Great to have this forum, as I'm certain I referred to this for information I needed to decide on a stove.
My wife bought our home 6 years ago. The house is a cape style cottage that used to be a summer only home back when it was built circa 1950. We're up in Hopatcong NJ.
The house "came with " a very nice (looking anyway) old "Franklin" stove- It took me some research to discover that- the things were big in the oil crisis in the 70's and apparently Sears and Roebuck used to sell them.
We quickly learned that the homes heating system just barely keeps the place "livable " in winter ( fairy old Weil McLain oil burner with hydronic "baseboard " heat) - we've even had a few freeze ups when the boiler just stopped in February. Needless to say, after one or two costly repairs on burst pipes- I'm wrapping all my crawl space pipes with electric heat tape.
The house is only roughly 1200 sq ft - divided between 2 floors- It's built upon a crawl space about 3-4 ft - In January/ February, even with the boiler running, the first floor- floors can get pretty cold. Very badly insulted very poor windows upstairs ( old lead based glass with counterweights!)
Anyway- I got an Englander pellet stove a few years ago and installed it. It's been very dependable, but the heat is "okay ". It's not the end all be all solution I was hoping for- plus if we lost power, it's useless.
We'd fire up our Franklin "stove " a few times every winter, but that thing simply ate up wood and produced negligible heat. It couldn't hold anything over night and the house would get super smoked out from trying to start the beast, never mind that it wasn't really sealed up like New stoves are. It really did practically save our butts during Hurricane Sandy though- we were even warming up food on it. That was 2 weeks I don't care to re live and we were just married a few weeks before it!
I thought about replacing the old franklin stove with a real modern and more efficient wood burning stove right around the time I got our pellet stove.
I finally had the additional budget to just do it.
I just want to say- WOW what a difference
I can realistically heat my house with this thing- don't get me wrong, my pellet stove still serves a purpose by keeping the "back half" of our house warm where it's divided by the brick fireplace chimney/ mantle- but THIS puts it to shame.
I'm sold!
My wife bought our home 6 years ago. The house is a cape style cottage that used to be a summer only home back when it was built circa 1950. We're up in Hopatcong NJ.
The house "came with " a very nice (looking anyway) old "Franklin" stove- It took me some research to discover that- the things were big in the oil crisis in the 70's and apparently Sears and Roebuck used to sell them.
We quickly learned that the homes heating system just barely keeps the place "livable " in winter ( fairy old Weil McLain oil burner with hydronic "baseboard " heat) - we've even had a few freeze ups when the boiler just stopped in February. Needless to say, after one or two costly repairs on burst pipes- I'm wrapping all my crawl space pipes with electric heat tape.
The house is only roughly 1200 sq ft - divided between 2 floors- It's built upon a crawl space about 3-4 ft - In January/ February, even with the boiler running, the first floor- floors can get pretty cold. Very badly insulted very poor windows upstairs ( old lead based glass with counterweights!)
Anyway- I got an Englander pellet stove a few years ago and installed it. It's been very dependable, but the heat is "okay ". It's not the end all be all solution I was hoping for- plus if we lost power, it's useless.
We'd fire up our Franklin "stove " a few times every winter, but that thing simply ate up wood and produced negligible heat. It couldn't hold anything over night and the house would get super smoked out from trying to start the beast, never mind that it wasn't really sealed up like New stoves are. It really did practically save our butts during Hurricane Sandy though- we were even warming up food on it. That was 2 weeks I don't care to re live and we were just married a few weeks before it!
I thought about replacing the old franklin stove with a real modern and more efficient wood burning stove right around the time I got our pellet stove.
I finally had the additional budget to just do it.
I just want to say- WOW what a difference
I can realistically heat my house with this thing- don't get me wrong, my pellet stove still serves a purpose by keeping the "back half" of our house warm where it's divided by the brick fireplace chimney/ mantle- but THIS puts it to shame.
I'm sold!
Attachments
Last edited:
