firefighterjake said:
Well one of those choices doesn't seem to be available any more . . . I voted for the Lopi myself . . . but honestly if I was to upgrade and money was an issue I would go with something like an Englander or Napoleon myself vs. buying used and paying the prices that some folks seem to think their rusted out, over-fired stoves are worth during this time of year.
To answer your original questions . . . better efficiency? Yes. By utilizing a secondary burn you are getting a clean burn and more important to us folks who aren't out to save the world -- the combustible products in the smoke are burned which results in a second burn which translates into more heat that would have been lost by going up the chimney.
Longer burn? Honestly . . . it depends. If you take a Pre-EPA stove and choke the fire down you can get a very long burning fire . . . but it is belching lots of smoke out the chimney and not producing a whole lot of meaningful heat. On the other hand if you run a pre-EPA stove wide open or shut the air down just part way even you may end up with a fire that burns up the wood pretty quickly. If you run an EPA stove wide open you will also burn up the wood pretty quickly . . . but if you get the stove up to temp and then shut down the air on an EPA stove what will happen is you will get a fire that will burn intensely (vs. smoldering like an EPA stove would do choked down) and give you good heat for several hours. In my limited experiences having used both types of stoves (one of which was a Shenandoah by the way) -- on an overnight burn you will get the same result in the firebox in the morning -- a bunch of coals . . . the difference is with an EPA stove you will get a decent amount of heat during the overnight burn AND you will not gunk up your chimney and glass in the process.
Unless i throw some coal it the shenandoah, I'm lucky to get 5hrs out of it. Your right i can choke it way down but its in the teens here, and i got a baby, so i need to keep the house warm. I'd really like to improve this.
You know, i really like the Napoleon, in fact i went as far as calling a local retailer. They quoted me 1500 bucks, for >$200 of steel, and maybe 6hs labor. That's what i mean by inflated! You know their fabricators sure as hell aren't seeing the money. Had it been around $800 i probably would have jumped.
Ah, but you're not just paying for the metal and labor to weld it together -- you're paying for the engineering, licensing, advertising, testing, etc. . . . my own take is that they are expensive . . . then again buying a new oil boiler is pretty pricey too. The small englander unfortunately take max 16" logs, and i got 4 cords at 18ish, and can buy oak at $150 a cord(i got a guy...), at 16" i gotta pay a premium/be more selective.
On the flip side . . . if the deal is good enough it may make lopping off 2 inches worth it . . . to have something brand new . . . just saying . . . in the end you are the one with the money and you are the one making the decision . . . and truthfully many folks have bought used stoves and have had good luck with them.
Thanks for a very informative post. I'm gonna get the lopi, it's only a year old, that's close enough to new for me.
As an aside, I've seen poking around this site $10,000 as the price to go wood. Where the hell did this come from? I totaled up my costs, and even with the new stove I'm at >$2000. Couldn't wrap my head around that one.
Seems very high to me . . . unless these folks are figuring on buying a new chainsaw, hydraulic splitter and maybe an ATV to haul the wood around. . . beats me where the 10K figure is coming from. .