Lowly Heritage has a good day

[Highbeam]

I have shoved 25 or so cords through my heritage since I bought it about 5 years ago. It is not new. The paint is fading and wearing, and the door hinges are getting saggy. Most people would say it looks like new and it probably is in pretty good shape.

The gaskets are original and even the baffle is still hanging in there just fine. I noticed a little stream of fire squirting into the firebox from the secondary air manifold so I took some rutland furnace cement, the brown stuff, and rolled it up like clay. Stuffed it into the seam between the secondary manifold and the rear of the firebox. This seemed to change how it burns.

The stove has always delivered as promised. Overnight burns are easy and my 1700 SF is easily heated when it is into the single digits outside. The stone stoves take a long time to heat up but a long time to cool off. I heat with softwoods and at this time 100% red alder and some willow cut to 16" length and split pretty small. Easy one handers.

For the topic at hand.... I watch the local news at 10 o'clock and then go to bed every night at 10:30. Load the stove at 10, char and then fully closed before 10:30. Last night I didn't get back into the house until 7:00pm. Inside temps were down to 64 and I needed to get a fire going. Normally I level out the ash bed and start a new fire. This time the stove was still warm. I stirred the ash and turned up two healthy handfulls of coals. Pulled them to the front and loaded a full load of splits directly onto them. I had a fire and settled in to watch jeapordy at 7:30. Let me do the math for you. 21 FREAKING hours from a non-cat stone stove loaded with red alder!

I often wish I could try a new stove. I am convinced that a cat stove would be wonderful. Make no mistake though, a non-cat heritage can do the job.

One thing must be clarified. I define burn time as the time from reload to the time that you can no longer reload with regular sized splits and continue burning. Sure, the stove was not 400 degrees after 21 hours but it was still burning.

The photos, are the leftovers from a 21 hour burn and then the reload which fired right up.

 

[BrowningBAR]

The Heritage holds coals well. I've been able to do the same thing several times. The heat production time is what falls short for me. That is more of an issue with my needs than it is with the stove.

 

[Highbeam]

A good ash bed and some ashy alder really seals up the coals and prolongs the burn. My experience with douglas fir, a bigher btu wood, is much lower burn times since the DF makes almost zero ash and the fuel is fully exposed to combustion air and heat.

I actually prefer willow and alder to the evergreens now. The smooth and thin bark is another benefit of the deciduous trees. I happen to have 15 acres of this type of "junk" firewood to exploit.

 

[Todd]

Impressive indeed! Your right, if you have a good layer of ash it can hold coals a long time. I too have found enough coals for reload after 20 hours in my little soapstone stoves.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

That is great to hear Highbeam. That Heritage was one of the stoves on our list the last time we started shopping for a new stove. In fact, it was the first stove we went to look at. We loved the looks of it too. Glad it is doing the job for you but I'm not so sure about that willow wood. lol

 

[weatherguy]

The grass isnt always greener, seems like your stove is working well. I think we all get the urge to want to try another stove, I guess stoves are like women, theres a lot of attractive ones and we'd like to try them all ;-)

 

[Highbeam]

The grass isnt always greener, seems like your stove is working well. I think we all get the urge to want to try another stove, I guess stoves are like women, theres a lot of attractive ones and we'd like to try them all ;-)

Being stove geeks, it is to be expected that we would like to swap stoves every 5 years or so. Sheesh, much cheaper than swapping wives, houses, or cars.

I've burned tons and tons of willow and (western)cottonwood. Once either of these dry they are actually pretty good to burn. Thing is I own a woodlot and don't always get to choose which trees to cut. Sometimes they just fall down or are in a place that makes mowing difficult.

Every stove has faults and I think I know what those are on my heritage. Still, the dang thing looks very nice when cold and the fireshow is really amazing.

 

[mfglickman]

I've always admired the Hearthstone stoves. They are absolutely gorgeous. Nice to see you're happy operating it as well!

 

[begreen]

That's excellent performance. I tried hard to talk the other half into a Mansfield, but she balked. Didn't like the feet. :shut:

 

[Highbeam]

Me either, the manny has the old school hearthstone look to it. Duck feet. Oh and no side door, I've really learned to appreciate the side door. You'll notice in my photos that I stack onto the glass and certainly onto the shelf in front of the glass. Ash accumulates at the glass bottom and would dump out if I tried using that huge front door.

 

[Dairyman]

There's no way I can get my oak to start on that bed of coals, it would be smoldering for hours.

 

[begreen]

That's good to know. I toyed with the idea of the Heritage, but with a corner install we have to go with front or top loading, so it was the Manny or a Fireview. She doesn't like the look of either. Fortunately the T6 has a nice deep bed so I can go quite a while between ash cleanouts.