I am new to this forum but have been lurking for a while now. I appreciate all of the great insight and shared experience here and would like to add to it by sharing my first year of heating with my Sedore 3000.
First of all, I like things simple - less is more. This is what attracted me to the Sedore. I also like that it could burn anything - having just built my own home (still building it!) - I had lots of cut off ends and odd lengths of rough sawed timbers to get rid of. We moved into the house on Dec 30, 2012 and I had no firewood put up. Realizing this kind of wood was less than ideal to burn I mixed it in with lightly seasoned hardwoods.
The Sedore is my only heat source and it provides for a very comfy home. I am heating a 2800 sqft cape cod with vaulted ceilings. Quite often it got a little too toasty upstairs that was remedied by cracking a window. The Sedore easily would go 12-15 hours on a load of wood - the Sedore big so a load of wood is like 8-12 pieces of firewood, depending on the size. I found myself cleaning it out bi-monthly - it is easy to do through the side clean out door. It can be cleaned with coals in it and then loaded back up with wood - a nice feature IMO. Starting the Sedore and subsequently adding wood to it through its top loading lid can be exciting at times and a bit smoky. I always open an upstairs window before cold starting and sometimes need to after loading. While loading with smoldering logs in it I need to be quick with getting the lid closed as the logs will ignite very quickly with a roar. Ideally I like to load it when it is down to coals, but sometimes the situation calls for loading it while it still has a little load left and this can be done safely by fully opening the intake for 30 seconds then cracking the lid for 45-60 seconds - the establishes a down draft which pulls the smoke out of the stove and up the chimney.
I recently cleaned out the stove pipe and cap from last winters burn and was a bit surprised to get about 2 gallons of fluffy creosote. My pipe is 25 feet - 20ft inside the house and 5 feet outside. The interior pipe is 6" single wall and the exterior/through the roof is triple walled. The Sedore website promotes low creosote and in frequent cleanings and imagine I that can be true if burning seasoned hardwoods - I burned a lot of crap my first year and had ALOT of start and stops with it during the home construction process, so it is not too surprising my pipes were dirty. When the 3000 is "in the zone" (pipe 200 deg F/box 400 deg F), only a faint vapor can be seen coming from the chimney-very reminiscent of the vapor coming from a gas furnace.
All in all I really love this stove - it sits there like a quiet gentlemen emitting warm steady heat. We all missed him when the heating season came to an end last year, but we are elated to have him back for year 2.
First of all, I like things simple - less is more. This is what attracted me to the Sedore. I also like that it could burn anything - having just built my own home (still building it!) - I had lots of cut off ends and odd lengths of rough sawed timbers to get rid of. We moved into the house on Dec 30, 2012 and I had no firewood put up. Realizing this kind of wood was less than ideal to burn I mixed it in with lightly seasoned hardwoods.
The Sedore is my only heat source and it provides for a very comfy home. I am heating a 2800 sqft cape cod with vaulted ceilings. Quite often it got a little too toasty upstairs that was remedied by cracking a window. The Sedore easily would go 12-15 hours on a load of wood - the Sedore big so a load of wood is like 8-12 pieces of firewood, depending on the size. I found myself cleaning it out bi-monthly - it is easy to do through the side clean out door. It can be cleaned with coals in it and then loaded back up with wood - a nice feature IMO. Starting the Sedore and subsequently adding wood to it through its top loading lid can be exciting at times and a bit smoky. I always open an upstairs window before cold starting and sometimes need to after loading. While loading with smoldering logs in it I need to be quick with getting the lid closed as the logs will ignite very quickly with a roar. Ideally I like to load it when it is down to coals, but sometimes the situation calls for loading it while it still has a little load left and this can be done safely by fully opening the intake for 30 seconds then cracking the lid for 45-60 seconds - the establishes a down draft which pulls the smoke out of the stove and up the chimney.
I recently cleaned out the stove pipe and cap from last winters burn and was a bit surprised to get about 2 gallons of fluffy creosote. My pipe is 25 feet - 20ft inside the house and 5 feet outside. The interior pipe is 6" single wall and the exterior/through the roof is triple walled. The Sedore website promotes low creosote and in frequent cleanings and imagine I that can be true if burning seasoned hardwoods - I burned a lot of crap my first year and had ALOT of start and stops with it during the home construction process, so it is not too surprising my pipes were dirty. When the 3000 is "in the zone" (pipe 200 deg F/box 400 deg F), only a faint vapor can be seen coming from the chimney-very reminiscent of the vapor coming from a gas furnace.
All in all I really love this stove - it sits there like a quiet gentlemen emitting warm steady heat. We all missed him when the heating season came to an end last year, but we are elated to have him back for year 2.
