Opinons on these three stoves

[TJN66]

We are looking at 3 different stoves.

1. Montage Pellet Stove by Lennox ~ $2613.00 with a ton of free pellets, 10% off vent kit and, free delivery and no tax with capital improvment paperwork. Local to us. With pellet delivery all season.

2. Quadra Fire Castile ~ $2699.00 with $100 shipping freight charge so would make it $2799.00. We have to pick up or $150 delivery fee. No pellets available. Sales tax. Need Vent kit. 45 min from us.

3. England Stove Works Summers Heat Model 55-shp10 ~ $1400.00 we pick up. No pellets available. Sales Tax. Need vent kit. Available at Ace hardware 20 min from us.


The England Stove works model is by far the cheapest but we dont know what this stove doesnt have compared to the other two.

We are leaning towards the Montage Pellet Stove by Lennox. But I have not read very many reviews of this stove. As this store is local we were thinking that is a big plus.

We are looking at more money than we had expected to spend. I was thinking around $1800 for a stove. I am willing to pay more for a stove but need some people that have used one to let me know how they like the heat and any other info on it.

Also the space we are looking to heat is our downstairs living room and dining room. Approx 500 sq feet. Would be nice to be able to get some heat upstairs to the 2 bedrooms also. Again approx 500sq feet. We would love to not turn on our furnace at all this year. But realistically not sure if that is possible. I hate paying the gas mafia anymore money than I have to.

Anyway... can ya help a girl out here? Thanks so much.

Tammy

 

[2c3d]

we have a (quad castile free standing)....1,400 sq. ft. log cabin....one floor, with open floor plan....quad has heated our whole home for (4) yrs, it has never let us down...same results for my sister and brother in law.....if you can, spend a little more and get the quad....

 

[DiggerJim]

Also the space we are looking to heat is our downstairs living room and dining room. Approx 500 sq feet. Would be nice to be able to get some heat upstairs to the 2 bedrooms also. Again approx 500sq feet. We would love to not turn on our furnace at all this year. But realistically not sure if that is possible. I hate paying the gas mafia anymore money than I have to.

Anyway... can ya help a girl out here? Thanks so much.

Tammy

The Montage is about 2300 considering you get a ton of pellets. The addition of delivery of pellets all season is something I can't quantify - is it "free" delivery or just that they'll guarantee you pellets will be available? Depending on the price of the pellets, this might be a good thing or not but for a rule of thumb check www.pelletsales.com to see what pellets + delivery would be.

Quadra is a good stove but the distance & the highest price aren't much of an argument for it. However, it might be construed as a better looking stove and its got some ease of use features - self-cleaning fire pot, etc. that might be worth a premium. I'm surprised the dealer is charging you freight & pick up. That turns it into about $550 more than the Montage. The dealer sounds a bit like he's taking advantage of the situation (and you) so he's not someone you might want to be "married" to for warranty & service work.

The Summers Heat (Englander Stoves) is a basic stove. Looks more like a stove than the Montage. A smaller hopper (40 lb vs. 55) and I don't know the BTU rating -- the Montage looks like a 4lb/hr feed which equates to their 32,000 btu rating; not sure about the SH. You need to add the price of sales tax & the outside air kit (required for the SH and optional for the Montage -- lots of folks will argue they're needed or not based on their particular biases; regardless, if you aren't going to do it unless required, then the SH cost has to include the extra bucks for the OAK). You can run it on a thermostat but have to do it set for high so when it comes on it will come on full blast (my Profile, also by Lennox, starts on high but after 15 minutes or so switches to whatever the stove controls were set to - I have mine on medium). This isn't an issue if you're going to run it on low all the time but might be a useability thing when you're running it during hump seasons from a desire to "turn it down" but not off. Maintenance on the SH will be more time-consuming as you have to clean the burnpot every day and the ashes twice a week - the Montage requires weekly attention and has an ash drawer for easier ash cleanout.

I like the looks of the SH - more stove like, but you have more decorative options (even if you want to add them later) with the Montage. Purely subjective and your call.

You're likely at about a $500 price difference for the Montage vs. the Summers Heat (when including the sales tax & OAK). Your call as to the value of the difference. If you're handy you can do either, if you're not, you don't want the SH as it's a self-install, self-maintenance (the factory support is supposed to be very good and one of their techs is on the board a lot).

If it were me, even being a handy guy, I might take the Montage simply for the less frequent filling (larger hopper), easier maintenance (burnpot & ash cleaning), dealer support (even if I did the install myself, having one close is nice) and pellet availability in its favor.

How much heat you'll get upstairs will depend on the layout of the house, where you place the stove and what kind of airflow you can get. You'll need to add a bit more info to get any potentially valid commentary on that.

Jim

 

[TJN66]

Thank you so much. We are going to go with the Lennox Montage. The daily cleaning of the pot with the SH would mean shutting it down each day. We did not realize that when we were looking at the stove at the hardware store.

Now to get the deposit down on it and have it acutally come in!

Thanks again,
Tammy

 

[DiggerJim]

Thank you so much. We are going to go with the Lennox Montage. The daily cleaning of the pot with the SH would mean shutting it down each day. We did not realize that when we were looking at the stove at the hardware store.

The manual is available on Englander's website (Lennox's isn't).

Mike from their tech staff is also on this forum and can fill you in on how the stoves really work vs. what the manuals say -- they say you also have to turn the stove off to refill the hopper. Turning it "off" doesn't actually shut it down right away - it stops the auger from feeding more pellets but it does leave the blowers running until the temps drop. So if you can clean the burn pot or fill the hopper before it cools, you can hit the button again and it starts back up. It's the twice weekly ash clean out that would drive me nuts - in that case you have to let it shut all the way down and cool before shoveling out the ashes. I personally don't want to futz with the thing that much (one reason I didn't get a wood stove).

 

[TJN66]

Yeah..the twice weekly ash clean out is what made hubby say no to the englander. Now we just have to wait for them to come in. Crossing my fingers here!

Tammy

 

[look4life]

I just found this forum so i don't know if you have your stove yet. I can only comment on the Lennox Montage as we bought one in November 2008. The stove appears to be well built and it works well on manual operation. But if you plan on using this stove with a thermostat them DO NOT buy this stove. Too long to go into here so I am going to start my own topic about what I have gone through.

 

[packerfan]

I clean the ash from my englander about once a week. Twice a day, I scoop the ash from the burn pot into an ash can that I have. The weekly cleaning takes about 5 min., and scooping the ash takes 5 seconds. It really isn't time consuming at all.