Anyone have any thoughts as to how big of a stove I should be looking for to heat a single living room of approximately 325 square feet (with a sloped ceiling between 20 ft - 10ft tall) of uninsulated/poorly-insulated concrete block construction, in a climate with a winter night-time average low of upper 30s low 40s (but humid), and where I do not plan on keeping the fire going during the day but instead plan to run the stove for a few hours in the morning and about 8 hours each evening?
Hi everyone - new guy here! I have spent many hours reading up on woodstoves and reading through some of the posts here, and I'm hoping to get some advice from the experienced woodburners around here.
My wife's family has a small cottage near the coast in Portugal. From what I can tell by looking at various climate maps, the climate is similar to coastal northern California or coastal Pacific Northwest: warm dry summers, cool (but not freezing) and humid winters. I'd say the average nightly low temperature during the winter months is in the low 40s (sometimes dipping down into the mid 30s), but also humid so it's a damp cold. During the day, it warms up quite a bit, on average in the 50s during the day even in the winter.
The cottage is a simple cement block building, on a concrete slab, single story, a few bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. There is no central heating system of any kind, to the extent anyone spends time there in the winter they get by with electric heaters in the bedrooms at night. The house is poorly insulated, if at all (I don't believe the walls have any insulation, although I think there is some insulation in between the ceiling and the roof).
I would like to add a woodstove to the living room, since that's we'll spend most of our time when we're inside on winter evenings. (I will be installing an interior metal chimney with the woodstove.) I'm trying to decide how much stove is right for our needs.
The stove will most often be lit in the late afternoon and kept going for maybe 8 hours each evening. Mainly I'm just hoping to keep that room cozy during the evenings. While there might be some residual heat benefit transferred to the adjacent bedrooms, I'm not counting on it, and so I expect the fire will burn out each night, maybe lit again in the mornings to warm the room up a bit, then left alone during the day and not lit again until late afternoon. On some days we might run the stove during the day, but usually because of the mild weather we're out and about and won't need to keep the fire going, nor will anyone be around to do so.
The room is somewhere around 200 square feet. The ceiling is tall, at the peak it's probably 18-20 feet or so, sloping down on either side to about 10 feet. Again, some light insulation in between the ceiling (wood) and the roof (terra cotta roof tiles), but probably nothing in the walls.
My first thought was the Jotul 602CB, which has a listed max heat output of 28,000 BTU and is listed as heating up to 800 sq. feet. But this must be based on some assumptions about insulation, ceiling height, etc. I'm concerned that this might not be enough to heat the living room I have.
So then I was considering the Jotul F3 CB or the Jotul F118 CB. But I'm concerned that might be too much stove, even given the lack of insulation and the high ceilings.
I really just don't know. I grew up in a house where our old Much Wenlock coal stove was our primary heat source in Pennsylvania, but that was years ago and I don't have a sense for how the building material will play into this. Given the way I plan to use the stove (not expecting it to last overnight, probably will make a fire in the AM to warm up and then not get it going again until the late afternoon/early evening) does it make sense to error on the side of getting a bigger or smaller stove?
Interested in hearing any thoughts or advice from you guys!
Hi everyone - new guy here! I have spent many hours reading up on woodstoves and reading through some of the posts here, and I'm hoping to get some advice from the experienced woodburners around here.
My wife's family has a small cottage near the coast in Portugal. From what I can tell by looking at various climate maps, the climate is similar to coastal northern California or coastal Pacific Northwest: warm dry summers, cool (but not freezing) and humid winters. I'd say the average nightly low temperature during the winter months is in the low 40s (sometimes dipping down into the mid 30s), but also humid so it's a damp cold. During the day, it warms up quite a bit, on average in the 50s during the day even in the winter.
The cottage is a simple cement block building, on a concrete slab, single story, a few bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. There is no central heating system of any kind, to the extent anyone spends time there in the winter they get by with electric heaters in the bedrooms at night. The house is poorly insulated, if at all (I don't believe the walls have any insulation, although I think there is some insulation in between the ceiling and the roof).
I would like to add a woodstove to the living room, since that's we'll spend most of our time when we're inside on winter evenings. (I will be installing an interior metal chimney with the woodstove.) I'm trying to decide how much stove is right for our needs.
The stove will most often be lit in the late afternoon and kept going for maybe 8 hours each evening. Mainly I'm just hoping to keep that room cozy during the evenings. While there might be some residual heat benefit transferred to the adjacent bedrooms, I'm not counting on it, and so I expect the fire will burn out each night, maybe lit again in the mornings to warm the room up a bit, then left alone during the day and not lit again until late afternoon. On some days we might run the stove during the day, but usually because of the mild weather we're out and about and won't need to keep the fire going, nor will anyone be around to do so.
The room is somewhere around 200 square feet. The ceiling is tall, at the peak it's probably 18-20 feet or so, sloping down on either side to about 10 feet. Again, some light insulation in between the ceiling (wood) and the roof (terra cotta roof tiles), but probably nothing in the walls.
My first thought was the Jotul 602CB, which has a listed max heat output of 28,000 BTU and is listed as heating up to 800 sq. feet. But this must be based on some assumptions about insulation, ceiling height, etc. I'm concerned that this might not be enough to heat the living room I have.
So then I was considering the Jotul F3 CB or the Jotul F118 CB. But I'm concerned that might be too much stove, even given the lack of insulation and the high ceilings.
I really just don't know. I grew up in a house where our old Much Wenlock coal stove was our primary heat source in Pennsylvania, but that was years ago and I don't have a sense for how the building material will play into this. Given the way I plan to use the stove (not expecting it to last overnight, probably will make a fire in the AM to warm up and then not get it going again until the late afternoon/early evening) does it make sense to error on the side of getting a bigger or smaller stove?
Interested in hearing any thoughts or advice from you guys!
