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I'm worse than a woman about this decision....sorry ladies. Now I'm looking at the PE summit insert. If I go with the insert I dont have as much masonry work to do... I like the size and price compared to the jotul.
I have the Vista which is the Summit's little brother. It's a great stove and keeps everything nice and toasty. I wouldn't mind having a bigger one (the Summit) but in my case that just wasn't going to fit.
The house is about 1800sf of living space. It's on a slab that sucks up a ton of heat. Not a lot of attic insulation yet. Fireplace is huge so fitting it in isnt a problem.
The room that the fireplace is in will encompass about half the house. The kitchen opens up to it. The bed rooms are always cold due to the hvac runs in the foor make for cool air by the time it gets there. The heat from the stove should be able to help heat those rooms with a fan in the hallway pushing cool air into the stove rooms and the ceiling fans on.
It's a fine insert and a good heater. There are several owners here. For comparison you might also want to see the Lopi Freedom or Avalon Olympic if there's a Travis dealer nearby.
I got a summit insert this year, upgraded from an older Vermont Castings Winterwarm.
The Summit heats my house up very well so farf as the only heat source. I have roughly 2,000 sq ft and it stays about 75 degrees with it all the way down.
There are a few learning curves that you will have with running it efficiently but there are some very helpful and knowledable folks on this site who answer your questions promptly and shre their experiences with you.
I say go for it, shop around when I was going for mine the price varies from store to store drasticly.