Woodstock Absolute?

Ashpan door seals are just another potential air leak on some models. Betting you would be just fine without a ashpan.

begreen said:

Ash pans are overrated. This should not be a showstopper.

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I'm not sure begreen The ash pan in my PH is pretty incredible! I use to have an old smoke dragon without an ash pan and the ease of use with my current setup is really nice!

I was also looking at the Absolute. Functionally it seems perfect for our setup. It's slightly smaller and should be able to run a little hotter to keep the room at the same temp. We are at 2400 sq ft but the stove room is about 325 sq ft. We'd also want to often run burns for about 10-12hrs. Our current 2.9 cu ft stove is hard to keep below 75°F on an average 30° winter day without running on a very low burn. At about 300°F STT it gets the downstairs to about 75°F. You may have a similar situation running the AS in a 1400 sq ft house.

The AS pricepoint is certainly great. There is a flash sale ending tomorrow!

Just can't get over the aesthetic design. Seems like it certainly would be an eyesore in our stove room. It might work with different decor...
I would certainly go with the Keystone in your situation but that would be too small for us. On the cold nights in the teens I was running our stove over 500°F to keep downstairs around 69°.

sugar cookie said:

No ash pan kinda sounds like a pain to me.

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Yes, it is. I've done it both ways and it's damn near a deal-breaker to me, to not have a grate. At the very least, it has to have a decent ash dump.

toddnic said:

I'm not sure begreen The ash pan in my PH is pretty incredible! I use to have an old smoke dragon without an ash pan and the ease of use with my current setup is really nice!

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Right. If you've never had a good grated system, you don't know what you're missing but once you have used it, you don't wanna go back.

begreen said:

Our Castine had a good ash pan system, but I eventually stopped using it. The stove actually ran better with a bed of ash under the fire so I let the pan fill up and cover the grate. Ash buildup can also be controlled by the species of wood burned. Some create much more ash than others. By burning doug fir I can go about a month between ash cleanouts during peak season and 6 weeks during shoulder season.

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The Castine system isn't that good if you can't let the ash build up to the desired depth. In the Keystone, ash will sit on top of the grate until you elect to stir it down with a poker. You won't be going six weeks before shoveling out the Fireview, more like six days if you want to get the biggest loads in the box; It's only 1.8 cu.ft. usable volume. If you have an over-sized non-cat stove like begreen, you don't worry about how big a load you can get in since you are burning mostly small loads anyway, so as not to roast yourself out in the mild climate.
But whether you have to shovel out often, or once a month, you'll spend about the same amount of time either way, although if you shovel out less often, you can usually pick a colder day when the draft is pulling the dust back into the box better.

sugar cookie said:

I wish Woodstock made a soapstone/steal stove w/ a 2 c. ft-ish firebox-the Survival is too small, and the AS (seems) too big; or that they would put an ash pan on the FV!!

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That's a hole in their lineup, going from 1.8 cu.ft. in the Fv, to 2.5 in the AS. I would love a Ws steel, straight-cat stove, rear or top vent, ash grate and big window, about 2.2 cu.ft. usable volume. Buying a stove is usually a trade-off, you seldom find everything you want in a single stove.

begreen said:

FWIW, the T6 is definitely not oversized for our house. With the exception of some shoulder season burning the T6 is running full loads 24/7.....Shoulder season burning days for us are typically less than 30 a season. Usually, the stove is fully loaded and running 24/7 from November through February.

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Oh, that's right, you have a lot of glass and not that tight a house, I stand corrected. But heating solely with wood I would have a lot more than one month of shoulder season there, where it is cool and damp most of the year, so the heat pump would no doubt be saving me a lot of shoulder burning, and shoveling. Heck, I burned a half load of Black Cherry yesterday morning because it was under 70 in here and damp, and my wife was chilly.

This year I ran exclusively on wild cherry in Jan/Feb and had to clean the ash out every other week. Doug fir on the other hand creates maybe 1/4 to 1/3 that amount of ash.

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sugar cookie has Doug Fir and Pine, so maybe wouldn't have to shovel as often. I'd still want to avoid it, but some folks don't seem to mind...to each his own. My point about the over-sized stove was that you can let ash build up a long time, but she doesn't want to risk being roasted out by a stove that's too big most of the time, and the Fv requires more frequent shoveling than a bigger stove in order to get max wood in the box.

The Ks is deep enough to leave a 1" bed of ash on top of the grate and still have a few inches until you have to stir it down. The Fv has yet more depth IIRC but I found myself wanting to get it down to an inch of ash when I wanted to cram in a big load.

sugar cookie said:

The peeps at Woodstock said either the Keystone, Fireview or AS would work for us, but they said they thought the Fireview would be the best fit out of the three-they do seem to think that we would be able to burn it at higher capacity on a more regular basis, which is recommended...They said that it's not recommended that the AS be burned long and slow all the time (which is most likely where we would be at with it), or that, if we did choose to burn it that way, that we make sure we burn it at full capacity, and high every once in a while to burn soot off the glass, as well as creosote buildup.

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I haven't heard this, recommendation to burn higher. You burn the stove at a higher rate when burning in a fresh load and bringing the stove up to temp for the cat light-off. I've never burned either the Ks or Fv hot to burn out creosote..it's just not much of a problem if your wood is dry. I generally do a cat-only burn for most of the loads, no flame in the box, unless it is cold and windy out, when I need more output in our leaky house with un-insulated walls. The double glass stays pretty clean on these stoves, and I'd think the AS wouldn't be much different.

I believe the AS would work, the question we're facing is- do we want to have a much larger stove than we really need (and I mean that literally too, as the house will only have about an 850 sq ft footprint, so we're not sure we want a big 'ol stove in the middle of it,

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The footprint of all three is about the same, though the AS has the ash lip on the front. You could get the "Plain" model with no lip but I think the Wildwood looks better.

sugar cookie said:

Thank you, all! These comments help confirm our decision. We wanted to make one by today since the AS goes off-sale this eve...in case we decided to go with it. I think we're going to go w/ the FV despite no ash pan and a higher price tag.
The deciding factors were (In this order):
1) Woodstock, themselves, period. Love this company, so we knew for sure we wanted to go w/ them; and we knew we wanted soapstone in the stove in some way, therefore this seemed like a win-win.
2) "Perfect" size for our space/long burn times/hopefully no cracking windows
3) Favorite look
4) Double layer of soapstone (like that type of warm, radiant heat)
5) Soapstone/cast iron (preferred) vs soapstone/steal
My husband is usually the cheapskate, and I'm the one who is willing to pay for quality , but ironically in this instance, he made the final decision and chose the FV, despite the fact that we're on an extremely limited budget. I'm glad he did, since I was having such a hard time making the choice. I was struggling to pay $1000 more for the FV, but he said that it's an investment and we need to make sure we have one we like since we're going to have to live w/ it every day. Yea!

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Don't feel pressured by the "sale," they run them all the time.
That said, I think Hubby made a good choice, the Fireview is a great stove, and easy to run. Come back and ask questions any time, I'm always happy to blab my fool head off.
I got good at shoveling it out with no dust escaping. I stirred the ash to bring the larger live coals to the top, skimmed those to the back with the side of the shovel, then got a shovel of ash. Holding a long, shallow pan directly under the door, place the nose of the shovel in the bottom of the pan, tilt the shovel up and move the shovel handle back to slide the ash off into the bottom of the pan. Do this on a cold day when draft is good. If you haphazardly dump shovels of ash into a bucket, you get a huge dust cloud and the draft pulling it into the stove can't handle it all.
I have the pan on a cardboard box here, but in practice I hold the pan in one hand, shovel in the other.

Best to start a new "Hearth build?" thread to get more experts drawn in by the title.

Here's the floor protection info, to get you started. http://woodstove.com/images/Fireview/Manual/205-Installation-170610.pdf

I've never run the AS, but with the Fv and Ks I can run the air down around 0.5 (4.0 is wide open) when I need less heat. You'll have to experiment to determine how low you can run in your particular setup without crashing the cat burn. You can look up through the glass on the Fv and see the cat glowing, but it can be burning and not glowing. You can go outside and look at the plume to make sure it is clear and you are still burning clean.

Given the house will be well-insulated, I think the smaller stove is probably a better choice. We heat about the same sq ft, but its a very drafty 1700s cape, so we need the bigger AS or IS.

Right about it being an investment. That stove should last, and the company is great about helping out. Your good feeling about the folks there is right on the money.

branchburner said:

stove should last, and the company is great about helping out. Your good feeling about the folks there is right on the money.

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They also have some of the most reasonable parts prices you'll find.