Fahrenheit endurance L50 info

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mkhopper

Member
Hearth Supporter
Oct 1, 2006
17
Eastern Maine
I'm mulling over the purchase of a Endurance L50 or a Harmon pf100. I've read alot of posts about the endurance related to fixing problems, and I know that these forums are used to pool together knowledge to solve such problems. I would like to hear from anyone who knows if these are reliable units.
 
I've been happy with mine. I bought it used and it had three years of use before I picked it up. Never got a good cleaning from the previous owner either.

How big is your house and how well is it insulated? The Harman puts out more BTU and can have a larger convection blower. I'm heating 1700 square feet on the main level and half that much on the finished side of my basement, running on 3 of 5.

As with most things I've found, you don't usually find Internet forums with people singing praise about what they bought. The highest quality product will have some bad reviews and some will give the cheap chit rave reviews. It's all perception of the end user.

All I can say is I wish I'd bought mine earlier. Very good unit, IMHO.
 
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My house is 1900sf and it has a 8" register in the center hallway where I once had an ashley wood stove connected, so I'm mulling adding a hot air unit to use in the shoulder seasons and when my wood boiler runs out of fuel, or adding a pellet boiler to the mix. The pellet boiler is nice but is so much more expensive. I'm tired of dealing with 8 cord of wood per year (would like to go to say 4 cord) and my house is always too hot when it warms up a little.
 
I'd think you'd do OK with the Fahrenheit. It has an 800 CFM blower, but if you're only feeding one register you'll be fine. I had to do a lot of tinkering with my ductwork to get decent airflow, but I'm ducted to the whole house. Sealing and insulating the vintage 1960s steel duct made a big difference for me, as did removing the ducts that terminated in dead ends after remodel work. Those were of my own doing and I knew better at the time, but it was easier to tape off the ends of the pipe and call it good than do it right the first time.

The hot air supply that comes out of the furnace is 10 inch, so you could probably add another few ducts to even out the heat distribution if you wanted.

A Harman owner might chime in, but the PF100 might not like running through a single duct. I've only seen one of those (the guy I bought my Fahrenheit from upgraded to a PF100, but he had a big farmhouse that was probably 4000 square feet) and its a beast of a unit.

I'm not sure what the feed rates are on my unit, but the only time I go higher than level 3 is when I am burning junk pellets. When it gets to single digits I throw a couple splits in the wood eater to help out and keep pellet consumption down.
 
Ducting is an art, But even with my 455CFM blower I am doing fine. Start big and feed a header. from the header step the size down to the registers. Don't forget to seal and insulate the ductwork for less heat loss. If you don't want to heat the area where the stove is at use an air return.

I don't own the 50F, But I am comfortably heating just under 2K sqft with a ducted stove(60K btu). Easily keeps temps in the 72 ::F with about 3 tons per season. The 50F should do fine. Where the PF100 would have an advantage is the blower size. It will turn the air over in the house faster with the larger CFM's.
 
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I'm tired of dealing with 8 cord of wood per year

X2 - While the outside wood boiler kept me in good shape, it got old having to feed the beast. Hubby was away often so I would often have to cut to stove length too. Happier with 40 lb bags and like the warm glow...
 
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