Electing for bullet points to be as thorough as possible, and maybe address some of the topics that were new to me before going down the Hearth.com rabbit hole.
FINALLY settled on the Hearthstone Heritage for a free standing wood stove. For years, I thought I'd prefer an insert - mostly bc I was concerned about our limited floor space in a small living room with small children. But after exhaustive research I determined there are simply no options that would fit in our old coal burning fireplace without extensive and likely impossible masonry work. After settling on a stove, my options were actually somewhat limited b/c of 2020 regs, rear exit that would fit under the lintel, not too big based on own floor space (bye bye Jotuls
), and of course aesthetically pleasing (bye bye Woodstocks according to my better half even though I wanted a Progress)...and of course, cost. All in all, I think the Heritage is a great fit for our home, and looks nice in place, which is no small matter. I love the soapstone.
- House layout and Install: Detroit, MI - doesn't get absurdly cold. House from 1913, 1600 sq ft with a fairly closed layout. Suffice to say we spend most of our time in living room in the winter. Got the pros to install the liner and make connections because I wanted no part of our 35' chimney on the steep roof. Comes down to a T connection in the fireplace, w/ thimble and block off plate covering the open. Short length of what I think is single wall pipe to the rear of stove.
GoldenFlue insulation liner before chimney cap.
I believe this is called a snout
Rear heat shield, short straight section, block off plate
Finished install (I did the brick work for hearth extension. Original hearth wasn't deep enough)
- Stove operation, catalyst, etc: Stove is in, had a few break-in fires (really got the glass dirty - I need to clean original soot but glass is pretty clean since then). I'm working out systems for loading/starting and maintaining fires. Generally have a good supply of kiln dried cut offs from my millwork shop. Sometimes newspaper, etc to get it going. Its my understanding the addition of a the catalyst is new for this Hearthstone to meet 2020 regs. Per the manual, I build a hot fire and usually can get the catalyst into 'active' range in 20-30 minutes, and have been leaving the air open for 45-1 hour or so to get my bigger splits to get going. Wood right now is almost exclusively ash ~15% MC. I have a small supply of white oak that's still north of 20%, unfortunately. Severely underprepared to have enough dry wood to get through the winter, but have big plans for next season! I have little experience with other stoves, but have no problem loading, watching the catalyst temp, reloading through front or side door, etc. Construction so far seems quite tight.
Because I don't have any way of monitoring stove/flue temps, this is my main gauge for paying attention to how the stove is operating. I've very cautious of overfiring, cracking stones, etc because I don't want any problems, esp in year one. But I would like a better idea how I'm supposed to be monitoring stove temps. As you can see in picture above, there's only a short section of stove pipe before it goes behind the block off plate. Suggestions for how/where to measure? I believe I've had some good fires with the elusive 'secondaries', but I'm not sure what they look like, or how long they are maintained.
- HEAT: That's what it's all about, right? Ok, so definite learning curve here. I anticipated the soapstone taking a while to warm up - and that's very true. Like 2 hours to take the chill off in the morning if I'm starting from scratch. Again I don't have much frame of reference but the soapstone is a very nice radiant heat. It never gets too warm, and really really does radiate for a long time. Afternoon/evenings are quite pleasant, never hot. We have basically not turned on our heat yet, however, it's only been in the 30s/40s - with a few overnight lows in the 20s.
Here's the thing: I want to 'push' it to kick out more heat come true winter, but not sure how to get more heat while monitoring the catalyst temp. It's pretty easy to get it up to the high end of the active range, so I haven't really loaded the stove beyond the morning's big fire. I understand using higher BTU woods would produce more heat (by definition), but I still don't fully understand how to regulate. Cutting the air of course works, but it's a dance to figure out how to keep things burning well. I did successfully load up 1 evening about 10pm, let everything catch, then cut the air and had enough coals to restart at 7am.
Apparently its quite well insulated on the bottom, because this guy goes under here every evening.
Without doing extensive searching, I was wondering if folks have references for videos of what their 'big' fires look like, as well as what a good looking fire that engages the catalyst 'looks like'. Hard for this newbie to figure out what I'm shooting for.
FINALLY settled on the Hearthstone Heritage for a free standing wood stove. For years, I thought I'd prefer an insert - mostly bc I was concerned about our limited floor space in a small living room with small children. But after exhaustive research I determined there are simply no options that would fit in our old coal burning fireplace without extensive and likely impossible masonry work. After settling on a stove, my options were actually somewhat limited b/c of 2020 regs, rear exit that would fit under the lintel, not too big based on own floor space (bye bye Jotuls
), and of course aesthetically pleasing (bye bye Woodstocks according to my better half even though I wanted a Progress)...and of course, cost. All in all, I think the Heritage is a great fit for our home, and looks nice in place, which is no small matter. I love the soapstone.- House layout and Install: Detroit, MI - doesn't get absurdly cold. House from 1913, 1600 sq ft with a fairly closed layout. Suffice to say we spend most of our time in living room in the winter. Got the pros to install the liner and make connections because I wanted no part of our 35' chimney on the steep roof. Comes down to a T connection in the fireplace, w/ thimble and block off plate covering the open. Short length of what I think is single wall pipe to the rear of stove.
- Stove operation, catalyst, etc: Stove is in, had a few break-in fires (really got the glass dirty - I need to clean original soot but glass is pretty clean since then). I'm working out systems for loading/starting and maintaining fires. Generally have a good supply of kiln dried cut offs from my millwork shop. Sometimes newspaper, etc to get it going. Its my understanding the addition of a the catalyst is new for this Hearthstone to meet 2020 regs. Per the manual, I build a hot fire and usually can get the catalyst into 'active' range in 20-30 minutes, and have been leaving the air open for 45-1 hour or so to get my bigger splits to get going. Wood right now is almost exclusively ash ~15% MC. I have a small supply of white oak that's still north of 20%, unfortunately. Severely underprepared to have enough dry wood to get through the winter, but have big plans for next season! I have little experience with other stoves, but have no problem loading, watching the catalyst temp, reloading through front or side door, etc. Construction so far seems quite tight.
- HEAT: That's what it's all about, right? Ok, so definite learning curve here. I anticipated the soapstone taking a while to warm up - and that's very true. Like 2 hours to take the chill off in the morning if I'm starting from scratch. Again I don't have much frame of reference but the soapstone is a very nice radiant heat. It never gets too warm, and really really does radiate for a long time. Afternoon/evenings are quite pleasant, never hot. We have basically not turned on our heat yet, however, it's only been in the 30s/40s - with a few overnight lows in the 20s.
Here's the thing: I want to 'push' it to kick out more heat come true winter, but not sure how to get more heat while monitoring the catalyst temp. It's pretty easy to get it up to the high end of the active range, so I haven't really loaded the stove beyond the morning's big fire. I understand using higher BTU woods would produce more heat (by definition), but I still don't fully understand how to regulate. Cutting the air of course works, but it's a dance to figure out how to keep things burning well. I did successfully load up 1 evening about 10pm, let everything catch, then cut the air and had enough coals to restart at 7am.
Apparently its quite well insulated on the bottom, because this guy goes under here every evening.Without doing extensive searching, I was wondering if folks have references for videos of what their 'big' fires look like, as well as what a good looking fire that engages the catalyst 'looks like'. Hard for this newbie to figure out what I'm shooting for.
