Advice on stove selection

[noonsun]

Hello - looking for advice please.

We are building a new pretty high efficiency home in Vermont. Home will be 2500 sqft, heated with heat pumps. We have always had wood stoves and relied on them heavily for heat all winter. The builder is suggesting a Morso 7110b and says we will just want it for ambiance. I am leaning toward a Blaze King Ashford 20.2 which will allow for overnight coals and longer burn times. Curious on others’ thoughts. Thanks.

 

[begreen]

The 7110b is a tiny stove. I think the Blaze King will be more practical in VT if the room where the stove goes is large and central. How open is the stove room to the rest of the floor? How often does the power go out?

 

[DuaeGuttae]

We have a Blaze King Sirocco 30.2 in the downstairs of our new construction, well insulated and air-sealed home in Virginia. The home is about 2,700 square feet split over two floors with the larger downstairs having a more open floor plan. It serves us well burning on low most of the time.

We haven't been using it too much this spring since the weather has been swinging pretty wildly. We had three days of temperatures of ninety-nine and one hundred earlier this week, but it was cold enough on Saturday morning that my husband broke down and built a small fire. We just burned it on high and let it burn out.

We like the turn-down capability of the Blaze King and appreciate the larger firebox that allows us to use the irregular wood pieces that we get from cleaning up the property.

I'm not sure how much experience your builder has with woodstoves, but if your goal is true heating with coals left over in the morning for restarts, a Blaze King should serve you well. You just want to make sure that your install will support the chimney requirements as it's important to have good draft for these very efficient stoves.

 

[noonsun]

Thanks for your comments. The house is very open concept on the first floor where the stove is located. We typically lose power a couple times a winter and want the stove to serve as backup when we do. I am leaning heavily towards the BK.

 

[begreen]

In that case I would definitely recommend the BK. If the outages are longer than a few hours, then consider the larger 30 model. It will burn at about the same low rate, but with a larger fuel tank = longer burn times. If it gets too warm, open a window a bit.

Note that modern stoves really need fully seasoned wood to perform well. Stock up now.

 

[Rearscreen]

Take a ride over the border to Lebanon NH to Woodstock. You may like what you see. No tax if you back your truck up to the factory.

 

[EbS-P]

We are building a new pretty high efficiency home in Vermont

You need a manual J heating load calculation. “Pretty high efficiency” means different things to different people. What is the blower door test number you are shooting for? Outside air kit is probably a requirement.

BK Ashford 30 is my choice!

 

[Ryan_C]

Even in a very efficient house, a Blaze King turned down can still provide ambiance, but a small ambiance stove can't magically become an overnight heater when you need it. OAK - I'd install it while the house is being built. It's cheap compared to trying to add it later. Especially if you're thinking BK, and I assume there'll be kitchen exhausts, bath fans, etc.

 

[stovelark]

If house is fairly open, agree with all here, get a bigger stove. While the 7110 is a nice looking, has a good rep, its not enough of heater to do what you are asking. A larger BK, Hearthstone, or Woodstock will be a great investment, look great and most importantly, keep you warm when/if needed. I hope you have your wood ready, all of these units need good dry seasoned wood. Congrats on the new house too.

 

[EbS-P]

While the 7110 is a nice looking, has a good rep, its not enough of heater to do what you are asking.

But if you want a pretty room heater with flames it’s hard to beat.

 

[stovelark]

EbS- Agreed, very attractive stove. If memory serves, it had the Royal insignia affixed to one of its sides too? I think it punched above it weight in heat output as well, but was a smaller firebox... can't remember the model, but the large Morso with a side door, that was a heating beast.

 

[EbS-P]

EbS- Agreed, very attractive stove. If memory serves, it had the Royal insignia affixed to one of its sides too? I think it punched above it weight in heat output as well, but was a smaller firebox... can't remember the model, but the large Morso with a side door, that was a heating beast.

Use case matters. If I had a really high efficiency home I wouldn’t want to be burning 2+ cords a year. Let the heatpumps do theirs thing and burn a fire any evening I wanted to. Emergency heat is another matter.

 

[begreen]

The Morso 7110 is a cutie, but with a small.83 cu ft stove that has a more like .5 cu ft usable firebox taking 2-3 small splits to fill. It's a room heater, not a large, open-space heater. It could suffice for ambience burning though it might look a bit tiny. However, in an extended outage, I think it would prove anemic. This is especially important if the house has cathedral ceilings that boost the cubic footage heated and/or a lot of large windows.

 

[dznam]

EbS- Agreed, very attractive stove. If memory serves, it had the Royal insignia affixed to one of its sides too? I think it punched above it weight in heat output as well, but was a smaller firebox... can't remember the model, but the large Morso with a side door, that was a heating beast.

That large stove you refer to would be the Morso 3640. Its twin, the 3610, is the same stove minus the side loading door. We have a 3640 at camp and it is indeed a heating beast when the air is opened up but the heat output can be (perhaps surprisingly) fine tuned to allow for a low or moderate burn as well. The casting quality of the stove puts Jotul to shame.

 

[stovelark]

Well, Jotul has done pretty good for themselves- since 1853... You're right too about the 3610, always liked that stove. What I experienced was selling them both, a lot of Morso purchasers were prior Morso owners, they were loyal to the brand. Too bad that stove was discontinued, I do believe that would have been a good choice for this OP. Take care all.

 

[mycelianhollow]

Just to offer another relevant data point:

I energy-retrofitted a 1990s-housing-boom wood frame house that had vinyl siding, to beef up insulation (R60 in the attic, I think? and maybe R30-40 on the sides) and air sealing. We got triple paned windows and energy efficient doors. We got a cold-friendly Mitsubishi heat pump that works at 100% down to at least 0 Fahrenheit if not lower (not remembering off top of my head). We didn't have the budget to include the basement in the same project, so we're slowly DIY-ing the insulation and air sealing down there and didn't have the benefit of an efficient basement this past winter.

This past winter was a rough one for us in MD (that's of course relative, compared to VT; this winter was similar to winters back in my hometown of Chicago). But for most of the deep of winter, we decided to try running completely on a tiny Vermont Castings Aspen C3 (for the record, I'm not recommending a VC). Evenings we would get indoor temps up to 78-80 degrees before bed, and wake up to 66-68 degrees — when it would be as cold as like 10-15 degrees outside. I would set the heat pump to kick in at 66 or 67 and could see it kicked on some of the coldest mornings at like 4 or 5am. 95% of the time we had sufficient coals to easily restart in the morning with some kindling. There were a couple days that I was wondering about what if we had a Blaze King instead, but I think that was primarily cuz our (concrete) basement isn't efficient yet. Indoor basement temps were in the 40s so it was just sucking the heat up. I'm hoping to finish our basement retrofit this summer so that we can see how the house does this coming winter.