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Pete6962

New Member
Dec 7, 2019
1
Western ny
Hi... New guy here and my first post.
I'm a long time wood stove user ( 30 + years) and all of it with a barrel kit type stove to heat just my small detached work shop/garage of about 500 sq ft (insulated). The barrel type stove ( I've gone thru several over the years) have served me well, Since its a worshop I heat, my primary need was always to get the place heated up fast and since i was going to leave it at the end of the day, I didn't really care how long a fire lasted. Didn't need or want it to last overnight.
But last year I noticed that a lot of new wood stoves claim to be very efficient and use way less wood. Hey ,using less wood sounds good to me since I fell, cut and split all my own firewood. But I'm concerned that the new type stoves might not heat the the workshop up very quickly in the morning. Sort of like , the fire lasts forever but takes forever to initially heat things up.
The newer type stoves I saw used terms like high efficiency, air tight and secondary burn.
Any insights, cause I'd rather not pay a lot of $'s for a new stove only to freeze my tail off till late in the day.
Pete
 
I used an NC-30 years ago in our old house. It was amazing how quickly it came up to 700 deg from a. cold start with good dry wood. I don't think any of my cat stoves were able to get there that quickly. If I remember correctly it was around 15-20 minus and that's a good sized stove that is economical, so it should fit the bill for heating up 500sq ft of insulated space. Now I don't now if it will duplicate what your barrel stove does. Thats a question for BrotherBart....
 
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Yeah, you need a cheap, big plate-steel stove that can throw big heat in a hurry. Then have a torpedo heater or whatever else might work, to run for a short period to bring the shop to temp while you wait for the wood stove to get crankin'.
 
Drolet, Englander NC-30, etc.
 
Do you use the workshop every day? If so, a BK might make an awful lot of sense. You aren't going to need a ton of heat to hold 500sq ft in normal conditions. A cat stove could be the ticket. 1 load a day and the place stays warm 24/7.