Brand New Bosca 500 Classic Up and Running

[Snowmobileaddict]

I live in SE WI and just finished the basement of our 1979 ranch home this summer. Not wanting to go through the expense of adding a zone to our existing natural gas forced air furnace, we elected to go with a free standing pellet unit. We've had a wood furnace for our outbuilding for several years and have a natural fireplace in our family room, so the idea of burning wood in a neater, cleaner, automated way appealed to us.

In December of 2011 we found a hearth store in Big Bend, Wi going out of business and selling their remaining new inventory at DEEP discounts. We decided on the Bosca 500 Classic freestanding pellet unit. Fast forward to today, our 700 sq foot basement project is complete and the Bosca is up and running now on its own programable thermostat.

So far we have only burned about 1.5 bags just to get a feel for how the stove operates at different heat levels etc. I couldn't be happier so far. Its a quiet machine, has a nice "mission style" look to it, and the hopper holds an entire bag and then some. I am using a fresh air kit and 3" Selkirk VP pipe (flue adapter, cleanout tee, 5' length, elbow, 3' length and termination cap). I did take extra care in advance to seal most every seam I could on the pellet pipe with ultra high temp silicone as well as high temp flue-rated foil tape. No smoke leaks for us!

I am enclosing couple of photos below of our setup. I know that there aren't too man reviews on Bosca units on the web so I thought I take the time to describe ours. I'm also, happy to learn that in the last year or so USSC has acquired the distribution rights for these stoves. That will be a plus when it comes time to buy any replacement parts. I did take the time to look at the internals before putting iit into service, taking care to write down generic industry-source replacement parts like igniters and snap switches. FYI, the igniter on this stove is readily available on the web for under $20 (TEMPCO HDC00317)

Although these units are fabricaetd in Chile, all the electronics are common to popular stoves sold all over the USA. We also decided to go with a KidCo Hearthgate Model G3100 to keep our 20 month old daughter away from any hot surfaces. We also have our second daughter due next month, so well need these safety measures for a couple of years. The gate works great and is very adaptable to different stove or fireplace layouts.

On my to do list for now is to figure out a decent brand of pellet to use in this stove. There arent too many brand to choose from where we live. We are pretty much limited to big box varieties. Well see how it goes though. I have read that this stove is not too picky about the type of pelelts you feed it.

 

[smoke show]

Hello and welcome from a fellow Wisconsinite.

Nice clean looking install!

 

[kykel]

Looks nice. Thats some heavy duty fresh air kit. Enjoy the heat.

 

[Snowmobileaddict]

Looks nice. Thats some heavy duty fresh air kit. Enjoy the heat.

I know, the 2" steel pipe is overkill right, but I was just following the directions to a "T". They said that it had to be metal pipe, not plastic. I thought the corrugated flex piping for fresh air looked kind of lame so thats how we ended up with what we did. Oh well, at least its overbuilt and not underbuilt.

 

[DexterDay]

Looks nice. Thats some heavy duty fresh air kit. Enjoy the heat.

Yep... Welcome to the Forums.

That OAK is very Heavy Duty! I thought you said this was a basement? Resembles nothing like a basement in this house! LOL

Seriously though, does the OAK go up the interior finished wall of the basement? Or is this a daylight basement?

 

[Snowmobileaddict]

Yep... Welcome to the Forums.

That OAK is very Heavy Duty! I thought you said this was a basement? Resembles nothing like a basement in this house! LOL

Seriously though, does the OAK go up the interior finished wall of the basement? Or is this a daylight basement?

The OAK goes up the wall cavity and out through the rim joist just above the top course of cinder block . We do not have a walkout. This side of our house happens to have nearly a 4' exposure (see photo below). This helped out big time when we had to hand dig the escape well for the bedroom egress window. Instead of the usal deep hole, we only had to go down about 2 feet to get meet the necessary max sill height for fire code.

The stove exhaust and intakes are not in the photo below but they do exit the cinderblock appx midway along the pictured wall between the 2 basement windows.

Pre-hookup photo, no shortage of kiddie toys!

 

[DexterDay]

Damn..... Nice basement.

That OAK is heavy duty. Very nice. No shortcuts. You should be proud