Pellet Stove Fireplace Insert...which one?

[wanttobewarm]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post. I moved to a new house a month ago with two older fireplaces. I'm considering converting the fireplace downstairs into a wood pellet insert. Does anyone have any advice on a great manufacturer or model? How about a good place to go for service and advice in Central MA? Any thoughts would be helpful as I begin my research!

 

[timss13]

Welcome! We installed a Quadrafire Mt Vernon insert last fall and love it. We have a 2100 sq foot 1850 colonial that typically burned about 1200 gallons of oil and this past year we went through about 200 gallons of oil since the stove did a great job heating the entire house.

 

[Wood Heat Stoves]

Avalon Astoria has been great... we only sell them in our area, see avalonfirestyles.com for dealer locator.

ps, we sell soooo many quad parts for a reason!!

 

[imacman]

Avalon Astoria has been great... we only sell them in our area, see avalonfirestyles.com for dealer locator.......

I agree w/ WoodHeatStoves....my Astoria has been great, and would recommend either the Avalon or Lopi brands that Travis Ind. sells.

www.travisbuilder.net

 

[summit]

three word: Harman Accentra Insert

 

[wanttobewarm]

Thanks everyone. You certainly gave me some things to think about. I'm looking forward to the research process!

 

[timss13]

Quadrafire apparently used to suck butt....they seem to have less issues than many others now. We have loved ours and know many others using it that feel the same way. I know a big factor for us was also appearance. Quadrafire and Harman both made appliances that blended best with our older colonial home. I got the say on technical stuff- my wife got the say on appearance.

 

[Stentor]

Yes, welcome. Your question of course is like bringing beer and food to the cookout. Everyone has an opinion and will gather round! Here are my two opinions:

1. After you've narrowed down your choices about equipment, one very important factor is what you think about the dealer. For that you might want to make a couple of visits because many stove manufacturers in this industry seem to deal with customers almost exclusively through dealers. That can leave you dependent at least during the warranty period. I think service call margins for products under warranty are pretty thin and dealers do not have an incentive to provide service at a good price outside their stores, which means you want to have a good feeling about the dealer you buy from.

2. Doing a lot of searching in this forum and the HearthWiki link can be very valuable to you. Invest some time. The posts are not always reliable but they can be taken with a grain of salt. For example, I remember someone a couple of months ago started out like you and, it seemed, found a stove and dealer he liked. (I think he was in Maine or NH but the same technique of course applies to you.)

Good luck.

 

[sparkydog00]

three word: Harman Accentra Insert

I agree with those 3 words...this is my second pellet insert. The Lopi was the first. The Harmen beats the Lopi in every catagory.
That said....
in Central Mass...you can check out the Stove Place or shop in Shrewsbury on Rt 20...
Though I didn't buy my stove from these guys...they are a good bunch down there.
Make sure you get a decent installer. Most are very haphzard...to say the least.

 

[Bounty Hunter]

three word: Harman Accentra Insert

Can't agree more! This was my first season with a pellet stove and the Harman performed flawlessly.

 

[lecomte38]

My Harman ran perfectly all winter also. The bottom feed can't be beat. It will burn ANY pellets with no problems.

 

[wanttobewarm]

Hey folks,

Most outstanding. I plan to do some more research, but I am hearing that the Harman Accentra is the insert to look closer at. I even (before you guys mentioned it) went into The Stove Place in Shrewsbury, and I DO have a good feeling about those guys. Now...one more question you guys can send me advice on...

The room I am planning on putting the stove into has an old fireplace in it, and is probably about 400 square feet. The room opens up through a small doorway into my main living space, probably something like double the size (800 sq/ft). I would like to heat both rooms (obviously) and as much of my home as possible. My house is a box, seperated by walls and doors (part of the charm from 1920 I suppose), so I don't expect to heat the entire place, but what do you think...will the fan kick in well enough to send the heat out to the majority of the house? There is a ceiling fan in the "stove room", but will it be enough?

Gather around the keg, and lets chat about it. Thanks guys!

 

[sparkydog00]

Hey folks,

Most outstanding. I plan to do some more research, but I am hearing that the Harman Accentra is the insert to look closer at. I even (before you guys mentioned it) went into The Stove Place in Shrewsbury, and I DO have a good feeling about those guys. Now...one more question you guys can send me advice on...

The room I am planning on putting the stove into has an old fireplace in it, and is probably about 400 square feet. The room opens up through a small doorway into my main living space, probably something like double the size (800 sq/ft). I would like to heat both rooms (obviously) and as much of my home as possible. My house is a box, seperated by walls and doors (part of the charm from 1920 I suppose), so I don't expect to heat the entire place, but what do you think...will the fan kick in well enough to send the heat out to the majority of the house? There is a ceiling fan in the "stove room", but will it be enough?

Gather around the keg, and lets chat about it. Thanks guys!

Luckily my 1600 sft house has an open floor plan...with a cathedral ceiling in the entryway. The Harmen is never working very hard to heat the entire house to a comfortable 72 degrees.
A problem you are going to run into is the stove when run on temp mode will heat the room it is in to that temp....and shut down. While the rest of the house is cold.
Is there anyway to make the space between the 2 room larger? A 36 inch doorway really isn't that much space.
Also...are you thinking about an OAK or not?

 

[Bounty Hunter]

My house is a 1100 sq. ft. ranch and I don't have a open floor plan. I had concerns about the heat getting down to the bedrooms and considered putting up fans but we set the room temp control on low , the temp. between 70 - 75 deg. and the house was very comfortable all winter. My thermostat in the hall would read 1 or 2 degrees lower than the stove setting and the bedrooms were about 1 or 2 degrees below that. All in all we found the house to be more comfortable than when we heated with oil and in fact there were a couple of nights that we forgot to lower the temp down to 70 deg. and woke up during the night quite warm. A friend of mine bought the same stove and he heated his 1500 sq. ft. range just as well. I used 2.5 tons all winter while he used 4 tons.

 

[sparkydog00]

My house is a 1100 sq. ft. ranch and I don't have a open floor plan. I had concerns about the heat getting down to the bedrooms and considered putting up fans but we set the room temp control on low , the temp. between 70 - 75 deg. and the house was very comfortable all winter. My thermostat in the hall would read 1 or 2 degrees lower than the stove setting and the bedrooms were about 1 or 2 degrees below that. All in all we found the house to be more comfortable than when we heated with oil and in fact there were a couple of nights that we forgot to lower the temp down to 70 deg. and woke up during the night quite warm. A friend of mine bought the same stove and he heated his 1500 sq. ft. range just as well. I used 2.5 tons all winter while he used 4 tons.

Remember basic thermodynamics here...heat rises....is tough to get heat to go downhill.

 

[wanttobewarm]

Thanks SparkyDog...my heat source would be on the 1st floor, heating the rest of the first floor and hopfully able to make it (somewhat) upstairs. Also, what did you mean by OAK? Acronym or type of wood?

 

[imacman]

........ Also, what did you mean by OAK? Acronym or type of wood?

OAK stands for Outside Air Kit......a means of bringing in outside air for combustion instead of using the already heated inside air. Not having an OAK also causes a negative pressure inside the house, and pulls cold outside air in through any cracks/openings, defeating the purpose of heating the house in the first place.

A must have for a pellet stove that has a powered combustion fan, IMO.

 

[kiwiinma]

three word: Harman Accentra Insert

in Central Mass...you can check out the Stove Place or shop in Shrewsbury on Rt 20...
Though I didn't buy my stove from these guys...they are a good bunch down there.
Make sure you get a decent installer. Most are very haphzard...to say the least.

I had a bad experience with the Stove Place in Shrewsbury. They installed a wood stove insert in my home that didn't pass inspection nor would the chimney sweep touch it as it hadn't been installed correctly. We followed up with the Stove Place and they claimed it was installed to code and refused to do anything about it. We ended up selling the stove because it required too much to meet the clearance requirements. Overall, a disaster. Try Higgins Energy in Barre MA. We're going with them for a wood pellet insert.

 

[Former Farmer]

I have a Quadrafire Castille insert that has performed flawlessly for 2 years now. The reason that I had to go with that model was because I was restricted with the size of my opening. I also wanted the option to be able to burn corn in it. I highly recommend using the OAK. No need to send any more heat out of the house than necessary.

 

[Gweeper64]

+1 for the Quadrafire Mt Vernon AE insert. It's expensive, but we're totally happy with it. It is virtually "set it and forget it". If you have an older house though, make sure and measure carefully as the Mt Vernon might be too big for your fireplace dimensions.

Our house is about 1500sq ft single level ranch (built in the late '50s) including an 18x20 addition with cathedral ceilings and skylights. The Mt Vernon AE was installed on January 20th. The thing was heating the whole house nicely. We had a fan running to push warm air out of the living room area where the fireplace is down a hallway to the bedroom area. Our oil boiler heats our hot water as well as the primary heating loops. With the insert running, the boiler was barely running basically only keeping our hot water tank warm. During the real cold snaps, I was turning up the primary heat now and then just to get it to run to make sure pipes didn't freeze. We have not had an oil fillup since the insert was installed. In the dead of winter in January/February, we were buring about 1.5 - 2 bags of pellets per day.

We bought ours from Enchanted Fireside in Worcester. We were happy with them too. We bought last summer during the "mad rush of 2008" and they were really good at trying to keep people appraised of the ever changing delivery schedules. I don't think that is a problem this year, lucky for you.

 

[Gweeper64]

My house is a 1100 sq. ft. ranch and I don't have a open floor plan. I had concerns about the heat getting down to the bedrooms and considered putting up fans but we set the room temp control on low , the temp. between 70 - 75 deg. and the house was very comfortable all winter. My thermostat in the hall would read 1 or 2 degrees lower than the stove setting and the bedrooms were about 1 or 2 degrees below that. All in all we found the house to be more comfortable than when we heated with oil and in fact there were a couple of nights that we forgot to lower the temp down to 70 deg. and woke up during the night quite warm. A friend of mine bought the same stove and he heated his 1500 sq. ft. range just as well. I used 2.5 tons all winter while he used 4 tons.

Everything you wrote mimics our experience exactly. Except that our Mt Vernon has a programmable thermostat, so we had it programed to turn down a few degrees around the time we usually go to bed and then to kick back up about 1/2 hour before we get up in the morning. Very, very convenient. We burned about 2.5 tons between mid/late January and the end of April when I finally turned the stove off for the season.

 

[kbjelka]

I have a Quadrafire Castille insert that has performed flawlessly for 2 years now. The reason that I had to go with that model was because I was restricted with the size of my opening. I also wanted the option to be able to burn corn in it. I highly recommend using the OAK. No need to send any more heat out of the house than necessary.

I have a Castile insert for the same reason, limited fireplace opening size. I also liked the looks of the Castile. Burned 4 tons last season without so much as a hiccup except for an occasional stuck burn pot door. I soon learned the key to that problem was a good scrape down to the metal on the bottom of the burn pot. No complaints, very reliable and easy to maintain stove.

 

[newstove]

Here is another vote for Enchanted Fireside in Worcester. We had a wood stove insert installed by them in April of this year - we were very pleased.

We also stopped by the Stove Shop in Shrewsbury - we were not impressed at all by any of the salespeople or anyone we talked to there. In fact, we were a little put off by their attitudes. They also didn't have any stoves we liked, but that didn't matter as even if they did I don't think we would have purchased there.

 

[vgrund]

I really love my Quad Mt. Vernon AE insert. I researched this heavily before making a decision, and I do not regret it. I have an OAK and like others, I recommend that. Do the math on the air volume / hour moved by the combusion fan. You want that to be outside air and not expensively heated indoor air.

 

[CygnusX1]

I've had an Enviro Meridian insert in my 1,500 sqft house for 6 years. It's been
very efficient and reliable stove, out side of a blown high temp sensor ($30 fix), I haven't had a problem with it.
The Stove Shop and Enchanted Fireside are both good shops, though I would stay away from a certain shop in Oxford, MA.