"Recreational" Wood Stove Suggestions?

[sonofdays]

Most of you seem to be much farther north than the middle of Kansas with much colder winters and I am not intending to use this as the sole source of heat for our house so probably my intended usage is more recreational than most of what is seen here. Just wanted to put that out there as a disclaimer.

Unless it is recommended against, I am hoping to find a <$1000 wood stove to put in our sun room. It was built onto the house and is around 450 sqft with windows all around. On a sunny winter day, the temperature in there gets about 35°F warmer than outside temperatures.

There is a window and a door that opens from the living room area of the house to the sun room so some of the heat could get into the house, though the actual furnace would still have to run some amount so pipes did not burst if it got that cold. But we could keep the heat in the house really low and primarily spend our time in the sun room with the wood stove. Hopefully we would use it nearly every day of the winter.

"Dealers" in town have the following "good" brands that I have seen recommended in various places:

• Vermont Castings
• HearthStone
• Enviro
• Quadra-Fire

But it seems those are quite expensive and probably overkill. The big-box stores in town have the following under $1000:

• Vogelzang
• Summers Heat
• Ashley King
• Drolet (only 2100 sqft - $799 Menards)
• United States
• WoodPro
• Pleasant Hearth
• Century

It seems that smaller, cheaper, 1000-1200 sqft stoves would be fine for my purpose and I could currently get the Vogelzang 1200 sqft for $449 from Menards. But most everything I read says, "Spend $500 more on something that will last." Are the "good" brands that much better than what the big-box stores have?

 

[begreen]

I'd recommend sticking with Drolet, Englander (Summer's Heat) and Century. The Summer's Heat 50SSW01 would work. If you want to move some heat out of the sunroom into the house consider putting a table or box fan on the floor in the house, on the floor, pointed toward the sunroom opening door and run it on low speed.