I posted about the sadness of retiring my little Century and my brand spanking new T5!
Looks like this winter will mark a decade of warm toes, lol. I suppose a long term review is fitting?
Great stove! The only big maintenance has been repainting the top and new door/window gaskets (once for each). Edit: the flat gasket sealing the baffle has been changed twice!
I’ve cooked and reheated an awful lot on it. I also had a storm collar leak for a bit that it took me a while to fix. I wish that the flue collar was welded on. I suppose that they chose not to for a good reason. But that leak could have caused rust down in a crack that can’t easily be serviced.
The gaskets weren’t bad yet when changed, but they’d been in service for years and I got to wondering if a changeout would improve performance. They did a bit, but it wasn’t overwhelming, lol. The old gaskets must not have been horrible yet!
Every fall I squirt some liquid graphite spray on the latch mechanism and door hinges. Some people like powdered graphite, I make a mess with it and can’t get it where I want it. Spray works better for me. The oil pulls the graphite down into the crack then evaporates.
The chimney stays clean with wildly variable wood. I had one year where my 3 year old oak washed down the river in a spring flood. I got some white pine as it dries fast, and it washed down the river in a fall flood! I wasn’t a happy burner that year! I had to buy compressed sawdust and burn what I could scrounge. The stove processed it all like a champ!
If I could pick one thing I’d improve on the stove it’d be burn time. I’m in a windy area and I think that increases draft/shortens burn time a bit. The stove is a real easy breather. Hopefully the new T5s with the EBT do that. Chimney is 17 foot. 5 feet of singlewall and 12 feet of Class A. I have a key damper in the singlewall that fits really tight and helps when it’s like -20, lol. Everybody has a different definition of burn time so your experience on my stove in my cabin could be different, lol. I don’t really run the stove unless it’s 20-25F out down to well, -20 or so. I’d say normal reload is about every 7 hours. It gets shorter as it gets colder.
But I’m happy with the stove! I’ve got to admit that I sometimes get a grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and id love to try a cat stove in the cabin sometime. But I look at the price of them and if I asked my wife for permission I think she’d rather go on vacation with that money! Maybe in another 10-15 years the temptation will win out!
Looks like this winter will mark a decade of warm toes, lol. I suppose a long term review is fitting?
Great stove! The only big maintenance has been repainting the top and new door/window gaskets (once for each). Edit: the flat gasket sealing the baffle has been changed twice!
I’ve cooked and reheated an awful lot on it. I also had a storm collar leak for a bit that it took me a while to fix. I wish that the flue collar was welded on. I suppose that they chose not to for a good reason. But that leak could have caused rust down in a crack that can’t easily be serviced.
The gaskets weren’t bad yet when changed, but they’d been in service for years and I got to wondering if a changeout would improve performance. They did a bit, but it wasn’t overwhelming, lol. The old gaskets must not have been horrible yet!
Every fall I squirt some liquid graphite spray on the latch mechanism and door hinges. Some people like powdered graphite, I make a mess with it and can’t get it where I want it. Spray works better for me. The oil pulls the graphite down into the crack then evaporates.
The chimney stays clean with wildly variable wood. I had one year where my 3 year old oak washed down the river in a spring flood. I got some white pine as it dries fast, and it washed down the river in a fall flood! I wasn’t a happy burner that year! I had to buy compressed sawdust and burn what I could scrounge. The stove processed it all like a champ!
If I could pick one thing I’d improve on the stove it’d be burn time. I’m in a windy area and I think that increases draft/shortens burn time a bit. The stove is a real easy breather. Hopefully the new T5s with the EBT do that. Chimney is 17 foot. 5 feet of singlewall and 12 feet of Class A. I have a key damper in the singlewall that fits really tight and helps when it’s like -20, lol. Everybody has a different definition of burn time so your experience on my stove in my cabin could be different, lol. I don’t really run the stove unless it’s 20-25F out down to well, -20 or so. I’d say normal reload is about every 7 hours. It gets shorter as it gets colder.
But I’m happy with the stove! I’ve got to admit that I sometimes get a grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and id love to try a cat stove in the cabin sometime. But I look at the price of them and if I asked my wife for permission I think she’d rather go on vacation with that money! Maybe in another 10-15 years the temptation will win out!
