Not long winded at all. Honestly I'm going to be rereading everything you said here a few times over. I appreciate EVERYTHING you mentioned in this forum. Right now the Matrix (or inspire) is my first choice however I'm going to look up the other units you mentioned.
The only thing that concerns me about what you shared is the draft. I had not considered this at all. This will be my first insert and im excited about it but also learning a ton from this forum. My insert won't be my primary source of heat but if I spend this kind of money I want to make sure it works as intended. I only know about overfiring due to reading about it and honestly never knew that was a thing. How do you know if something is overfiring? I mean, don't fires look similar from one another? I want to make sure I know what to keep my eye out for, regardless of the unit I decide on.
My home is a 2 story + basement. All three levels are finished and used. I have a fireplace in the basement (never gets used) and one on the main floor. Total square feet is a little over 3,000. We just moved here over the summer and this is our first wood fireplace. We have fallen in love with using our fireplace compared to our old gas fireplace. But I feel the heat going right through our chimney when we make a fire every night. Literally the entire house gets cooler because its sucking the warm air out even though its so relaxing. I found this unit online and although it won't be the same as an open fireplace its likely the closest we are going to get to it while being more conscientious of energy.
Last question I have for you...for now. How long do you get from one load, and how many splits of wood do you consider a load? My father in law is holding us back on purchasing one because he's not convinced it will do much better than what we currently have. He's stuck on the idea of how long they burn for. I know it says up to 8 hours but thats likely just advertisement. Whats your take on how long it last per load?
Now I have to apologize for being long winded. Im just excited to have you write me back as this subject is so fun to learn about. I cant wait to finally make the decision and sit back with the fire warming my home.
If you put the stove in the basement you will have a tall chimney, likely very close to my 36', if you put the stove on the main floor I believe your draft will be more manageable as your chimney should be in the 25' range, a flue damper may still be required though.
Overfiring is possible with most setups, but especially on tall chimney's, the problem is the tall chimney provides a strong draft and pulls lots of air through the stove, eventually this becomes a run-a-way process. Draft is dependent on 2 things, the height of the chimney and the temperature of the flue gases, an increase in height, temperature or both increases draft. In an overfiring situation as the chimney gets hotter draft becomes stronger, as the draft becomes stronger it pulls more air through the stove, increasing stove and flue temps, increasing draft and so on. Even with the stove turned all the way down the stove is burning very violently. If the overfire is bad enough the stove can overheat and so can the chimney, if the chimney has enough creosote there is a risk of a chimney fire. The best way to tell is by temperature, a stove top thermometer, flue probe thermometer, or digital flue probe thermometer. Ideally you run stove top and flue, but the Matrix and Inspire stoves don't really have a space to allow a stove top thermometer to be added, so I run a flue probe. 1000F is max you should see on a flue probe, but realistically I try to keep mine below 700F at all times.
On a few occasions I've had an overfire, all before my flue damper was installed, the internal stove pipe temps exceeded 800F and the stove couldn't be slowed until the fuel began to get used up. On one occasion I had an overfire hot enough to turn the center of the stove top a very dull red in a pitch black dark room, with flue temps of almost 1000F, this is when I decided to install the flue damper. The flue damper slows the flow of flue gases from the stove, essentially limiting draft, now with the flue damper closed and stove damper closed I have to load a full firebox of wood on a hot bed of coals to hit 650F flue temps.
One thing to consider is how much heat you want from the stove, I have 2100sqft total with R22 walls and r50 roof and my Matrix is on the small side to solely heat the house on the coldest winter days, but works fine the majority of the time. I do get colder temps than Minnesota, but really not by that much. If you want supplemental heat it will work fine, and if tended regularly it could get you through an outage of heat in the winter depending on your houses air sealing and insulation.
Comparing this stove to an open fireplace really isn't fair. As you've noticed a fireplace can either be a poor choice for heat, or downright suck the heat from the house right up the chimney. You don't get the crackle from the fire, but at the benefit of not having smoke or sparks entering the living space. A properly operated modern stove is a very effective heater, and most operate in the mid 70's for percentage efficiency. I really can't state that enough, every house I've ever lived in has had a wood stove, and every one of them could heat the house in the depths of winter, albeit with the rooms furthest from the stove being significantly cooler than the room the stove is in. Unfortunately you FIL seems misinformed on this topic, a good fireplace will turn 15% of the energy of the wood into heating the room, even a poor wood stove manages to turn 70% of the woods energy into heat, a very substantial difference.
Ah. now for the ever debatable burn times. I can get 10 hr burn times with mine on a full load (I'll get to that next), by that I mean I load my stove at 10pm and at 8am the next morning I have just enough embers left in the coals to get the next fire going. By simply placing a couple pieces of birch bark on the embers with kindling or splits on top closing the door and opening the damper fully I have another fire. Realistically with a full load by the 5hr mark the majority of the heat has been released from the wood and the stove is cooling down, with just coals remaining. This is the nature of the beast, a non-catalytic stove runs in cyclic operation like this, heating up and then cooling down. Once you get good at running a stove you learn to use these cycles to your advantage, lighting a fire in the morning to take the chill from the house, and letting its output fade as outside temps warm up. Lighting again in the evening to heat for the night.
For a full load I don't really count splits, mine aren't all the same size, sometimes I get in 12 pieces sometimes only 6. A full firebox to me is loaded bottom to top about 1-2" below the bottom of the secondary tubes. It's got a 2.4 cuft firebox, so realistically about 2cuft of wood at a time. The firebox doesn't have to be loaded full though, it does run shorter burns quite well on smaller loads of wood, I do find though that 3 smallish splits is really the minimum that should be burnt at a time to ensure a clean burn.
One thing I should also mention is this stove has a shorter yet wider firebox than most, when loading in the North-South orientation 16" is the max length, but 15" is more ideal, in the East-West orientation you can get up to 20" pieces.
If you have any more questions just ask. Keep reading though there is always more to learn, I find that all the time. Sometimes it's intimidating, especially on a site like this with so many knowledgeable members, but your off to a great start, doing as much research as you can before spending a dime is the best way to ensure you get it right the first time.
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