I’m new to having a wood stove in a house. I used to live in a tepee with an 18” tin airtight stove 20 years ago for a few years and have missed burning wood to keep warm since. It’s hard to put it into words other than I think burning wood to keep warm is good for the soul. I now live in a 1,000 sq ft house (built 1954, 2x4 construction, poor insulation, changing out windows soon) and I’m looking at Hearthstone products. Being a small house I’m limited to space otherwise I would probably also be looking at Woodstock stoves. If their clearances to adjacent wall surfaces were similar to Hearthstone I might have given them a closer look. I’m taking out walls between the kitchen, dining and living rooms and will place the stove so it is very close to centered in the house with the chimney straight up. So being that the Homestead is the cleanest burning at 1.9 grams vs 2.4 – 2.7 for the other stoves, I have to assume that it burns more efficiently. With the box being so narrow I was wondering (I have not been able to see one yet) how well wood can stack inside. Anyone with any experience with this stove, your thoughts would be appreciated. I’m also thinking of the Tribute or the Heritage as the boxes are a better size (not as narrow) and both still have good clearances. The Tribute may be too small but not sure. Rated for 1300 sq ft but??? I know that the Heritage (nice side door loading) is oversize by spec but we get some weather in the winter that hovers around -45 for a few weeks and it would be okay to have a few extra btu’s. I don’t think that I will burn 24/7 all the time but will when it’s cold. I think that with the Homestead being a cleaner burn if comments on stacking wood in the box are positive the Homestead will win. If not maybe the Tribute will be big enough to keep the soul warm, but the Heritage will keep it warmer longer. Thanks for any advice you can give me.
Burning wood .... for the soul
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Welcome. Sounds like if you take out all the walls you won't have any clearance issues (just kidding). Remember that, wherever you do have clearance issues there are some things you can do with wall shielding and pipe shielding and types of pipe to allow reductions in those clearances. Very smart to plan the house modifications around placement of the stove near the center with a straight-up stovepipe/chimney...that's ideal. Again, welcome to the forums! Rick
I would check into a Pacific Energy T5. They are great stoves and the T5 has good reviews. One thing thats important about the T series from Pacific Energy is they have very close clearances on the sides, back and floor. This is because of the cast surrounding the steel fire box. Most of the heat 80% ? comes out the top and front. This means it will be comfortable to sit close to the side of the stove when its putting out. Makes the footprint of the stove not so bad if you can put furniture fairly close to the sides. Good for a small house. I would not get the smaller T4.
Thanks "ReallyHot" but I kinda had my heart set on a soapstone stove. The T-5 looks good and has some good features but it would extend into the room 33.5" vs 24" for the Tribute and 26" for the Homestead and the Heritage. I only have the one wall behind the stove (about 5' long) for actual fire rated clearances the other clearance is just to have more room in front of the stove by having it not stick out so far. Any other ideas for soapstone other than Hearthstone or Woodstock?
What I tried to articulate in my previous post is that with the installation of a properly constructed and installed heat shield behind the stove (they can be quite attractive), you can reduce the required clearance from the combustible wall up to 66%. So, for example, if the stove you're interested in has a manufacturer's required clearance from the back of the stove to a combustible wall of 24", with proper shielding you can place that stove 8" from the same wall (with the shield in between the two). Shielding may open up some options for you. Of course, you'll always require the hearth protection around the sides and in front of the stove. Rick
Hey Rick, thanks for the welcome. The Tribute required clearance is 7" and the Homestead and Heritage are 8"clear from back of stove to the wall if the extra heat shield is installed. I don't know if it would be wise to make this smaller. Access to supply air connections may be necessary depending on the stove connection but maybe I can loose a few inches.
We have a Homestead in our 1500 sq ft ranch and it heats the house nicely. But our climate prob a little milder and we have 2x6 sidewalls. The only down fall is the small firebox. 6-7 hour overnight burns is what I plan on. We our very happy with our Homestead.
Hoopdancer said:
I have a 1,300-ft house and a Tribute, and it's a wonderful stove that keeps most of the house at a decent but not roaring temperature (I have pretty good but not perfect insulation in a 150-plus-year-old farmhouse) even when it gets down -15 in the depths of winter. I feel disloyal saying this, but if you can afford the larger model, go with that. The small firebox in the Tribute is a pain in the neck, and it makes it impossible to get an overnight burn. I think most people here will tell you that very few regret getting a larger stove, many regret settling for the smaller. I got the Tribute before I realized I would want to rely on wood heat entirely, and if I had it to do over again, I would get the larger model. The Tribute will do the job for you, barely, with judicious tending and placement of fans, but life will be easier with the Heritage. The Tribute is really a one-room stove, or a nice toy for a pleasant evening before a fire now and then, not a serious whole-house heater.
You're entirely right to want to stiick to the soapstone, I think, but I'm biased. The heat is gentle and even and warming, and no big hotspots right around the stove. I'm crazy about it, and if I can find the money to upgrade some day, it'll be to a bigger Hearthstone soapstone for sure.
(BTW, word to the wise-- Hearthstone overstates the length of the wood you can fit in the Tribute, and probably also in the other models. So before you cut your firewood, or order it pre-cut, try out some sample pieces in the stove you decide on. Hearthstone says the Tribute takes 16 inches, but 14 is the biggest you can actually put into it. One small 15-inch split can go in diagonally if there's nothing much else in the stove, but that's it. It's beyond me why they don't fix that in their literature since they've surely had the feedback from irritated customers. I came very close to getting caught by that when I first got my stove and just managed to miss ordering up a couple cords of what would have been totally useless 16-inch wood.)
Welcome.
I have completed 1 season with the Homestead and I really like it. In the dead of winter (several weeks of -5 F to 20 F typically) we do not get blasted out in the living room, but rather have a gentle heat of mid 70s. Rest of the house is mid 60s to low 70s. Very good for the soul.
You should be alright with your home set up. I had to add lots of insulation to my house and it made a significant difference. If possible, you may want to get cellulose blown into the walls and cellulose or fiberglass in the attic after you weather strip/replace those windows.
Once the stove gets going, you'll probably see ~2 g/hr smoke. Don't be alarmed when you start the fire when you see more smoke. It takes some time for the secondary burn to kick in and ignite most of the smoke (30-45 minutes sometimes from a cold start).
I get 6-7 hr burns on hardwoods (nearly 8 hrs off of a load of hickory), plus the soapstone continues to radiate beyond that. Good luck.
I have completed 1 season with the Homestead and I really like it. In the dead of winter (several weeks of -5 F to 20 F typically) we do not get blasted out in the living room, but rather have a gentle heat of mid 70s. Rest of the house is mid 60s to low 70s. Very good for the soul.
You should be alright with your home set up. I had to add lots of insulation to my house and it made a significant difference. If possible, you may want to get cellulose blown into the walls and cellulose or fiberglass in the attic after you weather strip/replace those windows.
Once the stove gets going, you'll probably see ~2 g/hr smoke. Don't be alarmed when you start the fire when you see more smoke. It takes some time for the secondary burn to kick in and ignite most of the smoke (30-45 minutes sometimes from a cold start).
I get 6-7 hr burns on hardwoods (nearly 8 hrs off of a load of hickory), plus the soapstone continues to radiate beyond that. Good luck.
Thanks to everyone for your input. Lazeedan and Vic99, I'm curious as to how you stack wood in a fire box that is not very deep. Is it a difficult task? I was concerned about how well one can stack the wood inside. Seems maybe just big enough to have 2 pieces side by side and then other pieces stacked similarly on top taking care to not be up against the glass. If you had to do it over would you have picked the Heritage over the Homestead or was size an issue?
Gyrfalcon appreciate your honest input. It sounds like you would bypass the Homestead for the Heritage. The box size and the side door on the Heritage seem to be advantageous. After reading more posts, going big seems better as you can always build a smaller fire but to have the ability to build a big one when needed. Did you look at the Homestead when you bought the Tribute?
Gyrfalcon appreciate your honest input. It sounds like you would bypass the Homestead for the Heritage. The box size and the side door on the Heritage seem to be advantageous. After reading more posts, going big seems better as you can always build a smaller fire but to have the ability to build a big one when needed. Did you look at the Homestead when you bought the Tribute?
I like my stove. It heats the whole house. My daughter closes her bedroom door at night because she thinks its to hot. My stove is right in the middle of my house and we use a ceiling fan that is maybe 8 feet away to circulate the air. Stacking wood in the firebox for overnight burn can be a chore. I usually get 2 splits on top of 2 splits and push them all to one end and then fill any gaps on the other end. I usually load about 11 pm and go to bed. and at 6 am have a nice bed of coals to start on. Maybe a larger firebox would be nice at night. But we could never go back to running the furnace. This will only be our second year with this stove and we our partial to soapstone.
Hoopdancer said:
Hoopdancer, I had barely begun to think about a woodstove when my next-door neighbors decided to move to Hawaii (!) and I bought the Tribute from them second-hand. As I say, I wasn't thinking at all at the time that I would ever want to use a woodstove for more than occasional fires to make things feel homey, so this lovely little-used stove at about half-price seemed like a no-brainer. It's very good luck for me that it's such a dynamo of a stove that I can get by with it over the winter reasonably well. (I actually prefer a generally cooler house temp than most folks here, I guess.) The only major consistent problem with it for me is the short maximum burn times I can get out of it, which means refilling numerous times a day and a cold stove to deal with in the morning before my brain has been well enough caffeinated.
At some point when the frenzy at the dealers dies down, I'm going to go have a look at the Homestead and Heritage and see what I think. The smaller of the two (is that the Homestead?) looks a little odd in the pix, out of proportion and a pretty narrow firebox, no?
As I said, there are very few people here who would regret getting a bigger stove than they thought they needed, and a lot who wish they'd gone for a size or two up. With the soapstone stoves, too, you won't have much of a problem with it getting too hot and blasting you out of the room.
Hoopdancer,
You mentioned that yours is an older home, and also commented you might need to arrange for air intake. Unless the house has been completely taken down to the studs, inside or outside, and sealed to today's standards, I suspect it will be leaky enough that you will not need an air intake for the stove.
Although we have only burned twice in our Hearthstone Mansfield, we know we will not regret the soapstone stove. I am not an expert, but I read many posts on stove size here before we chose ours. The general consensus seems to be that manufacturers do tend to overstate stove BTU output, so I would lean towards the larger of the stoves you are considering, were I you, esp. given the (likely) leakiness of the house and the temps you get. As you pointed out, a smaller fire can be built in a bigger stove, but not vice-versa.
In our case, we're in a similarly leaky house, subject to a lot of wind and similar temps. Our open area is about 1000 sq feet, and we chose the Mansfield to heat that. If some heat wanders down the adjoining hallway, so much the better, but we aren't expecting that of the Mansfield, despite it's being rated by the mfr for 2500 sq ft. We know that some of our heat will be lost to our second floor. Since we were renovating at the time, we built a thermal mass wall behind the stove. For 4 feet wide, the partition wall is completely non-combustible: concrete blocks filled with concrete covered with cementboard and slate tiles. The idea is that this wall will absorb heat from the stove and radiate it into the bedroom behind. We have yet to test that theory though ;-P
Don't know what prices are like in Calgary, but we were quoted about $2300 for the Heritage (stove alone), if memory serves, here in Eastern On.
Good luck. And yes, heating with wood does seem to include some non-tangible spiritual benefits, at least for us.
You mentioned that yours is an older home, and also commented you might need to arrange for air intake. Unless the house has been completely taken down to the studs, inside or outside, and sealed to today's standards, I suspect it will be leaky enough that you will not need an air intake for the stove.
Although we have only burned twice in our Hearthstone Mansfield, we know we will not regret the soapstone stove. I am not an expert, but I read many posts on stove size here before we chose ours. The general consensus seems to be that manufacturers do tend to overstate stove BTU output, so I would lean towards the larger of the stoves you are considering, were I you, esp. given the (likely) leakiness of the house and the temps you get. As you pointed out, a smaller fire can be built in a bigger stove, but not vice-versa.
In our case, we're in a similarly leaky house, subject to a lot of wind and similar temps. Our open area is about 1000 sq feet, and we chose the Mansfield to heat that. If some heat wanders down the adjoining hallway, so much the better, but we aren't expecting that of the Mansfield, despite it's being rated by the mfr for 2500 sq ft. We know that some of our heat will be lost to our second floor. Since we were renovating at the time, we built a thermal mass wall behind the stove. For 4 feet wide, the partition wall is completely non-combustible: concrete blocks filled with concrete covered with cementboard and slate tiles. The idea is that this wall will absorb heat from the stove and radiate it into the bedroom behind. We have yet to test that theory though ;-P
Don't know what prices are like in Calgary, but we were quoted about $2300 for the Heritage (stove alone), if memory serves, here in Eastern On.
Good luck. And yes, heating with wood does seem to include some non-tangible spiritual benefits, at least for us.
Hi Ourmoneypit, I'm thinking a bigger stove is better but I would suggest to all, especially those in a leaky house to have outside air vented directly to the fire. This will cut down on the amount of cold air that is drawn into the house from all the poorly sealed windows and doors to supply the appitete of the fire. It's hard to heat the perimeter of the house if you have cold air being drawn in from the perimeter to feed the fire, and some fires are hungry 
I first learned about this when living in a tepee. The native Americans (maybe not all) used to have a covered trench that would start outside and end at the fire. I was told that it created a positive air pressure inside and lessened the amount of drafts. -48 is pretty cold when living in a tepee and you want to take advantage of what ever you can. Great idea about the thermo mass. I have a 5' wall behind and was thinking about just putting some natural stone over it but now I'm think what you did is so much better. Just need to check for structural needs. The price of a Heritage here is about $3250 and only one place sells them so I'm kinda hooped. Tribute $1000, Homestead $1800, Phoenix $2000
Gyrfalcon I'm with you on the proportion thing with the Homestead. I think that that's where the Tribute shines but as it maybe too small for my needs I'm leaning towards the Heritage.
I first learned about this when living in a tepee. The native Americans (maybe not all) used to have a covered trench that would start outside and end at the fire. I was told that it created a positive air pressure inside and lessened the amount of drafts. -48 is pretty cold when living in a tepee and you want to take advantage of what ever you can. Great idea about the thermo mass. I have a 5' wall behind and was thinking about just putting some natural stone over it but now I'm think what you did is so much better. Just need to check for structural needs. The price of a Heritage here is about $3250 and only one place sells them so I'm kinda hooped. Tribute $1000, Homestead $1800, Phoenix $2000Gyrfalcon I'm with you on the proportion thing with the Homestead. I think that that's where the Tribute shines but as it maybe too small for my needs I'm leaning towards the Heritage.
Hoopdancer said:
It's an esthetically gorgeous little stove, no question. Think of it this way. You don't want to end up hating this lovely and beautifully functioning item because it can't do what it wasn't intended to do. Bad karma all the way around.
Good luck. Please come back and tell what you ended up with and how you like it.
HD,
Stacking wood in the stove isn't difficult, but it's not ideal. A side door would help. Most of my stacking was East West. I'm going to try N-S this year.
The homestead worked well for my set up because I could easily vent it out of my centrally located chimney. Most people always want a little more, but I'm happy the stove does what it does. No regrets . . . now if my living room and house was bigger, I'd get a Mansfield.
Stacking wood in the stove isn't difficult, but it's not ideal. A side door would help. Most of my stacking was East West. I'm going to try N-S this year.
The homestead worked well for my set up because I could easily vent it out of my centrally located chimney. Most people always want a little more, but I'm happy the stove does what it does. No regrets . . . now if my living room and house was bigger, I'd get a Mansfield.
Hoopdancer said:...cut, snip... but I would suggest to all, especially those in a leaky house to have outside air vented directly to the fire. This will cut down on the amount of cold air that is drawn into the house from all the poorly sealed windows and doors to supply the appitete of the fire. It's hard to heat the perimeter of the house if you have cold air being drawn in from the perimeter to feed the fire, and some fires are hungry
Hmmm....now that's food for thought. Can't argue with your experience! Ouch on those prices. $3100 is what our Mansfield cost us, purchased near Quebec City.
I got the thermal mass idea from passive solar heating concepts and from those massive masonry heaters. If it doesn't work, it only cost us 7 bags of concrete as the blocks were left by the previous owner. Well, the concrete and one very tiring, messy day! Be sure to let us know what you finally decide.
OMP
Curious ....... Is there anyone that thinks that the Hearthstone Heritage is too much stove for a house that is just under 1,000 sq. ft. It's basically going to cost me about $2,000 more than the Tribute or $1200 more than the Homestead but when it's -45 (Celsius or Fahrenheit doesn't matter when it's that cold) I will have the ability to buid a bigger and longer lasting fire. I think that as far as heat goes that the temperature around the stove would be the same just more of it with the larger stoves as the specs on the soapstone temperate cannot be breached. Anyone with any final thoughts before I take the plunge? Money is not a big issue but common sense is.
I don't think the Heritage will be too large for you. It's easier in my opinion to go bigger with soapstone than steel. The heat just feels different, don't get that blast of searing hot metal in your face. My stove is similar in size to the Heritage and I can sit 7' from it while she's going full bore and be comfortable. You will be glad to have that extra capacity when it gets real cold.
gyrfalcon said:
I am new to wood burning stoves but I think that you are right about the bigger the better when it comes to stoves. You can always build a smaller fire but you cannot always build a larger one with the smaller stove.
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