Figured I'd weigh in now that I have about a half-season of heating experience under my belt.
The Stove: Perfect size for my <1900 sq ft L-shaped ranch. With (1) pedestal fan to blow the air out of the "L" where the stove is and (2) ceiling fans, the hallway and back bedrooms have so far attained 70 deg and 66 deg respectively, on the coldest days so far. My worries about the front room, hallway, and bedrooms being deep-freeze lockers were not realized, the house is in fact much toastier than it ever was using the oil heat.
ALSO, the basement, where my wife does laundry, is not as cold as I feared, I think what little heat travels down from the heated floors above, plus the boiler running occasionally to heat domestic H2O keeps it tolerable.
The room that the stove is in is often too hot for my liking, but the dogs/cats and wife and 3 kids love it. The room has a vaulted ceiling with big sliding windows all around, so I usually keep one window behind the stove cracked open, and if it gets really hot, I can open it wider to let cold air mix with the nuclear air coming off the stove, and the pedestal fan draws the mix into the rest of the house.
This wood heating really does work!
The ashpan door hinge assembly came waay loose, and looks like a washer may have broken off, so I had to do a repair; not what I'd like on a new stove, but I'm sure a warranty claim would've taken longer with more frustration. ALSO! The ashpan needs to be dumped MINIMUM every 2 days, and at that point it's packed full. Maybe it's the wood I'm burning, maybe it's me, but I wish like hell they'd have put a deeper pan in there.
I may run out of wood! I had stockpiled 3+ cord, PLUS a load of slab wood that looks to be at least a cord, and I'm down to 1/2 cord of stacked wood and about 3/4 of the slab wood left. Most of this I'm sure can be attributed to my irrational exuberance last fall when I got the stove up and running; I had a full firebox going all day, and realize now that the most economical way is to just let the stove burn thru a load down to enough coals to re-start it. It can maintain down to 350 deg with an almost empty firebox for a long time, and with the fan circulating the air, the house just doesn't cool off very quickly. Sometimes I come home from work and the house feels warm, but the fire's out because the wife just didn't have time to deal with it. So NEXT year, I figure I can reduce my wood consumption by at least 25-30%.
My oil tank was filled last June, and I added 100 gal in Dec because my sis-in-law was staying for a couple of weeks in the finished basement (with it's own zone baseboard heat) with her cat and she likes it HOT! So even with the cheap oil prices these days I'm way ahead, and I always assumed a 2-yr payback. Looks like I'll do it!
Thanks to all on this board who piped in with help to all my start-up questions last summer/fall. Couldn't have done it without you!
The Stove: Perfect size for my <1900 sq ft L-shaped ranch. With (1) pedestal fan to blow the air out of the "L" where the stove is and (2) ceiling fans, the hallway and back bedrooms have so far attained 70 deg and 66 deg respectively, on the coldest days so far. My worries about the front room, hallway, and bedrooms being deep-freeze lockers were not realized, the house is in fact much toastier than it ever was using the oil heat.
ALSO, the basement, where my wife does laundry, is not as cold as I feared, I think what little heat travels down from the heated floors above, plus the boiler running occasionally to heat domestic H2O keeps it tolerable.
The room that the stove is in is often too hot for my liking, but the dogs/cats and wife and 3 kids love it. The room has a vaulted ceiling with big sliding windows all around, so I usually keep one window behind the stove cracked open, and if it gets really hot, I can open it wider to let cold air mix with the nuclear air coming off the stove, and the pedestal fan draws the mix into the rest of the house.
This wood heating really does work!
The ashpan door hinge assembly came waay loose, and looks like a washer may have broken off, so I had to do a repair; not what I'd like on a new stove, but I'm sure a warranty claim would've taken longer with more frustration. ALSO! The ashpan needs to be dumped MINIMUM every 2 days, and at that point it's packed full. Maybe it's the wood I'm burning, maybe it's me, but I wish like hell they'd have put a deeper pan in there.
I may run out of wood! I had stockpiled 3+ cord, PLUS a load of slab wood that looks to be at least a cord, and I'm down to 1/2 cord of stacked wood and about 3/4 of the slab wood left. Most of this I'm sure can be attributed to my irrational exuberance last fall when I got the stove up and running; I had a full firebox going all day, and realize now that the most economical way is to just let the stove burn thru a load down to enough coals to re-start it. It can maintain down to 350 deg with an almost empty firebox for a long time, and with the fan circulating the air, the house just doesn't cool off very quickly. Sometimes I come home from work and the house feels warm, but the fire's out because the wife just didn't have time to deal with it. So NEXT year, I figure I can reduce my wood consumption by at least 25-30%.
My oil tank was filled last June, and I added 100 gal in Dec because my sis-in-law was staying for a couple of weeks in the finished basement (with it's own zone baseboard heat) with her cat and she likes it HOT! So even with the cheap oil prices these days I'm way ahead, and I always assumed a 2-yr payback. Looks like I'll do it!
Thanks to all on this board who piped in with help to all my start-up questions last summer/fall. Couldn't have done it without you!
