Baby bear vs momma bear..

[Jason721]

Hello everyone... here lately ive been considering installing a fisher wood stove. I currently have a nc13 and i do not like it one bit...
I have a baby bear wood stove in my pole barn i have never used... a guy gave it to me a couple of years ago.. i restored it and decided to hang on to it. I heat with a seria in the pole parn.
As far as my house. Its 1100 sq ft. Thats counting a half loft.. its a very open floor plan. Easy to heat.
My question... would the baby bear do the trick.. what kind of burn time would i get on seasoned wood or would i be better off going with a momma bear

 

[coaly]

Mama Bear.
The fuel load is more of what you need as well as BTU. Baby Bear is OK up to 1000, but only with a 8 foot ceiling. You won't have much of a fire in the morning, if at all with the Baby Bear trying to heat that much area. The chimney also becomes more critical with a smaller stove. Allowing the exhaust gasses to expand in a larger flue can be compensated more easily with a larger stove. The small stoves then need to allow so much heat up, they don't have enough heat to radiate into the area they are heating. So make sure the chimney is matched to the stove you're burning.

Why don't you like the NC13? Is it connected to a proper chimney for the stove? I just installed one of these that was new, unfired in place of an older stove. I knew it should have an insulated 6 inch liner to the top, but that wasn't in their budget, so it is only installed with a stub into the first flue tile with block off plate. So far so good and he's happy with it. Cleaning is going to be a pain and he knows to line it fully in time. I personally don't like the smaller firebox. Loading across is not friendly to me, since deep narrow stoves simply fit firewood shape better. Even the Baby Bear fits more wood, more easily with no chance of falling out. Depending on your chimney, baffle the Mama Bear.

 

[Jason721]

My chimney starts with a single wall black stove pipe straight up to a triple wall SS class A. I installed it about 4 years ago.

My issue with the nc 13... I can barely get a 3 hour burn time.... from advice from others it could be that my splits are to small....
I don't like the lack of control... it's either blazing or blazing.... I do understand i could just load it with a lighter load which enturn leads to.... hardly any burn time and plus it seems i always have to babysit the thing....
I wanna be able to control/regulate the heat for a bit longer burn..
My first epa stove was a century s244... I still own and use it in a tiny house i built for camping... it actually does great and most of the time i can get 3-3 1/2 hours out of it... that lead me to upgrade to the nc 13 that I'm not very impressed with.

 

[coaly]

How tall is the stainless chimney? Too much draft creating too much air entering the secondary tubes? It would be nice if all manufacturers gave the required water column pressure needed at stove collar.

Your chimney starts at the stainless triple wall. The black is connector pipe that actually takes away from the draft produced by the chimney.

Did you try making the air intake inlet smaller on the stove bottom? I would experiment making it smaller to see if it can be slowed down without losing secondary combustion. I'll have to ask the people I installed this for if they feel it is controllable. I was concerned they wouldn't have enough draft. If theirs is just right with an 8 X 8 masonry chimney, yours would certainly be too much. I know the installation instructions call for what you have. But height could be making yours too much. Did you ever try a flue damper to slow it down? You would need to do that with the Mama Bear as well. The damper slows velocity of rising gasses, decreasing net draft.

My Mama Bear always had a good bed of coals after 8 hours after installing a baffle. With that as our only heat source, a shorter duration fire like you're experiencing wouldn't cut it.

 

[Jason721]

My chimney is 6" 14' tall from the stove top. No key damper in pipe. My house does sit on a hill and the wind coming out of the west does blow on it most of the time. Don't know if that would cause a strong draft?
The 13 has one intake in the rear for the air...no holes in front of the legs.
I have put foil over the rear vent and poked holes in it. It did seem to help some but wasn't sure if I should leave it.

 

[coaly]

The reason it helped is because you made the square inches of intake opening smaller for atmospheric pressure to work with.

Hot exhaust gasses lighter than outside air rise in the chimney creating a low pressure area in pipe and stove. This allows atmospheric air pressure to PUSH into the stove. With door cracked open it gives the atmosphere lots of square inch area to push in. With door latched, the only opening it has to push in is the intake tube up the back connected to all the holes in the burner tube pipes. So the stronger the draft, the more air rushes in. Slowing the draft with pipe damper slows the air going in because the pressure in stove isn’t as low. This allows you to adjust it for changing air pressure. When a low air pressure area moves over you, it can be open more to create more draft since the stove doesn’t have much pressure pushing air in. A high pressure day needs to be closed more slowing draft. Closing off intake gives it the right amount of air, but isn’t easily adjustable like a damper within easy reach.

 

[Jason721]

Thanks for the info coaly.. i managed to find a momma bear for sale a couple of hours drive from me. Will be going to take a look at it this week...