Choosing between a small and medium firebox

[distisso]

Hello! We're buying our very first wood stove for our cabin - it's 800 sq ft, ceilings are 11-12 feet, one story. We have baseboard heat in the bedrooms and living room, and while we'll mostly be there in the fall (nightly temps just above freezing), we may spend a few winter nights there when the lows can get to -20 F. We won't have water running in the winter, so we just need to heat for comfort.

We've been looking at smaller fireboxes (Regency F1150 and PE Vista), but I'm wondering if that's too small for our cabin. It's not a big space, but the ceilings are higher than average. We don't really understand where the sweet spot is for woodstoves - we think the small stoves won't be enough in winter, but if we're using the stove mostly for extra heat in the fall and spring, will a medium size firebox be overkill? I don't think we'd need raging fires going at that time of year, so I'm wondering if there's any disadvantage to having smaller fires in a medium woodstove (vs a fully stacked, but smaller woodstove)?

Any guidance you can offer would be great - thanks!

 

[begreen]

Go larger, like the 2 cu ft PE Super or 2.3 cu ft Regency 2450. It takes a lot of extra heat to warm up the contents of a cold cabin from say 50º to 70º. Once the place is warmed up, just feed the fire a couple of logs at a time if the temps are in the 40s. In the winter you will be running full loads. Burn thicker splits and turn down the air fairly aggressively to keep the stove from getting too hot.

 

[firefighterjake]

As a male my answer is almost always to go bigger . . .

And in this case, I stand by my answer. You can always build a smaller fire in a large firebox . . . the opposite is not so easy to accomplish. You can control the heat output in the fall by the amount of wood, type of wood and how often you reload the stove.

 

[MagdalenaP]

Always go bigger. I recommend whatever the recommended square foot space is, to go at least another 500sqt more.

 

[nola mike]

As BG says, it takes *a lot* to warm up a place for the weekend. I need to flog my insert to heat the place up (6-7'/hour), and for a day or 2 the temp plummets again very quickly until all the walls, inside of cabinets, floors, etc get heated. After that it isn't so bad. Except at night. There's no way to make up for firebox size on an overnight burn. I get about 4 hours of good heat out of mine, and the house temp will drop 10-12' over the rest of the course of the night.

 

[Todd]

I like my small stove for my small cabin but a few times last winter I left for a few days and when I came back it did take quite a while to bring the place back up from 40 to 70 and kind a wished I had a bigger stove. Wont be a problem this year since I installed a propane wall furnace to help out.

 

[moresnow]

Been using a propane wall mounted heater in a cabin for several years. Works well to jump start the heat. Great way to get the place up to speed.