Sick of thinking about it

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farmer

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Sep 27, 2011
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se mn.
Posted here last year about this time,you guys told me about stove choices,seasoned wood, and different chimney designs.Way more to it then I thought. My house is a little under 2000 sq.ft. with alot of small rooms.The room i am putting it in is 13by25.Scared of getting cooked out of the room with the stove. Went to look at stoves and other half really liked the jotul castine the most, had her look at PE stoves, she didnt mind the t-5 but didnt like the soapstone stoves of a differant brand. I know about burn times and it seems like the t-5 would be a little better than the castine. I am to the point where I want a stove but not sure what is better,a stove that fits the room or a stove with an overnight burn? I also did the cardboard box thing and any stove looks too big in the room. The dealer that seemed the most honest said any woodstove cook us out of the room. I dont want spend the money if he is going to be right. I plan on using this stove when it is under 20 degrees outside.
 
It depends on you, but I wouldn't worry about being cooked out of the room. I enjoy the heat of the stove on a cold day, and I think a fan in a doorway blowing cool air into the room will take care of any overheating problems.

I'd select a stove that is more likely to give long burns, in other words a larger stove over a smaller one. The larger ones hardly take up any more space than the smaller ones (only a few inches difference in width and height).
 
I have a Jotul 500 Oslo...and it is warm in the room it is in...but am learning how to move air and we have a 2200 sq ft house...with the room in which the stove being in is 200 sq ft. The difference in stoves...steel vs cast iron is radiant or convective. The steel I think will not heat you out of the room as the cast iron. Chimers?
 
How drafty is your home and how warm do you like it? I too am dealing with a home with a lot of small rooms. But I am also dealing with a lot of draftiness.

I think the T5 would work for you just fine. Just do not expect it to heat your entire house due to the restrictions of the floorplan.
 
The house is insulated really well but still a old house.The windows are not the best.Does the heat from the stove eventually make it to the other end of the house even with alot of small rooms?
 
Fan blowing into the room of the stove... as some has suggested...still experimenting. Seems to be working. It will never be as warm in the room far away from the stove...but.
 
The house is insulated really well but still a old house.The windows are not the best.Does the heat from the stove eventually make it to the other end of the house even with alot of small rooms?
Really depends upon the layout and the size of stove. For me, no. I need three stoves for whole house heating. And that would be the case even if this house was super insulated.

I've attached my floor plan so you know where I am coming from. Your floor plan may not be as bad.
 

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Fan blowing into the room of the stove... as some has suggested...still experimenting. Seems to be working. It will never be as warm in the room far away from the stove...but.


This!!!!^^^^^^^^

I bought a small 8" desk type fan and placed it at the end of my hall. I have a rinky dink small (1100sq.ft.) ranch house with small rooms off the hallway. My stove is in the small living room, the biggest room (15x19') at the other end of the house. The little fan on low, blowing low to the floor down the hall to the stove room moves the warm air much more quickly than without. I was skeptical at first..................I'm not any longer.
 
Posted here last year about this time,you guys told me about stove choices,seasoned wood, and different chimney designs.Way more to it then I thought. My house is a little under 2000 sq.ft. with alot of small rooms.The room i am putting it in is 13by25.Scared of getting cooked out of the room with the stove. Went to look at stoves and other half really liked the jotul castine the most, had her look at PE stoves, she didnt mind the t-5 but didnt like the soapstone stoves of a differant brand. I know about burn times and it seems like the t-5 would be a little better than the castine. I am to the point where I want a stove but not sure what is better,a stove that fits the room or a stove with an overnight burn? I also did the cardboard box thing and any stove looks too big in the room. The dealer that seemed the most honest said any woodstove cook us out of the room. I dont want spend the money if he is going to be right. I plan on using this stove when it is under 20 degrees outside.

For this type of setup I really think the soapstone stoves shine. The reason is the feel of the heat. If you stood next to a steel or cast stove and then a soapstone you would immediately notice a difference. There is truth to the "soft heat" that is described with soapstone stoves. Can you get roasted out? Yes, with any stove. However, I think much less of a problem with the soapstone stoves. This is one of the reasons we bought a soapstone and we've had steel and cast stoves in the past so we have something to compare to.

The biggest problem is the size of the home and the small rooms. In our house we have a hallway that leads to bedrooms and bathroom. We used to always be cold in the far rooms and even had to run an electric heater before taking showers. That is in the past as we no longer have that problem. Most times we don't even use a fan but if the temperature drops below zero, we will set a small (6" blades) fan in the hallway, on the floor running on low speed and aimed toward the stove room. It is amazing how quickly those far rooms will warm by doing this.

My best bet is that you will need to look at a stove that will not necessarily heat the entire home but will do most of the heating. For sure you would want a stove that will give you a decent overnight burn. This means looking at 2 cu ft minimum for the firebox.

Good luck.
 
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Our stove is in a 10x15 room with a 6' opening into the living room. Imagine a backward L (sort of) with the stove in the toe or short side.
Stove room can get quite warm, but since we put an air purifier blowing into that room from the LR, it stays a little cooler and moves the heat to the other end of the house.
Warms the bedroom at the other end about 3-4::F warmer than before we started doing that. Cleans the air pretty well too.:cool:
 
We have a steel stove wrapped in cast and it is amazing and soft heat we love it. The stove room ( 14*15 ft ) does get a bit warm in the shoulder season but not in the dead of winter. When it's cold there is nothing like being warm. Soap stone is the best though for soft heat ! It holds heat for a long time as well and keeps you nice and warm.

Pete
 
My highly insulated house is 2000 sq. ft. on the main level, the stove is in a room roughly 17 X 26, and we do very well with a Jotul Oslo f500. For a Minn. climate you need a stove this size or larger. Yes, it does get too warm in the main room during the late fall and spring, so I either burn one load a day or not at all during those warmer periods.

Heat will travel to the farthest reaches of the house, rather slowly through doorways of course, but you may be losing heat at the extremities at an even faster rate. The key is the insulating value of the house, windows, and doors. I know in our case simple cellular shades (effectively adding r3 to the windows, at most) made a dramatic difference in the evenness of the temperatures.

A soapstone stove will have less radiant heat, and will release that heat more evenly through the burn cycle, but heat is heat. A firebox of a given size is going to generate roughly the same btus whether it is rock, iron, or steel.
 
My house is a little under 2000 sq.ft. with alot of small rooms.The room i am putting it in is 13by25.

My house is +/- 2500sf, stove room is 14'x24', and my NC30 has not yet 'heated us out of the room.' No matter how much I crank it up, one little tower fan moves the heat nicely through the whole house.

The hotter it gets, the more cats materialize from other areas of the house.
 
Which ever stove you get there will be a learning curve.
Hard to say what will or won't work but you'll learn what works for you & your house.
I'm betting which ever stove you get, you'll be burning well before it's 20° or less out side.
It's a different kid of heat, a warm, nice heat.
Near the stove will be a good place to hang around to get you bones warmed up but,
heat will move around & you will learn to help it.
Don't let a salesman talk you out of the stove you want.
Get the stove you like , you'll make it work for you & your situation.
All good stoves have some controls for heat output. You'll learn & enjoy the $$ savings ;)
 
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Thanks for all of your input.Does jotul or PE have a little better air wash for keeping the glass clean? One or the other a little more efficient with the wood? Soapstone sounds like a good idea but the she wouldnt look to long at them.
 
If there is a stove I missed that is super efficient, glass stays fairly clean,not alot of upkeep you can bring that stove up as well. Thanks again.
 
Thanks for all of your input.Does jotul or PE have a little better air wash for keeping the glass clean? One or the other a little more efficient with the wood? Soapstone sounds like a good idea but the she wouldnt look to long at them.
I run a T-5 and the livingroom the stove runs in is similar in size to your room. This is a steel box with cast iron surround. The sides of this stove generally get to ~225 degrees so you don't feel baked by the stove additionally this is a convective stove and I run the blower when it gets colder. Oddly my wife didn't care for the look of soapstone either but I think they look nice and I like cast iron as well. This time of year I have run only the ceiling fan. The only place you will feel radiant heat is the front but most stoves are this way. Radiant wood stoves will make you feel much hotter than a convection type stove and soapstone is not harsh like many other radiant heat stoves.Keep us posted and good luck!

Ray
 
Yup, we have the T6 in a smaller room, but with an open floorplan in an older home. This stove is not overheating us at all. I don't think the T5 would be too much at all.
 
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Keep in mind a lot of your glass staying clean is In how dry your wood is too ! We discovered real quick with an old stove if it is a little wet the glass is black because the stove won't burn hot enouph with wet wood. Dry wood will be hotter and the glass no matter jotul or pe should stay clean for the most part. When you run with the air set low it will black up a bit but once turned off they tend to burn off and clear up again. I only clean the glass once a month and not because I need to but because I clean the whole stove up once a month.

Pete
 
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Thanks for all of your input.Does jotul or PE have a little better air wash for keeping the glass clean? One or the other a little more efficient with the wood? Soapstone sounds like a good idea but the she wouldnt look to long at them.
Remember, with the Woodstock soapstone stoves ,, you get to try it for 6 months, if you find your unhappy with the stove , they'll refund your money plus cover the cost for the return shipping. That's stated on the very first page of their owners manual, which by the way is a really nice laid out manual. Most likely you'll love the stove. Just something to think about. I doubt anyone else will let you return a stove for a full refund if you find out the stove is not working out or even take it back.
 
Posted here last year about this time,you guys told me about stove choices,seasoned wood, and different chimney designs.Way more to it then I thought. My house is a little under 2000 sq.ft. with alot of small rooms.The room i am putting it in is 13by25.Scared of getting cooked out of the room with the stove. Went to look at stoves and other half really liked the jotul castine the most, had her look at PE stoves, she didnt mind the t-5 but didnt like the soapstone stoves of a differant brand. I know about burn times and it seems like the t-5 would be a little better than the castine. I am to the point where I want a stove but not sure what is better,a stove that fits the room or a stove with an overnight burn? I also did the cardboard box thing and any stove looks too big in the room. The dealer that seemed the most honest said any woodstove cook us out of the room. I dont want spend the money if he is going to be right. I plan on using this stove when it is under 20 degrees outside.
Your thread title made me laugh. I can sympathize. Analysis paralysis is a bad thing. I'd vote to get a stove in the 2 cf range that she likes the looks of. Don't get bogged down. They all do the same thing. Stove size won't matter for space. They all will take up about the same amount of space once you get a proper hearth pad down anyway. A few inches just won't matter. I agonized over the space my stove would take up. I was afraid it would take up too much space, but it actually looks just fine and isn't in the way at all.

I've found that it's very easy to make small, hot fires that don't overheat the room. The stove will continue to radiate heat for a long time after burning down also. Just make sure you have good (dry) wood and you can safely stoke down the fire to suit. With a large enough stove, you have adequate capacity when you really need it. Sure, something like a 3 cf stove would be too much, but 2 cf would seem about right.

You can see that everyone has their favorite brand, and that (usually) is the one they have. That tells me that they're all pretty good stoves.

All stoves will keep the glass clear if you burn cleanly.

Good luck.
 
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Blaze King, though it's not a stove that will show flames like some other stoves do. When it's turned down and burning correctly the wood just glows red with a few flames popping up here and there.

Glass tends to get dirty because of low burning even with good dry wood and a proper setup. Minor "issue" for getting 12-16hr burns out of a load of wood.

For most of us Blaze King owners we are more concerned about heating the house vs looks. Function over form.

If there is a stove I missed that is super efficient, glass stays fairly clean,not alot of upkeep you can bring that stove up as well. Thanks again.
 
I went back and reread your entire posting, and so am editing.

1) I have never had either my Woodstock Fireview or my Woodstock Progress Hybrid have any blackening of the glass when burning, at any burn rate, unless I have had wet wood in the stove. If I have had wet wood in the stove, the window will get some darkening almost immediately I go into cat mode, but this will almost entirely, if not entirely, disappear once I get to a hot burn. If there is any residue darkness, and I don't want to wait a few days until I need to burn hot, the darkness wipes off very easily, The glass is not an issue with Woodstock stoves.

2) BTU calculator on this site says that for a 13 x 25 room in your zone you need from 3900 (very tight, modern insulation, warmish out) to 10,400 BTU's (average insulation, cold out) for your stove room alone, assuming door is closed and no heat flows to any other room, depending on level of tightness and insulation and outdoor temp. Woodstove requirement chart on the Woodstock site indicates that for your zone and square footage you require in the order of 50,000 to 60,000 BTU output to heat a 2000 sq ft home assuming 8 foot ceiling height, average insulation, and ability to get air to flow through your home. There is also a good description of the factors that influence the heating of a home, and what you can expect with different set ups... 50,000 to 60,000 BTUs calls for a stove with very good output. Either of Woodstock's two largest stoves would probably be alright, and perhaps also the Keystone, although I would lean toward the PH because of your difficulty in moving heat and the fact that you are just slightly larger than the (very conservative ) rating Woodstock gives the Fireview. The low end of cat output for the Fireview is about 10,000 BTU, the PH about 12,000 BTU . High ends of each maybe 55,000 and 80,000 plus.

3) There is no need to choose between a stove that will gve you an overnight burn and a stove that will fit in the room. Any cat stove large enough to heat your home will give you an overnight burn, and any cat stove will fit in your room, whether you are talking about actual size or BTU output. There isn't too much difference in size of the stoves, as someone has pointed out. There is a difference in clearance requirements. For assistance in sizing in your room now, to give you an idea of the space you will need, mark on the floor an area five feet wide along the wall and four feet from the wall going into the room, with the two outer corners cut off at a 45 degree angle. That is about the size of Woodstock's largest prefab hearthpad, and is both big enough to take just about any cat stove, and has a sufficient R-value to meet any requirements. So that will tell you the footprint. The other factor is visual impact. Different stove design and relatively minor difference in stove size can yield quite a difference in how they impact a room. If you look at the recent thread that is entitled something about removing or replacing a Fireview, you will see posted very good before and after photos of a Fireview and a Progress Hybrid installed on the same pad in the same location. They take exactly the same amount of space but have a very different feel and impact. The PH is bigger but has lower clearances, and is top rather than rear vented, so the two stoves sit on exactly the same hearth pad with exactly the same chimney (Woodstock actually made certain that would be so, to make the install of the larger stove easy because they knew a fair number of their customers were switching from Woodstock's previous largest stove to the new now much larger stove --another example of great customer service. They worked and tweeked really hard at the end, and did repeated testing, until they got the stove to have clearances that would make the transition zero cost other than the stove itself)ANYWAY...the point is that the stoves are quite different in size and heat output, but take exactly the same floor print in the room....but the Progress Hybrid is a significantly larger stove and has a greater visual impact on the room...and also looks very different.

A great incentive to try a Woodstock if you are really worried that any stove will be too much is that they will let you burn for 6 months and if you are not satisfied for ANY reason, will take the stove back for full refund, no questions asked (which tells you that very few people are unhappy with their stoves!). This would allow you to buy one of their good sized stoves (Fireview or Keystone) and, if you found it put out too much or too little (and I think that is also a possibilty here) heat, you could return it after six months and, if you liked the Woodstock product, exchange it for a smaller or larger stove as was appropriate for your setting...or just keep the money and do something else if you preferred. And your new stove would slip right into your previous installation....

4) Woodstock stoves are super efficient (especially the Progress Hybrid), glass stays clean, and they require no upkeep, hardly even chimney cleaning, except very occasional cleaning of the cat (once a year or less with the Fireview), which is super easy and takes no longer than removing the ash from the firebox, which one does on a regular basis. The stove are super sturdy, beautiful and amazingly well built. Cat needs replacing maybe every 6 years, costs about $125, takes about 10 minutes. Save way more than that much in wood over the 6 years from having a cat. You don't run into any other maintenance, and the stoves need no blowers and are totally free of dependence on electricity. They also lend themselves very well to stovetop cooking. They are sold directly from the manufacturer only, service and quality are legendary. Don't know if these were the soapstone stoves your wife didn't like. If not, get her to look at the site. Most people are very impressed with the appearance of the stoves. And the feel of the gentle heat radiating off a soapstone stove is hard to describe, the closest I can come is to say it feels as if you are sitting in a very sunny window...the heat heats you, not the room, and very soothingly.

Oh - and someone who just installed a Fireview posted that on one of his very first burns he reloaded the stove at about 5 AM, went to work, came home more than 12 hours later and the stove was still warm...

I think that addresses most of your questions.

Good luck in your choice.
 
If there is a stove I missed that is super efficient, glass stays fairly clean,not alot of upkeep
I might be inclined to go with a convective (jacketed) stove with a blower. It'll give you a lot of options for heating/moving air depending on how cold it is outside. begreen has said that both PE and Jotul fans are fairly quiet except when run on "high." A steel box/cast iron jacket will also give you low maintenance; Fewer seams that can leak over time with a welded steel box.
 
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Yup Woody I fully agree and why I insist on a convective wood stove! Totally different heater especially when in the same room as the stove..

Ray
 
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