As my handle says, I'm new here so bear with me. Before posting, I did read the warnings and I'm aware this is probably the most cliche post on here, but I could use the help and the forum's collective expertise.
Here is my situation. I'm a relative novice to wood stoves. Over the past three years I've owned two. I was renting a cabin that had a Morso 3610 (great stove) in the basement and heated the whole house.
Recently, I bought a new home which has an old (25 year old) Jotul model. I didn't pay too much attention to it during the inspection but after moving in quickly realized that it is an old catalytic model but the stove had been overfired and the box were the cat would go is warped. As a result of its age and wear the stove is really inefficient and old burns for about 2 hours before either sputtering out (if the air is turned down at all) or completely eating up all the wood.
The house is a forty year old open-concept post and beam. The main floor is one big room with the master bedroom lofted above. In all, the space is just over 1400 sq feet. The ceilings are fairly high (~20ft).
I've done a lot of research online and gone to see both these stoves, which are available locally. These two stoves are my finalists (I also considered soapstone but surprisingly my lady finds them ugly).
Here are my goals. I would like to heat my home almost exclusively with wood. Our propane kicks in at about 58 degrees - so I would be hoping to keep the house consistently over that temp. Right now, when we go to bed our home is usually at about 72 at 11 PM and by 6 AM the propane is kicking on. However, since we only get about two hours of burntime, the stove is not really burning after about 1:30AM. If we had burn times in the 6-8 hour range we could avoid this for longer.
Here are the pros and cons I've come up with:
Jotul: I'm used to the non-cat system; side loading which my girlfriend prefers for safety, cost (about $750 less than the Blaze King); nice lookin' fire
Blaze King: Longer burn time, might keep us over 58 degrees the whole day(?); likely to eat less wood; cost is higher; window may get blacked out; higher learning curve; higher upkeep costs
I am wondering what people think about the relative merits of these stoves. Also, if I get the Blaze King, how safe or unsafe is it to keep it on low while one is away at work? We both work 9 to 5 so we are out of the home and not attending the fire for that amount of time. Are there important pros or cons I'm not considering?
Here is my situation. I'm a relative novice to wood stoves. Over the past three years I've owned two. I was renting a cabin that had a Morso 3610 (great stove) in the basement and heated the whole house.
Recently, I bought a new home which has an old (25 year old) Jotul model. I didn't pay too much attention to it during the inspection but after moving in quickly realized that it is an old catalytic model but the stove had been overfired and the box were the cat would go is warped. As a result of its age and wear the stove is really inefficient and old burns for about 2 hours before either sputtering out (if the air is turned down at all) or completely eating up all the wood.
The house is a forty year old open-concept post and beam. The main floor is one big room with the master bedroom lofted above. In all, the space is just over 1400 sq feet. The ceilings are fairly high (~20ft).
I've done a lot of research online and gone to see both these stoves, which are available locally. These two stoves are my finalists (I also considered soapstone but surprisingly my lady finds them ugly).
Here are my goals. I would like to heat my home almost exclusively with wood. Our propane kicks in at about 58 degrees - so I would be hoping to keep the house consistently over that temp. Right now, when we go to bed our home is usually at about 72 at 11 PM and by 6 AM the propane is kicking on. However, since we only get about two hours of burntime, the stove is not really burning after about 1:30AM. If we had burn times in the 6-8 hour range we could avoid this for longer.
Here are the pros and cons I've come up with:
Jotul: I'm used to the non-cat system; side loading which my girlfriend prefers for safety, cost (about $750 less than the Blaze King); nice lookin' fire
Blaze King: Longer burn time, might keep us over 58 degrees the whole day(?); likely to eat less wood; cost is higher; window may get blacked out; higher learning curve; higher upkeep costs
I am wondering what people think about the relative merits of these stoves. Also, if I get the Blaze King, how safe or unsafe is it to keep it on low while one is away at work? We both work 9 to 5 so we are out of the home and not attending the fire for that amount of time. Are there important pros or cons I'm not considering?
