Regency F5100 - Can it bring the heat?

[BBrad]

I've been researching wood stoves to install in an unheated outbuilding, a carriage house that I use as a rec room. The building is 25x40 with open ceiling ranging from 14' to 21'. It is completely uninsulated and that isn't going to change in the short term. I currently use a 75k BTU propane bullet heater to warm it up on occasion which is more than up to the task.

I suspect most people would suggest a large non-cat stove for my space, but I think I'll often want to do low and long which has be thinking about a large cat stove, possibly supplemented with a permanently installed propane heater. Due to the fact that I have a dealer close by, I've been looking at the Regency 5100.

When I spoke to the dealer, he suggested the Regency 3100 instead, pointing out that it had a higher square footage rating than the 5100. He suggested that the 3100 could pump out a little more heat where the 5100 was optimized for long run times. Will I be sacrificing heat output if I go with the 5100? The two stoves I've considered at are the Blaze King and the 5100. Are there other big stoves that I should be looking at?
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[bholler]

wow 17500 cu feet of uninsulated space in buffalo you are going to need allot of btus. I think i would consider a big old stove until you insulate it then get a cat stove But that is just me it seems like a waste to spend the money on a big cat stove when you are going to be running it hard most of the time.

 

[BBrad]

wow 17500 cu feet of uninsulated space in buffalo you are going to need allot of btus. I think i would consider a big old stove until you insulate it then get a cat stove But that is just me it seems like a waste to spend the money on a big cat stove when you are going to be running it hard most of the time.

I'm not trying to turn this into a 24/7 365 day a year living area. I just want to increase the number of usable days.

The reason I'm thinking about a cat stove is that I expect a lot of my usage will be in the late fall / early spring with outside temps in the 40's and 50's. If I want to heat to 70 degrees from 40 degrees, I expect that will take about 30K BTUs which is not unreasonable. If I'm heating on a 20 degree day, then we're talking over 50k BTUs and running it hard. Much colder than that and I probably won't use the space.

The problem with insulating it is the ceiling and walls are 100 year old hand sawn hickory which I don't want to cover up.

 

[bholler]

I think your btu estimates are pretty low honestly but i could definitely be wrong