Hello- I'm relatively new to this forum but have learned a great deal reading probably hundreds of posts (thanks to all of you for being so free with your opinions!). I have a few questions and wonder if some of you would be willing to offer some of your sage advice to help me decide on a wood stove make and model that works for our situation.
I've narrowed wood stove options to the Blaze King Princess (classic) because of its long burn times, heat output, its relatively large wood box volume, its by-pass feature, stove pipe size (compatible with existing setup), and because it's pretty simple-looking and features a pretty big window. We like to see the fire and are used to cleaning the glass on our insert multiple/many times during the burning season (though with the BK's long burn times I understand that may not be possible very often).
Here are my questions (with background information about our situation below):
1. From reading this forum, the owner's manual, and the guy in town who wants to sell me the BK, this stove and its catalytic system appear to be very picky as far as things you can burn in it. Most of the things they tell you not to burn we don't burn anyway. But two no-burn items surprised me: paper with color ink and wood with nails. Is that for real?
2. Are stoves with catalytic systems high maintenance? There's so much back and forth in this forum it's hard to tell. We don't mind the idea of vacuuming the cat a couple times in the burning season and replacing it every three or five years or so. If that's all there is to it, no big deal. But I'm reading quite a bit about people's various and meticulous-sounding burning techniques in BK stoves. Is it really that complicated to achieve long burn times once you get used to how it works?
3. If I wanted to go the straightforward wood stove route, is there a simple-looking non-cat wood stove out there with the capability of ~16 hour burn times (assuming the use of decent hardwood)? Or is the cat stove really the best way to get those long burn times?
If these questions are already well-covered by other posts, please feel free to refer me to those links.
Background
We live on the southern Oregon coast where it gets wet and cold in the winter but not AK-style cold. We currently run a Morso 5660 insert pretty much 24/7 to heat our ~2,000 square foot house that features a ~23 foot cathedral ceiling (w/ceiling fan) and a loft . We like the Morso. It kicks out pretty good heat (esp w/fan), the fire always looks very pleasing through the large glass even when closed way down, but it does not cut it as far as burn times go and it's not enough for when it gets really cold for where we live (low 30's/high 20's)(I know, many of you will laugh about conditions we consider "cold"....). The Morso's got a 1.5 sq. ft. firebox and peters out after about 6 hours; maybe 8 hours at best. We knew this when we got it but were not thinking straight about how 6 or 8 hour burn times would fit our schedules- pretty stupid when you consider we've been running wood stoves for years. So I'm really tired of starting fires almost from scratch virtually every morning in the winter (or when really cold, tired of getting up in the middle of the night to feed the fire). We burn well-seasoned fir when we're around to feed the fire because that's what we have in abundance (we harvest from our property every spring). For when we're at work during the day and for overnight burns we use wax myrtle, a really nice long burning wood (and madrone when we can get it).
We want to replace the insert with a clean and simple-looking wood stove (looks are important to us) and have the space for pretty much anything we want (there's no fireplace for the insert- it's sitting in its own Morso zero-clearance insulated metal box waiting for us to build the fireplace surround which isn't going to happen since we want to switch to a free-standing wood stove). We have about 15 feet of straight 6" internal diameter insulated stove pipe and probably about another 6 or 8 feet above our steep-pitch roof. We want to be able to throw "splits" onto burning coals after being out of the house for as long as about 16 hours. We don't mind a little wood smoke in the house from time to time- comes with the wood stove experience. The Morso is pretty smokey early in the burn sequence (could actually use a by-pass), but it's not the end of the world.
Thanks for your help!
I've narrowed wood stove options to the Blaze King Princess (classic) because of its long burn times, heat output, its relatively large wood box volume, its by-pass feature, stove pipe size (compatible with existing setup), and because it's pretty simple-looking and features a pretty big window. We like to see the fire and are used to cleaning the glass on our insert multiple/many times during the burning season (though with the BK's long burn times I understand that may not be possible very often).
Here are my questions (with background information about our situation below):
1. From reading this forum, the owner's manual, and the guy in town who wants to sell me the BK, this stove and its catalytic system appear to be very picky as far as things you can burn in it. Most of the things they tell you not to burn we don't burn anyway. But two no-burn items surprised me: paper with color ink and wood with nails. Is that for real?
2. Are stoves with catalytic systems high maintenance? There's so much back and forth in this forum it's hard to tell. We don't mind the idea of vacuuming the cat a couple times in the burning season and replacing it every three or five years or so. If that's all there is to it, no big deal. But I'm reading quite a bit about people's various and meticulous-sounding burning techniques in BK stoves. Is it really that complicated to achieve long burn times once you get used to how it works?
3. If I wanted to go the straightforward wood stove route, is there a simple-looking non-cat wood stove out there with the capability of ~16 hour burn times (assuming the use of decent hardwood)? Or is the cat stove really the best way to get those long burn times?
If these questions are already well-covered by other posts, please feel free to refer me to those links.
Background
We live on the southern Oregon coast where it gets wet and cold in the winter but not AK-style cold. We currently run a Morso 5660 insert pretty much 24/7 to heat our ~2,000 square foot house that features a ~23 foot cathedral ceiling (w/ceiling fan) and a loft . We like the Morso. It kicks out pretty good heat (esp w/fan), the fire always looks very pleasing through the large glass even when closed way down, but it does not cut it as far as burn times go and it's not enough for when it gets really cold for where we live (low 30's/high 20's)(I know, many of you will laugh about conditions we consider "cold"....). The Morso's got a 1.5 sq. ft. firebox and peters out after about 6 hours; maybe 8 hours at best. We knew this when we got it but were not thinking straight about how 6 or 8 hour burn times would fit our schedules- pretty stupid when you consider we've been running wood stoves for years. So I'm really tired of starting fires almost from scratch virtually every morning in the winter (or when really cold, tired of getting up in the middle of the night to feed the fire). We burn well-seasoned fir when we're around to feed the fire because that's what we have in abundance (we harvest from our property every spring). For when we're at work during the day and for overnight burns we use wax myrtle, a really nice long burning wood (and madrone when we can get it).
We want to replace the insert with a clean and simple-looking wood stove (looks are important to us) and have the space for pretty much anything we want (there's no fireplace for the insert- it's sitting in its own Morso zero-clearance insulated metal box waiting for us to build the fireplace surround which isn't going to happen since we want to switch to a free-standing wood stove). We have about 15 feet of straight 6" internal diameter insulated stove pipe and probably about another 6 or 8 feet above our steep-pitch roof. We want to be able to throw "splits" onto burning coals after being out of the house for as long as about 16 hours. We don't mind a little wood smoke in the house from time to time- comes with the wood stove experience. The Morso is pretty smokey early in the burn sequence (could actually use a by-pass), but it's not the end of the world.
Thanks for your help!
out here last night, with 30-40 knot COLD winds. The stove room (1000 sq ft) is 80 this morning, and the oil burner does not come on. Did I mention the oil burner does NOT come on anymore? 
So that is/was a 13 hour burn, and I had a nice 1 or 2" coal bed across the entire bottom of the stove when I loaded. The stove top was 180, which with the Progress, means it's still CRANKING out the heat. The realy nice thing about the soapstone which I think is under-rated around here, and not talked about enough is, it releases tons of nice even, slow heat over a long period of time. And it does this, for hours after the fire is almost out and down to some small smoldering chunks of coals and ashes. Most stoves will be almost cold at this point, but the soapstone is still releasing the heat it built up 2 hours ago when the fire was still blazing. The downfall to this is, it takes a while (1 to 2 hours) to start getting real heat from the stove when lighting a cold stove. It steals that heat, to be released later at the end. If you don't let the stove get cold (keep reloading), you don't have this issue.
