Goodbye dragon, hello to Freedom

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TradEddie

Minister of Fire
Jan 24, 2012
981
SE PA
Waved goodbye to our 1980 Gold Marc slammer insert on Sunday morning. By Sunday evening, I was kindling the first break-in fire in a Lopi Freedom.

Many thanks to all those people here whose advice and experience helped me with this process. In the end, I found a store with a slightly better price on the insert and a much better price on the install. Installation of liner and insert took about 5 hours, almost an hour of that was spent trying to remove the old flue damper so I'm glad I let professionals do the work.

First impressions were just okay, I need to get a feel for what works and what doesn't, and our record-breaking rainfall last year didn't help season my wood supply, so I wasn't expecting too much. Lighting was a breeze, it took a little longer than expected to come up to temperature, but steady heat was maintained for several hours with just a few splits,which was an immediate improvement. Seeing the fire burning is nice of course, and I was able to get some secondary combustion but still not much to show for all the expense. Then last night, I reloaded a split of 5-year old oak onto hot coals, and within seconds watched the most amazing purple secondaries fill the firebox and the light-show continued for almost an hour. Beautiful!

All I need now is another year to let all of my wood season properly, and give me time to saw my bigger splits down enough to fit into the smaller firebox.

TE
 
Congratulations. That should be a very nice improvement. As you've noticed, these stoves like dry wood. Try bringing in some splits in the house and let them dry for a few days to a week. That can make a nice difference if the wood is almost dry.
 
I've been leaving splits by the old stove for a few weeks in anticipation of the new insert, but while it probably helped, it wasn't quite enough. My seasoned wood got depleted when we lost power for a week after that freak snow storm in October. I had three red oaks and a hickory taken down early last spring, and in the fall our utility company took down another oak and a cherry that were overhanging power lines. Confident that I already had enough wood for this winter, I started by splitting the oak, but most of the hickory wasn't split until late fall, so neither is much use yet.
Everything is split and stacked now ready for next winter, but I have to hunt around for stray older splits that were left on the bottom of the stacks, or some of the hickory that was split early. Luckily, we didn't have much of a winter here since that week in October.

TE
 
Congratulation's on the freedom insert. I have the liberty which is basically the same thing as the freedom, and I will tell you that with good dry wood that thing will be cranking out some serious heat. I would recommend though cutting your wood to 14 inches and loading it in N/S. Its alot easier than reaching into a firebox full of hot coals and you don't have to worry about wood falling against the glass.
 
Once again, thanks to everyone here for their generous help on so many topics.


We replaced our old smoke-dragon slammer last February, but the Winter that never was prevented me from getting a good feel for what I’d bought. Now that it’s been burning on some colder days I think I can give a better review.

First, dry wood, what can I say that hasn’t been said? The last fire in the slammer was burning year-old oak without a problem, that same oak with an additional summer to season is still miserable in the new insert. EPA stoves need dry wood, call that a fault if you will, but that’s how it is.

Heat Output: I wasn’t sure how to compare firebox sizes and manufacturers claims, but this unit has no problem heating our 1900sqft + 400sqft basement Cape with temperatures below freezing. Heat distribution is a separate issue, not the stove’s fault. Lopi says 2250sqft, which seems reasonable. We have the blower, but it heated well without power after Hurricane Sandy. In colder weather power outages, I’d unbolt the blower and use a small battery-powered muffin fan that I have for this purpose.

Burn Times: Two 4-inch splits of Cherry will keep the stove top above 400 for 3-4 hours. That’s much less than a half load. I haven’t had the opportunity to push the overnight burns, but I’ve got to 9 hours with the fan still on. Lopi says 12 hours, maybe when I get my oak fully seasoned, but I’m not convinced. A massive oak pugly might have made 9 hours in the old stove, but having anything more than embers didn’t usually happen.

Burn Rate: I didn’t really believe people’s claims about how much less wood an EPA stove would burn, but it really is about half what the slammer would go through.

Ease of use; No problems lighting or reloading, some smoke enters the room on reloads if I don’t crack the door for a few seconds before opening fully. (i.e. if I don’t follow manufacturer’s instructions).

Likes: Looks good, heats good, built well.

Dislikes: I think it’s stupid that normal burning is damper rod pushed in, but air rod pulled out. It’s confusing for those not running it regularly (the wife). How much harder would it be to have both operate in the same direction?
There is a lip on the ash shelf that makes it impossible to sweep ashes off effectively.
The rod on the bypass control handle sticks down too far below the hole and might scratch the stove top. I ground off a quarter inch from mine.

TE
 
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