New Member - Free-standing Wood Stove Considerations

[electropower]

Hello everyone. New member here in CT. I have a 1700 sq. ft. house, and I am researching the purchase of a free-standing wood stove for use as supplemental heating. (Oil-fired boiler with hydronic baseboard is my primary heat source.) I plan on using this stove mostly on weekends and occasionally during the week. The stove will be located on the first floor in my family room which is 400 sq. ft. There is a 4 foot french door that leads from the family room into the kitchen. The first floor is about 1100 sq. ft. total. I was thinking of the Pacific Energy Alderlea T4. I like the large window for flame viewing. I am open to other recommendations.
Also, if you have a free-standing wood stove, is there anything you wish you knew before you chose your wood stove? Is there anything you would change if you could?

Thanks for reading.
.

 

[kennyp2339]

Go as big as you can afford, T5 would be almost perfect, you want to take account of burn times 8hrs is pretty standard on a 2.5cu ft + with a layer of wood ash in it (pia always cleaning it out) also pacific energy has a fairly high reputation of making good stoves, same with lopi, jotul, regency, blaze king, quadrafire and drolet / osburn company.

 

[bikedennis]

Woodstock and Kuma are tops and worthy of a close look.

 

[EbS-P]

I like the PE T# series. Good choice. Seems sized about right for the room. Maybe too small for the house but weekends and supplemental usage size is about right. If you want an overnight burn you will be up late and and up early.

What I wish I knew.
0. You can’t buy dry firewood (this is a generalization but holds true 90+% of the time.)
1. Good hardWoods takes two+years after its split and stacked to be dry enough to burn.
2.wish i had a three bay woodshed. One bay holding enough for one winter.
3. It’s kinda addictive. I now have 7 axes and 3 chainsaws.
4. It’s messy. I kinda knew that but didn’t realize how messy.
5 Auber at200 thermometer alarm.
6. Wish my stove was larger but I knew that when I ordered.

 

[GrumpyDad]

I like the PE T# series. Good choice. Seems sized about right for the room. Maybe too small for the house but weekends and supplemental usage size is about right. If you want an overnight burn you will be up late and and up early.

What I wish I knew.
0. You can’t buy dry firewood (this is a generalization but holds true 90+% of the time.)
1. Good hardWoods takes two+years after its split and stacked to be dry enough to burn.
2.wish i had a three bay woodshed. One bay holding enough for one winter.
3. It’s kinda addictive. I now have 7 axes and 3 chainsaws.
4. It’s messy. I kinda knew that but didn’t realize how messy.
5 Auber at200 thermometer alarm.
6. Wish my stove was larger but I knew that when I ordered.

I bought seasoned firewood much to my shock. 7/8ths of a cord , $200. I bought it during the end of summer though, and not alot of people in my area worry about things until they need them, then they go nuts and buy two of them.

 

[Eman85]

Most don't realize the time,work and money involved with burning wood beforehand. Do you have a good reliable yearly source for wood? If you are going to cut and split your own do you have a place to do it the equipment for it and the place to store it? Wood brought in and the ash brought out can be messy is everyone on board with it?

 

[electrathon]

If you want heat from the stove, don’t even consider soapstone. If you want looks over preformance soapstone is very pretty.

 

[GrumpyDad]

Most don't realize the time,work and money involved with burning wood beforehand. Do you have a good reliable yearly source for wood? If you are going to cut and split your own do you have a place to do it the equipment for it and the place to store it? Wood brought in and the ash brought out can be messy is everyone on board with it?

yea I had no idea what I was getting into. I just knew I wanted a wood stove THERE. Then realized there, required a certain set of stoves that limited me to only a few choices. Then out of all the choices I picked the absolute worst stove to buy for someone that only needs it for weekends, doesnt want to fiddle with it too much, needs it to be highly adjustable based on outsides temps...easily, and oh a safe stove that wont catch the stove pipe on fire with less than 20%mc wood with the first half of a face cord, and an install that is straight forward that someone that has installed hundreds of stoves could figure out what parts were needed. Whoops!

 

[stoveliker]

Repeating what has been said above: I wish I'd known that dry wood can't be bought.

So, get a pallet of sawdust bricks and see that as cost needed to start up. AND get (not-dry) wood now. Stack it, split, covered, so you MAY have dry wood next year (depending on species). Certainly likely to have dry wood the year after that.

Get ahead on your wood supply now. Occasional burning, I would get 1-2 cords per season. I.e., if you get 3 years ahead, I'd get 4.5 cords or so, allowing to burn 1.5 cords.

 

[Eman85]

We logged off a piece of property for saw logs, I put an ad and gave away a lot of wood. I got a good laugh out of the people that showed up that were new to wood burning. People with SUV's and no trailer, people with chainsaws that wouldn't run, were dull, and had no idea how to operate and or sharpen. Many weren't much on elbow grease or sweat. Then I got the real wood burners that were "seasoned" in what it took. Most of them were 50yo plus and had been burning most of their lives.

 

[stoveliker]

I hope you took a chair, made a fire, and enjoyed the show!
No better entertainment than dumb people...

Though, if that were my property, I'd tell them to get the h*ll out of there if they showed any absence of necessary skills. If they hurt themselves on your property, your insurance won't like it.

 

[Rearscreen]

If you want heat from the stove, don’t even consider soapstone.

Uh Ok. I guess the abundance of long lasting heat from my Progress is a figment of my imagination.

 

[Ashful]

I'm surprised by all of the whining about work and dirt, from a bunch of supposed wood burners. For me, every part of the process sums into one of the most enjoyable parts of winter.

OP: You're already with an excellent brand, if you're looking at PE. The recommendation to consider Woodstock is another good one, if you want soapstone. I frankly don't understand why anyone would push someone toward Kuma, if they're already looking at PE, but perhaps they own one and they're happy with it. Lots of good brands, with the decision being as much cosmetic as performance, but PE is among the top brands in the non-cat market.

I'm heating a 1000 sq.ft. second floor with one of my 2.9 cu.ft. Blaze King Ashford 30's, and it's about right for keeping the floor it's on, plus the one above it (say ~2000 sq.ft. total) about where we want them, all year round. The floor below (walk-out finished basement rec. room) is cool, mostly 60's but dipping into 50's in January. The fourth floor (two above stove) is also cooler, mid to low 60's, but mostly because we keep the door closed on that staircase, to keep the third floor (immediately above stove) warmer. I just run the hydronic system on those floors to quickly bring them up to temp, when we want to use them.

So, if looking specifically at non-cat stoves, I'd say you'd want to hover around 2.5 - 2.8 cu.ft. for the most efficient setup. Mind you, you can always short-load a larger stove, to a point. If you start looking at cat stoves, then consider 2.5 cubic feet the absolute minimum, with the sky being the limit in some brands.

 

[electropower]

Thanks for your reply.

Go as big as you can afford, T5 would be almost perfect, you want to take account of burn times 8hrs is pretty standard on a 2.5cu ft + with a layer of wood ash in it (pia always cleaning it out) also pacific energy has a fairly high reputation of making good stoves, same with lopi, jotul, regency, blaze king, quadrafire and drolet / osburn company.

 

[electropower]

Most don't realize the time,work and money involved with burning wood beforehand. Do you have a good reliable yearly source for wood? If you are going to cut and split your own do you have a place to do it the equipment for it and the place to store it? Wood brought in and the ash brought out can be messy is everyone on board with it?

Good points. I currently do not have a wood storage solution but would most likely build a small woodshed. Also I have not secured a source for the wood.

 

[electropower]

Thanks for your reply.

With so many choices for stoves I’m trying to avoid “analysis paralysis”. Also I am finding that many stoves are simply not available. I might just wait until spring/summer next year. Hopefully more stoves will be available then.

 

[GrumpyDad]

I'm surprised by all of the whining about work and dirt, from a bunch of supposed wood burners. For me, every part of the process sums into one of the most enjoyable parts of winter.

OP: You're already with an excellent brand, if you're looking at PE. The recommendation to consider Woodstock is another good one, if you want soapstone. I frankly don't understand why anyone would push someone toward Kuma, if they're already looking at PE, but perhaps they own one and they're happy with it. Lots of good brands, with the decision being as much cosmetic as performance, but PE is among the top brands in the non-cat market.

I'm heating a 1000 sq.ft. second floor with one of my 2.9 cu.ft. Blaze King Ashford 30's, and it's about right for keeping the floor it's on, plus the one above it (say ~2000 sq.ft. total) about where we want them, all year round. The floor below (walk-out finished basement rec. room) is cool, mostly 60's but dipping into 50's in January. The fourth floor (two above stove) is also cooler, mid to low 60's, but mostly because we keep the door closed on that staircase, to keep the third floor (immediately above stove) warmer. I just run the hydronic system on those floors to quickly bring them up to temp, when we want to use them.

So, if looking specifically at non-cat stoves, I'd say you'd want to hover around 2.5 - 2.8 cu.ft. for the most efficient setup. Mind you, you can always short-load a larger stove, to a point. If you start looking at cat stoves, then consider 2.5 cubic feet the absolute minimum, with the sky being the limit in some brands.

Work sucks. Dirt sucks. I just want to sit on my butt all day eating processed food from walmart. end sarcasm.

I actually do hate one type of work, it drives me nuts. Maintenance. A couple of days ago the microwave door wouldnt stay closed. So of course I had to figure out how the trim piece / door came off, take it apart so I could see that the spring was just laying at the bottom of the door plastic body. There was a tiny little piece of plastic that the spring loops onto, and then onto the door part that goes inside the microwave and locks it in place (latch). So I drilled a hole through another support piece of plastic below the OG piece, stretch the spring a bit and fixed it. Wow wife says that was quick, and we went 3 days without a microwave and you fixed it that quick. Well yes and no. I had no idea what I was doing, and envisioned having to pull the entire microwave down to fix it. Of course I started with the most logical simple fix first but you know what would happen if I had thought it was going to be a quick fix. Id be back and forth to lowes/HD two or three times.

Now all other work? I love it. I had this one job that I was constantly stressed/worried about. Then I started having odd health issues that no doctors could figure out. I then began to remodel this townhouse that we bought long ago, and every night I would sit there thinking about what my next steps were, what I accomplished, what stuff I needed to buy to complete a job...and since then Ive never slept better. I hit the pillow and can be asleep in 30 seconds if I wish.

Like this stove. Do you have any idea the sense of accomplishment (and worry) I had after I installed this? I replaced an entire foundation of my cabin from the crawlspace UP while people were occupying above me. Yes, totally stupid, but I did it. However other than when I cut the main beam in half with a 14" recip saw blade, I have never been so worried about being 'right' than when I cut that 11" hole through my roof to put in my flashing for my chimney into my ceiling support box. I started to struggle with pipe alignment and pulling apart the telescopic pipe and getting everything fit, then ate some dinner and chugged down a couple of beers, then just put it all together quickly there in. It was done! All the research and learning on here, "I saved XYZ amount of money" was my justification, but that wasn't it....I did it. Myself. And I know it was done well. Worst case, I might need to add another 2' of chimney pipe. I slept great that night.

Hard work is soul cleansing.
Tedious repetitive non rewarding work sucks.

 

[kborndale]

Good points. I currently do not have a wood storage solution but would most likely build a small woodshed. Also I have not secured a source for the wood.

Get your wood first, dry wood is the #1 most important thing when it comes to heating with wood and hardwoods take at least a year to dry. Don't believe the wood seller when they tell you the wood is dry because it isn't. Buy it now and you will be set for next winter. Lots of wood dealers advertise on craigslist.

 

[Ashful]

Since OP is in CT, see if you can buy ash now, which will be ready to burn by next fall. Avoid oak and locust, these are great woods, but will take 2-3 full summers to dry sufficiently for burning.

If you’re sure you’re going to be doing this wood heat thing for many years, you wouldn’t be making a mistake in just buying 8-10 cords this year, as you could sort the ash for burning next year, and the rest for years 2 and 3. Always recommended to have 3 years worth split and stacked, as some woods do take that long, so it’s ready when you need it.

 

[Rearscreen]

Check your mail inbox, upper right on screen.

 

[begreen]

I plan on using this stove mostly on weekends and occasionally during the week. The stove will be located on the first floor in my family room which is 400 sq. ft.

Based on your requirements, the T4 is a good choice. If you are thinking that over time you might want to heat more frequently with wood, then going up to the T5 would work, as long as there is a good method for circulating the heat out of this room. Otherwise, it could get quite warm in there.

 

[electropower]

Thanks again everyone for your replies. I appreciate the wisdom. Lots of great information.

 

[1kzwoman]

I own a TL 200 Harman Exception free standing wood stove. I wish I had found this forum and fine folks here before I purchased. It’s a downdraft stove that was a learning experience. Wouldn’t recommend or purchase one again.
Properly dry and season and cover your CSS wood before you purchase any wood stove.
Ask for help with issues you’re having

 

[tjohnson]

With so many choices for stoves I’m trying to avoid “analysis paralysis”. Also I am finding that many stoves are simply not available. I might just wait until spring/summer next year. Hopefully more stoves will be available then.

That was me earlier this year. But it all paid off. The Lopi Eveergreen sounds like it would fit your bill perfectly, and it’s the only non-cat stove that qualifies for the 26% tax credit (this includes all chimney materials + installation fee). A true unicorn.

 

[begreen]

That was me earlier this year. But it all paid off. The Lopi Eveergreen sounds like it would fit your bill perfectly, and it’s the only non-cat stove that qualifies for the 26% tax credit (this includes all chimney materials + installation fee). A true unicorn.

Morso has some non-cats that qualify. The large Pleasant Hearth (WSL-2200) made the list along with the VC Aspen C3.