I am fairly new to wood burning(1 year) and currently have an Englander NC 30 in my uninsulated fieldstone basement. My house is an old cape 1300sqft in CT. This stove does heat the entire house BUT I’m loading it every 6 hours to keep the house 69-71. The set up is 30” single wall to a 90 elbow to the class a T and the chimney is 20’ Class A. Now my question is.... if I were to replace this stove with the BK Princess will I see a noticeable difference in wood savings and burn times with less reloads? Thank you in advance!
NC 30 to BK Princess?
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This is your problem. You may have longer burn times (if you so desire) but the upstairs will be cooler. Your trying to heat the upstairs, but the majority of the heat is going out through the giant heat sink of a basement.
Highbeam
Minister of Fire
I own both of these stoves. Of course the first thing to do is reduce your heat load by insulating but that wasn't your question.
The noncat nc30 running 6 hour loads is about a medium setting and pretty inefficient, lots of heat is blowing up the exhaust. I run full reloads every three hours through my NC30 and that is even worse! I don't think you would notice the reduction in wood consumption switching to a cat stove until you get your noncat reloads down to three a day or less. That would correspond to a medium setting on a cat stove which is where the advantage starts to really show up as wood savings and long burn times.
What's nice about the BK cat stove in a basement is the thermostat. It automatically adjusts the air to maintain a constant and safe heat output when you aren't there to watch it.
It would be interesting to see the efficiency curves of stoves vs. output level to really this crossover point.
Oh and finally, in a basement with a high load house, I would be getting a wood furnace in there. Those things don't lose much heat to the concrete walls, are pretty cheap, distribute air to the living space above better, and are automated to run safely without user presence.
That’s my problem. I looked into it and majority of what I got out of it is not to due to the fact it needs to breathe. Anything you put near or on it will condensate and eventually turn to mold. Literally stuck between a rock and a hard place!
There are lots of ways to insulate basements without having mold problems. First is do you have a moisture problem. I have insulated the basement in my last 2 houses. One block one stone. Neither had moisture problems so I just put foam directly on the walls with no problems. If you do have moisture problems there are many ways to deal with that. But heating with a stove from an uninsulated basement will always be hard.
weatherguy
Minister of Fire
I prefer basement heating as well but the basement absolutely needs to be insulated.If I put it there I wouldn’t be married anymore so I made a compromise. 
Hello again. Just thought I’d put this out there for anyone who might be interested. I did a home energy audit through Eversource and was able to fully insulate my attic R38 and all of my exterior walls R15 ( 2x4 construction). Both jobs getting half off the installation with rebates from my audit. So I paid out of pocket for the attic which was the lesser of the two and for the walls I used a program called Capital For Change which gives me a loan up to $3000 for insulation with zero interest for three years which is just added on to my utility bill each moth. I am now saving to do my basement as the rebates do not cover basement walls but WOW what a huge improvement it has made. In CT we’ve had pretty mild weather in the mid to high 30’s/low 40’s and I only load the stove once at night before bed and I’m saving a ton of wood. 1st floor low 70’s and 2nd floor 68/70. This is heating from an uninsulated basement. Hard to start due to there is very little coals left but using the bellow for about a minute gets everything going again. Sorry for being long winded but maybe this will help out some other people as it did myself.
jetsam
Minister of Fire
If you have moisture coming through the sides, you need to dig a trench around the foundation outside all the way down to the bottom, clean the masonry, and waterproof it. The most common thing is foundation tar and roofing felt.
If you have water coming up from under the slab, that's a different can of worms.
Either way, no stove will ever do well heating an uninsulated basement. Most of the heat goes to earth. You could get a Princess that burns for 24 hours, and then you'd have a much smaller amount of heat, most of which still goes to earth.
Don't worry, all that shovel work will keep you warm for a while!
If you're not going to insulate the basement, do yourself a favor and switch to a furnace/boiler or an upstairs stove.
Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
I hear that a lot but may not apply in some cases. I must be the exception to that rule. Got a totally underground uninsulated basement on 3 sides and the 20 x 20 room the stove is in goes up into the 90 s on the lowest air setting. rest of the finished basement in the 80s. Heats 2 more floors above. Im thinking if i insulated the walls id be at 100F in the stove room. Could be some insulation value in cinder cement though which could explain it.
I agree with this only because now I can tell a significant difference with my house being insulated. My basement isn’t insulated and it is 24 hours since I last started a fire and it’s 76 in my basement and low 70’s both floors above. A true test will be in the teens for a whole 24 hours to see how the house holds up.
Seasoned Oak
Minister of Fire
It makes a big difference to seal up all air leaks in the basement area. As your whole house acts like a giant chimney pulling in air at the bottom and expelling it at the top.
Oh I can imagine, they did seal and insulate with foam and XPS all along the sill and rim joists. Not that it’s helps a lot but I’d rather have it than nothing. But as the house is now with the new insulation I have no problem leaving the basement as it as my two floors stay right where I like them to be temp wise.
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