General question regarding Cat vs Non Cat and stove brand

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swalgin, have you looked at the Jotul F500 or F600 stoves? They are both side loaders. Also, take a look at the new Hearthstone Mansfield.

I did look at the Jotul but at this time price is an issue. Bad crop year! Not going to attempt the Hearthstone again.
 
Haha, had to be a king or princess. I couldn't get past the looks either, I do like the new Sirocco.

Hm. Never had a side loader but I don't find the front loading too messy.

Sorry, i should have clarified. CSS=cut split stacked. Do you burn the same year as it's split, or are you a few years ahead?

unfortunately we usually burn the year we split. I always want to get ahead but he just doesn't have the time. we do wood when there is time and usually burn all we a have each season.
 
Thanks so much everyone:) I belong to another forum related to vintage campers and it is not nearly as active or friendly! Will wait and see if the dealer calls with his bottom line price tomorrow. I think I have made up my mind to give the DW a try. James my farmer already has. He really liked it.
 
I think I have made up my mind to give the DW a try
Been there done the Dutchwest, it would not be my first choice! Any Hearthstone or Blaze King would be a much better bet! Don't forget, he wants to unload it! Think about it!
Front and side load stoves seem messy when using the front door because the side door is the primary loading door. So, the front door only gets used once a week or so. If you only have a front door, the mess is no issue because it gets used everyday and does not get a chance to build up.
 
Ok, the Equinox didn't reburn like it was suppose to, used almost as much wood to keep the house barely livable. The dealer sent us a damper because he felt that the chim was drawing too much. The damper didn't fix the issues. He came to the house with his own 2 year old seasoned wood. Started it up, loaded and waited (I took him trout fishing while it was burning and we caught two brookies). Got back about 4 hours later, wood was burned up and room was about 85. It was 55 outside.
Sounds like the dealer didn't know how to run a Hearthstone stove.

I'm guessing the stove was run with the air controls wide open.
 
Welcome swalgin. Bessie is a beauty. I'm having a hard time envisioning your chimney set up. So if I'm reading you right it starts out at six inches then transitions to ten inches. The height is seemingly over twenty feet as it runs from the first floor, through the second floor, into the attic and out the roof. Is that accurate?

The six inch is stove pipe. Is the ten inch masonry or stove pipe?

I'm not sure and forgive me if i sound pessimistic, but it sounds like between the chimney and the wood you are going to have a hard time having success with any EPA burner without some further modifications. Please don't take that as a knock. The good news is you've come to the right place for answers, and I could be wrong.
 
Welcome swalgin. Bessie is a beauty. I'm having a hard time envisioning your chimney set up. So if I'm reading you right it starts out at six inches then transitions to ten inches. The height is seemingly over twenty feet as it runs from the first floor, through the second floor, into the attic and out the roof. Is that accurate?

The six inch is stove pipe. Is the ten inch masonry or stove pipe?

I'm not sure and forgive me if i sound pessimistic, but it sounds like between the chimney and the wood you are going to have a hard time having success with any EPA burner without some further modifications. Please don't take that as a knock. The good news is you've come to the right place for answers, and I could be wrong.
I think it might have been the set up that caused problems with the Hearthstone but I'm just guessing. Swalgin, if you get the dutchwest and encounter any problems just post it here, someone will figure it out for you.
 
unfortunately we usually burn the year we split. I always want to get ahead but he just doesn't have the time. we do wood when there is time and usually burn all we a have each season.

I hate to say it but from what I've heard of cat stoves the DW isn't going to burn well at all with that wood. Tube stoves definately prefer dry wood (from experiance) but can work with greener wood if you invest time in getting the technique down (you need to get heat into the box and keep it there). You won't get as good of burn times and will need to keep and eye on creosote buildup, but it's possible. What I've heard of cat stoves, they really hate greener wood.

Unless....do you split the wood pretty small? Might help dry it quicker. That, and stack it in single rows where the wind can really get around it.
 
Sounds like the dealer didn't know how to run a Hearthstone stove.

I'm guessing the stove was run with the air controls wide open.

I'll say this-the dealer we bought the Republic from recommended keeping the air open.
 
I'll say this-the dealer we bought the Republic from recommended keeping the air open.
Just because the sell them doesn't mean they know how to user 'em...
 
Amen, that's for sure. When we bought the Castine the seller had one in their house but had only run it once. The installer also had one and had never burned in it!
 
The big stone stove should've got the job done just fine. Too bad you didn't find us before giving up on that one. :) I'm thinking you have few things working against you as others have said. The old stoves would burn anything, we see posts similar to yours many times during the burning season. "The chimney drafts great, the wood burns fine in my old stove." These new stoves are draft sensitive and wood sensitive, either of those are too far away from what they're expecting and you'll be unhappy with the experience.

It sounds like you had your mind made up on the stove before you came here. No worries, I did the same thing with my first stove. I came here asking about a Lopi Endeavor, no one said not to use it but posted about some other good stoves to check out that I promptly dismissed. I realize now I was just looking for confirmation that I made a great stove choice! :) The stove worked ok but wasn't what I was looking for in the end, I ended up selling that stove after 2 seasons of use and bought my BK. Starting my third season with my BK and have an itch to try something new, not because the BK isn't a performer but just like vehicles I always want something different. ;lol

Once you get the new stove installed if it's giving you any issues please post up, this group is pretty passionate about heating our homes with wood stoves as efficiently as possible.
 
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I hate to say it but from what I've heard of cat stoves the DW isn't going to burn well at all with that wood. Tube stoves definately prefer dry wood (from experiance) but can work with greener wood if you invest time in getting the technique down (you need to get heat into the box and keep it there). You won't get as good of burn times and will need to keep and eye on creosote buildup, but it's possible. What I've heard of cat stoves, they really hate greener wood.

Unless....do you split the wood pretty small? Might help dry it quicker. That, and stack it in single rows where the wind can really get around it.


wood is split pretty small so I think it will be ok. and it is in a west sun room stacked with lots of air movement.
 
Sounds like the dealer didn't know how to run a Hearthstone stove.

I'm guessing the stove was run with the air controls wide open.

He got it going and turned the air controls down just as we had. I read upteen directions in the book, on the Hearthstone site and on this forum. We literally followed directions verbatim and then when that didn't work tried other suggestions. I believe one of two things occurred or a combo: something was broken in it the stove or the draw on the chim is just too strong. I have damper closed on Bessie right now as much as I dare since the wind is whipping and she is still flaming up. Granted there is no gasification process going on since she is 100 years old. House is warm just going through wood too quick
 
Welcome swalgin. Bessie is a beauty. I'm having a hard time envisioning your chimney set up. So if I'm reading you right it starts out at six inches then transitions to ten inches. The height is seemingly over twenty feet as it runs from the first floor, through the second floor, into the attic and out the roof. Is that accurate?

The six inch is stove pipe. Is the ten inch masonry or stove pipe?

I'm not sure and forgive me if i sound pessimistic, but it sounds like between the chimney and the wood you are going to have a hard time having success with any EPA burner without some further modifications. Please don't take that as a knock. The good news is you've come to the right place for answers, and I could be wrong.


If you look at my avatar, the chim is behind the stove. Stove pipe is 6" (equinox was 8 and thimble down to 6 to go into chim). I don't always have the right terminology so I apologize. The chim 10" masonry inside. I am hoping what you say isn't going to be the case with any EPA burner or I am in trouble because this and the pellet stove are our only heat source. During remodeling we eliminated some duct work and the old oil furnace is toast! Plus will NEVER go back to oil!
 
Draft is measurable with a magnehelic manometer. Most stove companies spec out the range their stoves are designed to work in. Did the Equinox dealer actually measure the draft on the stove?
 
The big stone stove should've got the job done just fine. Too bad you didn't find us before giving up on that one. :) I'm thinking you have few things working against you as others have said. The old stoves would burn anything, we see posts similar to yours many times during the burning season. "The chimney drafts great, the wood burns fine in my old stove." These new stoves are draft sensitive and wood sensitive, either of those are too far away from what they're expecting and you'll be unhappy with the experience.

It sounds like you had your mind made up on the stove before you came here. No worries, I did the same thing with my first stove. I came here asking about a Lopi Endeavor, no one said not to use it but posted about some other good stoves to check out that I promptly dismissed. I realize now I was just looking for confirmation that I made a great stove choice! :) The stove worked ok but wasn't what I was looking for in the end, I ended up selling that stove after 2 seasons of use and bought my BK. Starting my third season with my BK and have an itch to try something new, not because the BK isn't a performer but just like vehicles I always want something different. ;lol

Once you get the new stove installed if it's giving you any issues please post up, this group is pretty passionate about heating our homes with wood stoves as efficiently as possible.

Cannot say I had my mind made up but James. Ultimately it is his house (I've live here 19 yrs) and his final decision. He looks to me to get info on computer, so I ask, read and ponder then tell him all about it. I think he is willing to buy it if the guy comes back with a better price. If not we will continue to go look at stoves and/or use Bessie. I was thinking today that it might benefit us to buy like 5-7 face cord from a local guy that has seasoned wood and save our for next season. I am going to make this suggestion if we buy a new EPA stove. Bessie will keep us warm she just is makes us cut lots of wood that obviously doesn't have time to fully season.

I do appreciate ALL the support and advice!
 
Draft is measurable with a magnehelic manometer. Most stove companies spec out the range their stoves are designed to work in. Did the Equinox dealer actually measure the draft on the stove?

BaHHaAAAA.............no he didn't
 
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Perhaps I failed to follow this. Did you say that you put a 6 inch pipe into a 10 inch chimney?

IMO, if you want any stove to operate, especially the new secondary burning ones, then you need to put in a chiney liner that is that same diameter as the chimney pipe.

For more than 30 years I used an old Riteway 37 side burner. It was an eight inch pipe into an 8 inch external SS insulated chimney. It could be difficult to handle in wind since the draft was intense.
But two years ago I moved to within 60 miles as the crow flies from the Canadian Border. I bought a Pacific Energy Summit. It's welded 3/8 inch steel with a suspended firebrick firebox amd a SS secondary burner. I've burned 20% less wood than the previous owner did with his older vermont castings Defiant. The chimney pipe installer came back this year after two years of burning and said that the pipe was clean enough to not need cleaning every year, but every two years. I generally burn about 4 cords a year. The stove has a variable speed fan which goes very far to moving the air across the back and the top.

We love it. It heats our big house pretty well, but we do cover the windows downstairs in the living/din/ktichen where the stove is when the night time temps start getting into the low 20's with temporary foam panels.

And its very easy to handle. Even with the wind blowing ad 25 mph directly over the chimney, at -5F, it still does become uncontrollable. Our stove pipe does go up through the center of the house.
 
I should also say that my first local of wood was something that the dealer put together in a kiln. I doubt that it was the equivalent of more than 3 months seasoning. When your wood is on the low side of seasoning, then you have to take special care to make sure that you get air under the fire. This means that your put two big logs on the side with their end facing you and then keep piling your wood across those pieces. This gets the optimum air into the fire under the wood. This is the case only if you have a ceramic see through window where the air flow goes down the windows to keep it clean and then into the bottom of the fire.

The second thing you have to do is use smaller pieces of wood. The quarter log cuts won't be small enough. This is why I have a Bailey Smart Splitter in my house so that I can cut the pieces to my appropriate dimension for the circumstances. Now its cut for fast heat or slow heat, but then it was cut for burning when the wood was wetter than I'd like.
 
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Cannot say I had my mind made up but James. Ultimately it is his house (I've live here 19 yrs) and his final decision. He looks to me to get info on computer, so I ask, read and ponder then tell him all about it. I think he is willing to buy it if the guy comes back with a better price. If not we will continue to go look at stoves and/or use Bessie. I was thinking today that it might benefit us to buy like 5-7 face cord from a local guy that has seasoned wood and save our for next season. I am going to make this suggestion if we buy a new EPA stove. Bessie will keep us warm she just is makes us cut lots of wood that obviously doesn't have time to fully season.

I do appreciate ALL the support and advice!

I ran my DW into a 8x10 masonry/clay flue for the first 5-6 yrs. of it's burning life here. I then, only because the exterior mortar was deteriorating in the chimney, had a SS liner installed when the chimney was rebuilt. I cannot tell the difference in the two systems, the stove runs the same. This with rear vent into a 32 ft. straight run up completely internal chimney. (no damper)

If you buy the DW, try your existing wood first. The cheapest way to do this would be to buy a moisture meter and test your existing and any wood you would consider buying. My wood is sugar maple, yellow birch testing at 18-22% moisture content with no issues to date.
 
Just because the sell them doesn't mean they know how to user 'em...

Lots of people make'em. Lots of people sell'em. But hearth.com teaches you how to use'em.
 
He got it going and turned the air controls down just as we had. I read upteen directions in the book, on the Hearthstone site and on this forum. We literally followed directions verbatim and then when that didn't work tried other suggestions. I believe one of two things occurred or a combo: something was broken in it the stove or the draw on the chim is just too strong. I have damper closed on Bessie right now as much as I dare since the wind is whipping and she is still flaming up. Granted there is no gasification process going on since she is 100 years old. House is warm just going through wood too quick

Did you have a damper on the Hearthstone? If not, that was your problem. A Hearthstone has the tendency to throw a lot of heat up the pipe. If you have a strong draft, it only makes things worse. This results in low stove temps and short burn times. Throw a damper on that pipe and that Equinox would have killed it.

Burn times on Hearthstones aren't the greatest, but you should have been getting 10-12 hours of stove temps of 250 or more.

When done correctly, the stove top should have been sitting at 600 with rolling secondaries and the air controls closed (or just a hair open).

The interior of stoves aren't too complicated. Not much can go wrong. When it does go wrong, it is usually pretty easy to find.

Here is a thread on using a Hearthstone:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/getting-a-hearthstone-up-to-600°.76166/
 
Did you have a damper on the Hearthstone? If not, that was your problem. A Hearthstone has the tendency to throw a lot of heat up the pipe. If you have a strong draft, it only makes things worse. This results in low stove temps and short burn times. Throw a damper on that pipe and that Equinox would have killed it.

Burn times on Hearthstones aren't the greatest, but you should have been getting 10-12 hours of stove temps of 250 or more.

When done correctly, the stove top should have been sitting at 600 with rolling secondaries and the air controls closed (or just a hair open).

The interior of stoves aren't too complicated. Not much can go wrong. When it does go wrong, it is usually pretty easy to find.

Here is a thread on using a Hearthstone:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/getting-a-hearthstone-up-to-600°.76166/


Yes, the dealer sent us a damper after two months of working with it. At this point I don't ever want to take a 4 thousand dollar risk. We could put in a propane boiler and plumb the main parts of the house for that money! (brother is a plumber). We never got a burn time more that 5 hours. Yes some of that was probably the moisture of wood, however when dealer came with his own seasoned oak the result was the same...no heat and not a longer burn time. The dealer had a Mansfield Hearthstone in his home. Reburn never happened like we saw at the shop before we bought. Generally we were cold all winter. I realize it was radiant heat but I couldn't even get warm standing next to it. Ran the pellet stove all the time and an electric radiator heater up stairs just to keep upstairs at 60.

Bessie usually heats me out upstairs so I have a curtain to block most of heat from traveling up. We use a fan to draw stove heat into living room which is in the stone section of the house just off the dining room where Bessie is. The pellet stove is in living room but it is too freakin loud to run all the time.
 
We will see if the guy calls with better price on the DW. Then go from there.
 
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