Should I buy a larger wood stove?

[RegencyNS]

My house has three levels including the basement and works out to be close to 3000 square feet. It is less than a year old and has a slant/fin oil boiler with attached 40 gallon indirect DHW tank. This furnace feeds cast iron rads in the basement (never on), 1st floor and baseboard heat on the 2nd (top) floor. The Regency F2400M wood stove is in the basement where I would like to keep it.

Estimating the oil consumption for the next month, we will have used just slightly over 500 us gallons (1912 litres) of oil for the entire year. Thats heating our DHW and during winter months, heating the house late evening and early morning. I also will have gone through at least 10 cord of wood in the Regency F2400 wood stove for the year.

The wood stove does heat the basement and main floor pretty well on marginally cold days but the last few weeks with temps way down, its having trouble. Last night just before bed, I heard the main floor cast iron rads heating up. Thats the first time they have kicked in in the evening in a long time.

I do believe I may have spec’d my wood stove too small for the house. Maybe a PE Summitt or T6 would provide more heat and longer burn times? Of course the EBT would be great also.

What do you think? Would it be worth the investment to sell the regency 2400 and upgrade to a PE Summitt or willit be not enough of a difference to warrant spending the extra cash?

 

[RegencyNS]

Nope, its a new house and all walls in basement are insulated. However, the floor is concrete.

 

[snowtime]

I think you need to upgrade. When things turn around oil will go back up. Boy you are using a lot of wood if your talking real cords. Maybe you are running the stove wide open?

What ever it does look like a bigger stove would pay off. I am sure you could sell the old one. As for which stove you can tell by my sig that I have a T6. I love it and would recommend it. But I am also wondering if you might need an even bigger stove.
If the heat has a hard time getting upstairs you could put your new heater in the living room or at least the main 1st floor room. That way you could heat all the main living areas and use the oil for the basement. The reason I say that is if its a finished basement with full insulation it would not take much to heat it. Just a thought.
I would put on your list the T6, Summit, Equinox, Blaze King. I know they are very different but one should appeal to you. The Equinox and Blaze King are serious heaters from what I have read. The Blaze King will give you the longest burn time and having a temp controlled air supply it might be just the ticket. They just do not look very good but in the basement who cares.
A thought just occured to me. Do you have serious draft? If you have a tall chimney maybe a damper would slow down your stove and you would get more heat.

I see by your next post that there is concrete under the stove. You could get an insulated fire protector for under the stove. This would cut down on the heat being sucked up by the immediate floor.

 

[Corey]

A key question would be: is any area of the house getting 'hot' now? If you do have hot areas, this is bad for efficiency as you loose heat exponentially faster as the temp goes up. It could be that increasing airflow would give you more moderate temps through the whole house without the need for a new stove. I'd also be curious how the airflow is around the stove. As CC mentioned, you can loose radiant heat to concrete - but you can also loose it to finished walls, windows, etc. That layout sounds notoriously hard to heat, so I'd expect to have a good amount of airflow up to the higher rooms and also a good return flow back down to the stove. If you don't - this again would show up as sweltering areas around the stove while the rest of the house is cool.

If the temps in all rooms are moderate, but overall, you just aren't getting enough heat, this would signal you might be able to run a bigger stove. But I would expect to burn more wood as well...you say you're already at 10 cords so you could certainly expect that to increase....roughly by the ratio of btu output of your current stove to btu output of the new stove. For instance if your current stove is 50,000 btu and the new one is 75,000, you might expect to burn ~15 cords.

 

[RegencyNS]

I've never fully closed the air for fear of the fire going out, usually leave air open about an inch or 1/8 of total adjustment. For example, I can burn through three to four splits in like three hours.

 

[Bigg_Redd]

My house has three levels including the basement and works out to be close to 3000 square feet. It is less than a year old and has a slant/fin oil boiler with attached 40 gallon indirect DHW tank. This furnace feeds cast iron rads in the basement (never on), 1st floor and baseboard heat on the 2nd (top) floor. The Regency F2400M wood stove is in the basement where I would like to keep it.

Estimating the oil consumption for the next month, we will have used just slightly over 500 us gallons (1912 litres) of oil for the entire year. Thats heating our DHW and during winter months, heating the house late evening and early morning. I also will have gone through at least 10 cord of wood in the Regency F2400 wood stove for the year.

The wood stove does heat the basement and main floor pretty well on marginally cold days but the last few weeks with temps way down, its having trouble. Last night just before bed, I heard the main floor cast iron rads heating up. Thats the first time they have kicked in in the evening in a long time.

I do believe I may have spec’d my wood stove too small for the house. Maybe a PE Summitt or T6 would provide more heat and longer burn times? Of course the EBT would be great also.

What do you think? Would it be worth the investment to sell the regency 2400 and upgrade to a PE Summitt or willit be not enough of a difference to warrant spending the extra cash?

10 cord of wood and 500 gallons of oil? Holy Moses! How warm is your house?

 

[Todd]

Have you considered a wood furnace? 3000 sq ft is an awful lot to heat with a wood stove from the basement. Maybe another stove on the main floor to help out the Regency?

 

[begreen]

I'd move the Regency upstairs and put in a pellet stove for the basement or just use the oil for that zone.

 

[learnin to burn]

Your stove is only rated to heat up to 2200 sq. ft. and that is with an open floor plan. Regency also has the f3100 witch is rated for up to 3000 sq. ft. but unless you have a good way to get the heat to move through out the house (all floors) you would only be wasting your time and money. Being new to burning myself I'm kicking myself for not doing more research and going with a wood furnace. Good luck with what ever you decide to do.

 

[Techstuf]

You are including the basement in your mention of nearly 3,000sq feet, right?



TS

 

[RegencyNS]

Yes, that includes the basement

 

[Sealcove]

I have a newly rebuilt and enlarged to 2400 square foot home, not including basement space, and since early November I have used a 36 gallons of LPG (primarily domestic hot water) and less than three cords of wood. That is keeping the house extremely toasty in a similar climate. Something is very out of whack.

 

[Sealcove]

Are your cellar walls insulated? Do you even need a heat source down there? You may be either losing heat through the foundation or heating below grade space that you don't need to (unless its a finished basement). I say that because without heating my basement it stays at around 50F from what little heat loss there is off a very efficient domestic hot water system, and I have one wall that is completely above grade. It sounds like we have similar sized homes, both are near new, we live in similar climates, but for some reason you are burning more than 3X the wood and a huge amount of oil (compared to my trivial gas consumption).

 

[RegencyNS]

Guys and gals, your gonna think im nuts but I just looked at the wood I consumed and its actually 10 cords till the end of this winter. If I look at when I started burning last year, March 1 until March 1 this year, I will guestimate 7.5 cord.

I was thinking 10 cord because I was calculating till the end of this winter.

 

[potter]

When you say you've gone through # of cords "this year" I think most folks here would assume you mean this heating season. How much since say, September?

 

[pinewoodburner]

Guys and gals, your gonna think im nuts but I just looked at the wood I consumed and its actually 10 cords till the end of this winter. If I look at when I started burning last year, March 1 until March 1 this year, I will guestimate 7.5 cord.

I was thinking 10 cord because I was calculating till the end of this winter.

Is this a face cord or a full cord of wood?

 

[Wet1]

And is it good hardwood or softwood?

 

[Wet1]

Oh yeah, my vote is to put a BK down there! :coolsmile:

 

[RegencyNS]

Ok, I'll reiterate, since September I have burnt approx 5 cord of good seasoned hardwood. Sorry for complicating things. By the end of this winter I'd say it will be 7.5 cords for this entire winter.

 

[Wet1]

Wow... that's aproximately 240+ million btu of fuel between the wood and oil! That sure sounds like a lot to me for a new construction of 3000 sq ft (including insulated basement)!

 

[Techstuf]

Sounds pert near impossible to me.....we need some pics! A stove in the basement absolutely requires an outside air kit be installed, elsewise your stove is little more than a vacuum which is sucking cold air into every crack and crevice in your home, pinching the updraft in order to get down stairs and into the feed vent of your stove. Without an OAK, you would be better off to quit burning wood altogether and heat via electric baseboard and your oil heater. If you already feed your stove via outside air vent, then the only other sane conclusion with the information given, is that somebody cut the corner of all corners in the insulation department when building your home....



Regards,



TS