small stove choice - pyropak or jotul

[jamesk7]

I am stuck between choosing a jotul F602CB or the Drolet pyropak for weekend winter heating a small 200 sq ft cabin in central Alberta.

Both seem like solid stoves - the drolet is cheaper - but bigger - my questions are - would the drolet overheat my cabin? and what is the actual real life overnight burn time on the drolet - the literature says 5 to 6 hrs.

If anyone has some experience with the drolet pyropak I'd like to hear your review.

Thanks in advance.

 

[tomrowsell]

This reply is likely too late for you, but I just installed a Pyropak in the basement of a 24x36 bungalow. So far, I'm able to catch the fire after 7 hours or so. i.e. there are plenty of coals left. The firebox is small, and with a bed of coals I can only fit about 3 regular pieces of wood in there. I think you will be able to control the heat for your cabin, but any woodstove will likely overheat a cabin of that size...
The large window and the secondary combustion make for a nice fire though. See http://www.tomrowsell.com/2010/11/woodstove-season-cometh.html

Tom

 

[krex1010]

It's a small cabin so just about any stove will be capable of over heating the place. I'm not sure of your budget but jotuls were pretty pricey compared to the drolets, and i am guessing it's just a basic hunting type cabin, so I would go with the drolet. They are basic but solid stoves from what I have heard. No sense in putting a fancy and pricey little stove in a hunting shack, I have no issue with jotuls but if I am buying one it's going into my everyday home.

 

[krex1010]

I just checked out that drolet stove, it may be larger than the jotul but at 1.3cu ft it's still a small stove, so i would not get to worried about it being larger than the jotul. And you are in central Alberta so I know you have some bitter weather up there, depending on how well insulated your cabin is and how much wind it is exposed to you may want the slightly larger stove.

 

[jamesk7]

Thanks for the input - I ended up going for the jotul - i liked its fit and look in the cabin - although the pyropak looks like a good little stove.
So far the jotul does overheat the cabin - so I have to keep small , sporadic fires to keep a decent temp - but I may add another extension onto the cabin in the future and the stove can definitley handle it. Attached is a pic - prior to stovepipe being installed.

 

[krex1010]

Nice! Hope it keeps your little slice of heaven warm and toasty.

 

[tomrowsell]

...don't mean to totally hijack this thread, but my new Drolet Pyropak seems to be working out nicely. A full week of burning (Saturday to Saturday) has consumed about 24 cubic feet of hardwood. I was able to "catch" the fire each morning without having to strike a match. Of course there's less heat than my old VC Resolute, but I think I'll burn much less wood...

Tom

 

[Strangebrew]

Just discovered this website and after an extremely cold weekend at my cabin, the timing couldn't be better. I installed a Drolet Pyropak wood stove in my 500 sq.ft. cabin (located in western Manitoba) in the summer. I burned it for the first time this fall when I was out there deer hunting. Outside temps got down to only about -4 celcius overnight, but I was up stoking the fire about every 2 hours. I was burning mostly dry tamarack. Not too impressed with the short burn time, but thought it was likely due to the fact that I hadn't finished insulating the cabin yet. Fast forward to this past weekend. I went to the cabin to finish installing the insulation (r-28 in cathedral ceiling and r-12 in walls). When I arrived at the cabin at 10 am the inside temp was -20 C. I started a fire, drove into town to pick up supplies and was back to start working in about an hour. Fire was almost out when I returned, although there were still some nice embers so getting it going again was easy. I completed the ceiling insulation & vapour barrier by about 5 pm that day and kept stoking the fire as needed. By 7 pm the inside temp on the main floor was +5 C. Temp in the sleeping loft was quite a bit warmer (+12 C) which was no big surprise to me. I stoked the fire before going to bed around 9:30 pm and was up at 11:30 pm, 2:00 am and 5 am to keep it going. I crammed that little firebox as much as I could every time. When I finally got out of bed at 8:30 am the inside temp was hovering around 0 C on the main floor and about +5 C in the loft. Overnight the temp dropped to -30 C outside. My family hoped to use this cabin on weekends throughout the winter, but if that little stove can't keep us warm, then I don't think we'll get out there much. I'm thinking of buying one of those Ecofans to see if that will help circulate the heat on the main floor better. Does anyone have experience with those? Any other suggestions for more effectively heating such a small space (using no electricity)? How about advice on how to get a longer burn time from that stove, so I can actually sleep when I'm out there? When the fire is going well, I shut down the draft and almost close the stove pipe flue. Pretty frustrating...

 

[krex1010]

Strangebrew,
I think with the climate you are in coupled with less than ideal insulation, you are likely pushing the heating limits of that stove. It's only a 1.3 cu ft firebox. So I am not surprised that you are having to feed it every 2 or 3 hours. Small stoves like that typically have a quicker swings in temperature than a larger stove. Those temps are going to drop very quickly in a situation like yours due to the cold climate and the fact that the cabin sits cold most of the time. Remember your cabin is ice cold when you get there, cold floors, cold walls cold furniture. That sucks up alot of heat. I know you have a smaller cabin but in that climate your stove may be undersized. Also I have no idea what kind of wood tamarack is, so maybe fuel could also be contributing to your problem.

 

[tomrowsell]

That's several reports I've read now about the short burn time of this stove. I'm a little perplexed for I added some wood to mine this morning and it caught no problem after about 6 hours or so. I think the cold and uninsulated space you refer to is a factor. Also, how long is your chimney? The specs call for a 12' minimum. See http://www.drolet.ca/product.aspx?CategoId=1&Id=525&Page=spec
I'm into my 4th week now, and I've only let it go out once during that time, to clean out the ashes...love the stove.
As mentioned, Tamarack is a likely problem too. You should compare the results with a nice hardwood. My suspicion is that Tamarack would burn much like spruce, very fast.

Tom

 

[Strangebrew]

krex1010, I suspect you are correct. given our infrequent visits to the cabin in the dead of winter may prove to be too much to ask for from such a little stove. Now that I have the cabin completley insulated, I'm hoping it will perform a little better. We're hoping to spend a few days out there over Christmas as long as the weather isn't too cold. I suspect overnight lows of -20 C would be our cutoff. Re: tamarack (also called larch) is a deciduous tree that loses it's needles in the winter. Even though it is deciduous, I believe it is quite dense (maybe at the bottom end of the hardwood scale?). According to the Pyropak owners manual tamarack falls into the medium energy yield category (whatever that means). It is quite plentiful around our cabin while hardwoods are not (mostly poplar, spruce, some birch).

tominator, there are plenty of viable embers in the stove when I add wood to it and the newly added fuel ignites quite easily. My chimney is about 16' from the top of the stove to the exterior stovepipe cap...I have no problem with draft.

Ideally, I need to install a ceiling fan to push the heat down, but I don't have electricity at the cabin, so my options are pretty limited. As I suggested earlier, I may look at getting one of those ecofans that sit on top of the stove to try and move some of the heated air around the main floor. Reading about those fans, I'm wondering if the the little pyropak would get hot enough to get the fan going (specs say your stove needs to get up to 400 to 650 F to operate the fan). Think that would be a problem?

 

[tomrowsell]

I think the fan should be fine. The top of my stove is reaching 700F. Mind you it's windy here this evening, but that's with the draft closed all the way...
See pic attached...

 

[Strangebrew]

tominator, I need to get one of those thermometers. Curious to know...what would the average operating temp range be for your pyropak?

 

[tomrowsell]

I normally don't have that thermometer sitting on the stove top. Instead I leave it about 16" or so above the top, attached to the stove pipe. Much of the time, it hovers around the 350-400F range at that height/position, at least until it has burned down to a bed of embers. My guess is that the stove top averages between 400 and 500. I'll do some testing to confirm. As you probably know, the "hollow cavity" in the top of the stove that's used for the secondary combustion air (intake in the rear) helps the top not get too extremely hot. When I took that picture last night, the wind was howling around 50 mph outside. Even with the draft closed off completely, the wood was burning fast. I have no damper in my stove pipe...

Tom

 

[SteveKG]

I don't know anything about this stove. It does sound as if the small firebox may be a limiting factor, no matter what.

However, consider that warming up a very cold structure is one thing, keeping it warm as the fire dies down is another. It takes quite some time to heat up more than the air, in other words, the mass itself. This won't be done in a day. For a real test, you will have to be there for a few days and keep the place warmed up so that the structure itself is warm. Once that happens, it will still be much cooler when the fire dies down, but it will not be as cool as in your case. Even any furniture, fixtures, the walls and floor and etc. and everything else in the place will have to warm up and act as a heat storage. If you've been there a day and the air is toasty warm, open a dresser drawer and feel in the back of it, behind the clothes, and it will be cold. The infrared from the stove will heat you up quickly; it takes a long time for the air to heat up and then for the air molecules to transfer that heat into the solid stuff. And, of course, until the insulating is completed, it won't matter....

That being said, it could be you need a different stove. Especially to keep the fire going longer [and putting out comfortable heat].

 

[krex1010]

strangebrew,
the more i think about it the more i think that little stove will not be able to cut it as your primary heat source when using that place in cold weather. i give you my cabin as an example, it is located in north central pennsylvania, when we go up in the winter the daytime higha are typically from the low teens to low 20's Farenheit. overnight lows are generally single digits or low teens. cold but not as cold as where you are. the cabin is about 1100 sq ft. and we heat it with an old smoke dragon with a firebox that is around 4.5 cubic feet. we often go up there and the inside of the place is single digits or low teens and it takes a few hours for the area around the stove to warm up and really the bedrooms take a full day of constant heat to warm up. warming the air is easy but warming the mass of the cabin takes time and constant heat, if the heat starts to drop that cold cabin is going to make the air cold really fast. our place is insulated too, not as well as some places but it is insulated. i think that stove would be fine if you were in a much warmer climate and it will probably be perfect up there at the times of year when the days are in the high 40's and 50' and the night are in the 30's. you may have to consider supplementing with a kerosene heater or think about a larger stove.