause of the leak I read about the England 50-snc30lc model wood stove and comments were from one poster who seemed to love it and another with a smaller version who also liked tht model.
I'm hoping to see if there are others out there as well that can comment along as the others that may have previously commented.... seeing as another winter is fast approaching and we have to decide if we want to invest $800 into a stove repair for the VC or just spend a little more now on a new England 50-snc30lc model wood stove. (Oh yeah, I should mention that my hubby is considering the rebuild as we plan to move in a couple of years and he thinks that if we rebuild it -now that we seem to have found where it was leaking and will have hopefully fixed it so that it shouldn't need to be rebuilt as a yearly project- that we could then leave it with the house when we sell it and it would add to the sale value... as it really is a nice looking and efficient stove when it's burning properly)... and then we can wait for the end of season sales and see if we can pick the England 50-snc30lc model wood stove up for a steal, like some of you seem to have been able to do....then we would have 2 stoves for about the same price as what the England 50-snc30lc model wood stove was at the start of the season.) (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that the only other heat source option is electric heat...I'm not sure why anyone in their right mind would have built a house in 1978 with electric baseboard heat, but they did...and we put the woodstove in after the first winter as there was no way we could afford to heat the house with electric...that said, we try to effeciently use any electric as the price of it keeps going up, and up and up...we learned that we could comfortably unplug the waterbed heater for the summer by putting a foam pad mattress over it...and that saved us some money, although not as much as I would have liked...but I would miss the warmth of it in the winter if we ever decided to get rid of it altogether.)
Also, our house is a 2 story cape cod that's about 1400 square feet, and on the colder nights it doesn't always seem able to keep up with heating. It can get to 58 degrees in the kitchen on rare occasions when it's really cold occasionally at night/early morning. Typically it keeps at about mid 60's, but I wouldn't mind a little more heat being available. ie- the DR and the Kitchen which are on the northwest side of the house are typically cooler and not as comfortably warm...plus I'm usually bundled up with a turtleneck, sweater and a blanket. Also, we typically don't need to heat the upstairs as the heat rises up there and we still have a heated waterbed that we turn on for the winter, so we usually sleep comfortably enough without needing any supplemental heater. (But since we are thinking of adopting, we will need to heat another room up on the 2nd floor and we wonder if this model would work with our house's layout.)
Also, we are concerned that the England stove being steel might not radiate as effectively as the cast iron VC.
So...please tell me about your likes and dislikes regarding the England 50-snc30lc model wood stove as well as if you think this model would work well for us. Thanks!
