Talk me into/out of Progress or Blaze King.

Based on my research, I've narrowed my selection to two. (although I'm still open to persuasion). Please talk me into or out of 1) A Woodstock Progress Hybrid; OR into or out of 2) A Blaze King Princess.
I'm heating a 2200 sq ft rambler (2200 upstairs, 2200 downstairs). Stove is in the basement atleast 30 feet from the stairs which has a door to enter stairwell.....I leave it open for heat to rise. Basement is fully insulated and finished. House is impressively well insulated. Current stove is a HUGE steel stove which puts out the heat but eats a lot of wood and has no blower. I have a six inch flue, most of which is insulated as it runs through wall and attic, and will be burning lodgpole pine. Its not my main source of heat, but I would burn it a LOT if I could get 12 hour burn times. I just hate building a fire before work and coming home to ashes. Thus I'm only a weekend warrior right now. I have access to plenty of wood.
I like the Blaze King for the large fire box and long run times. Dealer is about 1 hour away. Not sure of price. (Wyoming dealer....keep forgetting to call during business hours)
I like the Woodstock Progress for its looks mainly, but its no slouch on run times either. It sounds like people are easily exceeding 12 hours of burn. I also like to see the fire. From their site, they appear to be about $3100 plus $200 to $250 to ship. Can cook on both.
Finally, any other stoves that compare to the BK? Any that compare with the Progress?

I haven't ran a Progress, but I ran a B-King for a few seasons. I couldn't seem to tell any difference in my burn times if I burned soft wood or oak. It was consistantly 24hr burns and 40+ in the shoulder seasons. I haven't heard of any other stove that can come close to that. Most manufactures set a burn time that is next to impossible to achieve in the real world, but the B-King did the 40+ for me! I think you would see close to 24hr burns with the Princess too, after you get the hang of it.

For the $3K range you could look into the Lopi Cape Cod too. I Installed one last week, it was very cool!

Webby, question for you regarding the logn burn times on the bk's. How much "real" heat do you get out it, when you are burning with a 24, or 40 hour burn rate? I'm going with a Progress,mainly because I think it looks alot nicer than the bk's, and has a nicer fire/flame "viewing" burn. But I'm curious if you get any real heat out of a bk at the low burns? I've read here lots of guys saying there cats are at 500 degree's plus.... but, is there just one spot on the stove with some heat, or is the entire stove radiating heat?

Either one will work for ya!
The king will out perform the progress I believe..but the progress will do it fine and is a lot sexier!
Need 8" they say on the king..could be a show stopper right there.

I asked this same question and asked for temps to be posted to give me an idea as to what to expect if I were to go in the direction of the BK.

You can find the info here:
http://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/blaze-king-princess-and-king-question.94308/

Well, at 4.4 cu ft vs 2.75 cu ft, I would hope the King out performs the other stove.

I can't go with the full on KING. I would be looking at the Princess, which I think is the 2.85 cubic ft. My flue is 6".

Yeah, as much as I admire the BKK, I would be extremely reluctant to yank a good insulated 6" flue to replace with the 8" required for the BKK, especially if it's $$$ class-A pipe, which is what's supposed to be used in attics.

The BK Princess uses a 6" flue, and at 2.8 cu ft is a more reasonable comparison to the Progress.

Which to choose. . .if I wanted something chugging along like a furnace in the basement and requiring the least amount of tending possible, I'd go with the BK. If I were going to spend time in the same room with the stove looking at it, and didn't mind 12-hour reloads, I'd go with the Progress.

If you're trying to heat 4400 sq ft, you may not get 12 hours out of either stove, depending on how impressive your insulation is, and how warm you like your house. If you're saying that you want a blower, that's not an option on the Progress, AFAIK.

My King would run in the 400 deg. range for 24hrs. That was enough heat on most days, but not always. If you are wanting a nice looking Stove with a pretty fire view, then the B-King might not be the choice for you.

That is a large space to be asking a stove to heat.

Either stove will be an improvement over what you have now, and both will get you the 12 hour burn time, and I would give the Princess the advantage there. The woodstock would get the advantage on looks for most folks.

The BK will give you a light show for the first hour or so when reloading, so time the loading to the point in time when you want that light show. You can also generate some light show by turning it up a bit, there will usually be some secondary burning at the top of the firebox for awhile.

How long are you really going to be watching that stove anyway?

I would go with the BK because I view function over fashion. Others will disagree.

Well the Progress and the Princess have almost the exact same firebox size and are very simliar in efficiency. So, you are going to get the same amount of heat out of both of them. On a low burn, the question is do you want that heat spread over 24 hours, or 14 hours?

You do have a lot of house to heat, but being well insulated helps. I doubt those 24 hour burns would heat your whole house for very much of the winter. To give you an idea, the Princess on a low burn is roughly equivanlent to running one and a half 1,500 kw electric space heaters. If you think that would make a nice dent in your home heat for a decent part of the winter, the BK would be the way to go. I am sceptical that it would since you are currently running a massive steel smoke dragon. Those things usually give off WAY more heat than that. Do you find you are significantly overheating your basement or whole house in warmer temps with that stove?

With the blower, you will get more convective heat from the BK. This could be helpful in getting more warm air moving upstairs faster particularly if your basement is not a pretty open floorplan. I you will be running 24/7, I don't think this is a big factor, though.

Bottom line, is either stove will work for you. You just need to decide if the ability to get super long burn times outways the looks, clean glass, cooking ability, and fire show of the Progress. The choice is yours.

This was a tough choice for me as well. I like the looks and fire show of the PH better than the BK but like the flexibility of longer burns and larger range of BTU output of the BK. I went with the BK mostly for the burn times and it's in my basement. I have my good looking WS upstairs. Maybe look at two stoves further down the road?

For me, the ability to get 24 hour burns in shoulder season made the Princess an easy choice. No other stove can do this easily and consistently.

This should be a good thread, I'll try and be nice, but obviously each of us is biased towards our own stoves.

I was waiting for the progress to come out back when they first released it to replace my hearthstone heritage. The woodstock company's other heaters were all cat and had long burntimes for such small stoves so I thought the bigger PH would have correspondingly long burn times and yes, I like stone. When it was released with that 12-14 hour burn spec I had to pass on it and ended up with a princess instead which regularly delivers 24-30 our burns on low. The burn time issue more than made up for the more "utilitarian" aesthetics of the princess.

Heating 4400 SF, both stoves will be running hard most of the time and since the stoves are equal in efficiency and equal in firebox size, you will be getting the same burn time out of each for most of your winter. When it's not cold, the BK can burn longer which gives it an advantage. Both stoves are undersized for 4400SF.

The BK has a thermostat which will regulate the intake air supply to maintain a steady output, no such thing on a PH. Advantage to BK.

The BK has optional blowers which are a pair of axial fans that really do move a lot of air. The fans make a difference in output but also in creating hot air which should travel throughout the house better. I understand that there are no blowers available for the PH. I like a quiet heater and would rather not use the blowers but if needed, they are there.

You are aware of the looks, you can determine the importance of that. There are other versions of BK that are similar in size to the princess but look different.

The BK weighs about half as much. You may think that the thermal mass and the heat storage properties of stone are really important but as we all know, there is no free lunch, and any heat given to you at the end of a fire by a slowly cooling stove had been stolen from you in the beginning by a slow to warm stove. The long burntimes of cat stoves make the advantage of stone as a heat storage medium unimportant. Instead, the stone just looks really cool.

The glass on the PH is double pane so it stays cleaner, plus since the stove can't be smoldered for a long burn the glass just stays much cleaner. Good thing too, since the fireshow is excellent on the PH. My princess glass stays about 40% blackened nomatter what I do which is okay since the only thing to look at is a big pile of black/red fuel and no flames for the bulk of the burn. Advantage PH.

Side door only on the PH means shorter hearth requirements. Front door only on the princess means narrower hearth requirements. Your call on which is better, don't be afraid of a side loader they work fine.

Top or rear vent on the PH, advantage PH.

Mail order and 6 weeks build delay on the PH, advantage BK. 10 year 100% warranty on BK cat, way way less on PH, advantage BK.

It is a tough decision. Each stove has some strong advantages over the other that can tip the scales depending on your needs. I don't think either stove has the balls to heat 4400 SF in a cold climate but you didn't give your location.

Great post Highbeam. I do wonder a little about this:

I completely agree that what you get out at the end you put in at the beginning. But, there is still an advantage of having all that thermal mass. All that mass greatly flattens the heating curve output over a burn cycle compared to similiar steel or cast stoves. Functionally speaking, I wouldn't call this an advantage over the BK, because a BK has a thermostat that does the same thing. The thermal mass basically is thermostat in that is greatly reduces the variabilty in output over the length of a burn. I'm not saying it is the same/better/worse than BK's thermostat. Just saying there is benefit from all that thermal mass.

Well...I think you need to decide what's important in a stove for you. We have a tube stove and haven't ahd either a BK or WS, but from what I've seen and read...

Do you want looks? Many people don't care much for the look of the BK. Even if you don't mind it-how long are you keeping your house? One might have a better resale value.

How often do you want to feed the stove? Especially in shoulder season, you're going to feed the BK less.

How do you feel about side vs front loading?

I don't know how either of them act with pine, but BK comes from the west coast where they burn more pine and WS from the east, where you hear a lot of folks saying you CANT burn pine. I imagine BK has a heritage more built on burning softwood and getting more out of it. that's just a guess though. I noticed my Lopi, also from the land of pine, burns it well (although hardwood is still better)-it can get pretty respectable burn times on pine.

Nimrod, after reading a couple posts, I have to ask, why not go with your heart? That is, which stove do you really want? Go with that stove because you'll always be happy with it. If you go with the lesser, you'll forever be second guessing yourself. So if you like the Progress, buy it. If you prefer the BK, buy it. Then enjoy it.

Follow your heart, that's what I do.

What was the movie?

To answer one question that you asked specifically, nimrod, there is no other stove on the market that can come anywhere close to the burn times that you can get from a BK. This is the one quality that BK dominates.

Woodstock basically guarantees their stoves as long as they are in business, because they address any issue you have promptly and courteously and effectively, no matter how old your stove is. They will put amazing time and effort into diagnosing and resolving your problems. If there is any question of any defect on the part of a stove, there is never any question of the customer paying the cost of repair. The same effort is expended by Woodstock in helping you with any routine maintenance (gaskets, etc.) and any costs are incredibly reasonable.
Although there is no written guarantee beyond the 6 month full replacement, there is really and effectively a wonderfully efficient and reassuring lifetime warranty on these stoves. Woodstock keeps them working well for you. They will even completley rebuild your stove. These stoves are lifetime purchases.
And I agree...go with your heart.
Certainly the voyage with a PH is a love affair.

I think in your case both stoves would have pretty equal performance, I have the princess an Im heating about 3000 sf, does a pretty good job of it too but Im not getting 20 hour burn times keeping my whole house warm, now in shoulder seaon if it gets into the 40's in the day I only need heat in my office near the stove so I can turn it way down, get a long burn time and be comfortable, but most of the time Im drawing a lot of heat from the stove and go through a full load in 10-12 hours.
I think Dennis, as always gave you the best advice, go with the one you want.