Choosing stove for small Alaskan home

[ozzy]

Hello all,
I recently discovered this forum and thought I would ask for some help in choosing a woodstove for my house in Fairbanks Alaska.

The house:
1 story
currently 2 rooms ~500sq ft, ceiling fan
may expand to 3 rooms, ~800sq ft

I have heated the last 4 years with a cheap, small Volgelzang box stove (without burning the place to the ground believe it or not)
and it keeps the place plenty warm. Problems are obviously overfiring, lack of control, and short burn times. It also eats wood.

I have oil back-up but would like to try to heat with wood as much as possible. We only have access to birch and spruce.
I can get 3-4 hours out of my current stove if I'm careful, but I was hoping to double that if possible without
cooking us out of the house. I realize that a larger firebox would give me longer burns, but I'm afraid of overheating the space.
I would also like to avoid catalytic stoves unless someone can convince me otherwise.
The local stove guys have recommended everything from the VC Aspen to the quadrafire 2100 or osburn 1600. I recently looked at the
hearthstone Tribute, and thought that might be a good compromise. The firebox is kind of small, but I thought maybe the radiant heat might help.
The brands of stove sold here are somewhat limited: VC, Jotel, hearthstone, osburn, quadrafire.
My general leanings are toward the quad 2100, or tribute. They both cost the same here. The available Jotel's seem a
bit small, VC seem to jump from too small to too big.

Temps do dip to -50F for several weeks each winter and long stretches of -30 to -40F are common. Obviously it's important to be able to keep up at these temps.
My current stove can do it if I feed it enough.
Also, any idea how much I might cut my wood input by upgrading to a new stove? Even birch and spruce are not cheap here ($180-200/cord) and I'd like an idea of payback time.

I really appreciate any help you guys might be able to give and if you need any more particulars, just ask.

Thanks.

 

[Hestia]

Make a list of pros and cons, and you might be surprised that you want a cat stove. I just fired up the first big burn of my first wood stove, and had chosen a catalytic because of the long burn time and less wood used. All the seasoning burns and initial burn, pretty easy. I guess it is what you are used to, however for us we finally narrowed it down, the most important things for us were:

reliability/well made
safety
long burn
ease of use
using less wood

While we will have to replace the cat every 5 years or so, this is offset by the higher efficiency and less wood used. People on this board have said that they use less wood, and I'm looking forward to that.

We decided on a Woodstock Keystone (you would have to have it shipped - Woodstock sells direct - don't know how they do it to Alaska.) Have you checked the ratings? Make sure you do for any stove you consider.

I would also search under "Vermont Castings" on the board, and you will see that there it a lot of talk about them going out of business - also their replacement parts have gone through the roof.

Sorry I'm not being too helpful, but I would recommend a cat stove, especially with the temperatures you get. (Can't imagine going out in -50 to get wood!) Longer burns are good.

Hestia

 

[chad3]

I'll say the opposite of above. Get a mid sized non-cat and you can keep the fires down/not so hot when you want and turn them up when you need. This way you don't have to worry about getting it hot enough to engage the cat etc. Downside may be accululation of creosote but make sure you check the chimney during these types of burns. Small hot fires can still be had as well as loading for overnight (at lower temps).
Just my thoughts.
Chad

 

[BotetourtSteve]

Not sure which Jotuls you saw at a dealer, but they make a full range of cast iron stoves from baby to big daddy (I have the biggie).

That said, I like your thinking on a soapstone, based on your square footage. Most folks refer to soapstone as a more "mellow" heat that might not run you out of that square footage, but still allow you to get a big enough stove to allow for extended burns. To go with catalytic you'll have more maintenance and operator attention required - for that trade-off you will indeed probably use less wood than a non-catalytic, although the percentages are not that great (10-30%).

If you have a reliable dealer or dealers, don't be afraid to ask them what others are doing in the area. While service varies obviously, a good dealer will work with you to find the best match for your situation, and in your case will understand local conditions (wood, temps, wind, etc) better than we probably can.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

I'll say the opposite of above. Get a mid sized non-cat and you can keep the fires down/not so hot when you want and turn them up when you need. This way you don't have to worry about getting it hot enough to engage the cat etc. Downside may be accululation of creosote but make sure you check the chimney during these types of burns. Small hot fires can still be had as well as loading for overnight (at lower temps).
Just my thoughts.
Chad

Chad, perhaps you have never worked with a cat. stove. Your statement above does not make any sense whatsoever. Do you realize that the stove top temperature only has to reach 250 degrees to engage the cat.? That, sir, is not a hot stove!

Now for our Alaskan friend, I too thought about the same as you. A year ago we were looking at new stoves and I was deathly afraid of getting a stove with a cat. Naturally we looked at a lot of stoves without cats. But many years ago we also had looked at the beautiful soapstone stoves that Woodstock puts out so we decided maybe we should look at them again. Egads! They use a cat. in their stoves!

To make a long story short, we finally ended up buying a Woodstock stove. It set in the crate until we installed it in late summer. We built our first fire in September; actually three small fires for curing. Then in October started using it pretty regular and finally 24/7 as it is our only heat source. We were worried it might not produce enough heat once it got below zero, but were happy to find it does indeed give plenty of heat.

Now with the cat. Yes, they need replacing every 5 to 7 years and the cost is $100. Not bad I say. They also need cleaning. Takes less than 5 minutes to do. Now for the good part. We will burn approximately 40% less wood than we have used previously and the stove has kept us warmer though it uses less wood. Another good part is the creosote. There just is none! We put up a new chimney last summer and it still looks new inside. There just is no creosote. We've never even cleaned the cap and it does not need cleaning! Amazing.

One thing I am always amazed with is how this stove can give the heat it does and many times it appears the fire has gone out. I'll get up during the night and look only to see a small area of coals glowing and sometimes can barely see that. Yet when I look at the stove top thermometer (supplied with the stove) it will read from 500-550 degrees. Nice and toasty. And the heat from this stove really is a "softer heat." It is a lot different standing by this stove vs. standing by a cast or steel stove. And when the weather warms some, you can just let it go out and that stone keeps giving you heat.

So, big savings on wood and no creosote problems mean I am a happy camper. Give the folks at Woodstock a call. They will work with you.

 

[ozzy]

I did have some concerns similar to those that Chad mentioned about having to get the stove going to a certain temp to engage the cat. I was under the impression that I might end up overheating the place during the shoulder seasons because the stove would have to be run hotter than necessary in order to engage the cat. Perhaps this is not the case? I obviously have no experience with this type of stove.

Also, does anyone have experience with the Tribute? The firebox is relatively small (1.2ft) but they are claiming up to 7 hours burn time. I know it would be less than that, but with a 5-6 hour burn and 2 hours of additonal radiant heat, I was thinking that might be pretty good. Like I said, I'm only getting 3-4 hours of heat from my stove now. The Tribute is the size that the local dealer recommended and they appear to get longer burns than similarly sized cast stoves. I will look into the Woodstock stoves some too, but it looks like they are a bit bigger and would run be about $1000 more than the hearthstone models I can buy locally. I would need more convincing to overcome that price difference.

Another concern, do these stone stoves take forever to warm a place up? At -40F it might take me an 1 to 1.5 hours to raise the temp in my place from 55 to 70F (oil heater is set at 55F to keep the place somewhat warm) using my current stove.

Thanks for the advice, keep it coming!

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Sounds like you've heard some wild things about these soapstone stoves! It does not take forever to warm your place up. However, if you have no heat and the outdoor temperature is -40 then any stove will take some time to warm up. But it sounds like 55 degrees would be the low end in your home, so it would not take long to warm things up.

Last fall when the heating season began we got up one morning (6:00 am) to a very cold house so I started a fire in the Fireview. I used a couple newspapers (no colored paper though) and 5 or 6 sticks of kindling (soft maple). On top of that I put 3 small maple splits. I believe we engaged the cat. around 40 minutes, which means the stove top was 250 degrees. Now here is where the Woodstock stoves beat the Hearthstones. Once the cat. is engaged, the heat builds fast. It went from 250 up to 450 in a very short time. We then just let the fire go out.

Getting towards dark and expecting freezing temperature we naturallly figured we would have to start a fire again and keep it overnight. However, we had to wait a long time before getting the fire going. Reason? That darned stove was still giving heat! Finally around 9:00 pm we started the stove again. In no time we had it at 250 again and went to bed. The house was really warm in the morning and we just left it because of our experience the day before.

Now for the cold season. When the temperature is below zero I can guarantee you will not get 12 hours between the filling of the firebox. It just will take too much heat to keep that long. However, if you fill the firebox with good seasoned hardwood (we use white ash, elm, cherry and soft maple) you certainly can expect a decent 8 hours heat from the stove. The biggest problem will be learning how to use it so you can get the coals burned down. It took us a while but we figured it out and it is easy.

Comparing the Hearthstone to the Woodstock is what we did when we were looking and we were very close to buying a Hearthstone. However, I am very happy we went with Woodstock. The easy answer is to do some searching and you will not find bad things said about the Woodstock stoves but several people have problems with their Hearthstone. For example, in one recent post the fellow has a problem getting his Hearthstone above 400 degrees. This is not the first I've seen with the Hearthstone and I'll guarantee 400 degrees of heat will not keep your place warm in an Alaskan winter. I'll stop there with the comparison.

As I've stated many times, we are amazed at the reduction in the amount of wood it takes to heat our home this winter and it has been a cold one too. But I'm even more amazed at how clean our chimney is. I also like the fact that we see smoke from the chimney only when we restock the stove. btw, when you restock, you disengage the cat. for 10-15 minutes. We thought this might be a hassle but it hasn't. Seems very normal now. This just evaporates the remaining moisture from the wood.

This brings up another subject, which is the wood. Whatever you do with your stove, remember that the stove is very dependent upon the wood you burn. You must make sure the wood is seasoned and dry. You'll find lots of info on that in this forum too. We recommend seasoning your wood for a year. Here, we cut during the winter (even today we were cutting wood), split in the Spring (Spring not here yet) and then stack. We leave the wood uncovered through the summer and then cover only the top of the pile once the fall rains begin. This makes for a happy stove that will give you plenty of heat.

Good luck to you and don't be afraid to ask more questions. Also, don't be afraid to call Woodstock. I like talking to Mike the best but they are all knowledgeable people. And here is another very good point of talking to them. You will get answers...but you will not get any high pressure salesman trying to dump something on you.

Check your PM's because I'll be sending you one.

 

[chad3]

Denis,
You are correct, I didn't know about the stoves, only that you had to get them up to a certain point prior to engaging them (I THOUGHT (key word) that it was higher than that). If they work at that low a temp and easy to work with then go with it, sounds good. I have a non cat Jotul 500. Great stove for me and the wife has a very easy time using as well.
Chad

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Yes Chad, we were of the same thought before we bought ours. We really fought to stay away from the cat. stoves. Now if I were to buy another, it certainly would be with a cat. They burn so clean and hot, it is worth it. Glad you like your Jotul. I remember back in the 70's when so many were getting into wood heat. Lots of Jotul stoves were sold in northern MI and lots of happy folks too.