Thinking of buying a wood stove.

[buildingmaint]

I've been thinking of putting a wood stove in my basement ,just to take the chill off when it is real cold. I don't want to try and heat the whole house with it. I will probably burn pallet wood because it is readily available from work. I heat the main living area with a pellet stove , and it does a real good job. I have been looking at Northern Tool at their stoves . I don't want to spend to much for the stove $ 500.00 or less. Has any one heard good or bad of the following stoves, [ VOGLEGANG VG 650 ELG, TR003 VG 650ELG, TR001, VG450ELGB, DROLET SAVANNAH DB0320, DB03060.] All are from the Northern Tool web site. The size of my basement is 650 SQFT. I insulated the walls of the basement this winter . It was 38 degrees when it was real cold and I had to run a vent-less heater to keep the pipes from freezing . Any help out there?

 

[Corie]

You'd be better off going with one of the small Englander 13NC stoves. Vogelzang has a poor reputation for quality. Drolet is generally good, but you might want to wait for others to weigh in on that.


Pallet wood is going to be rough on any stove, wants to burn hot and fast. Have to be careful loading the stove up with that stuff because the stove will want to take off.

 

[Sandor]

DO NOT BUY the "V" stoves.

Take Corie's suggestion, or buy a used, brand name unit.

 

[elkimmeg]

DROLET SAVANNAH Is similar to the Englanders and Century stoves. It is Epa approved and worth every penny more than the Vogelzang death boxes.
One of a our regular posters has one. I got to run now but can someone PM Andre' to comment of the Drolet

 

[alfio]

Hi , there are a lot of good choices out there . But for a cheep stove if you cant find a good used one , then I would go with corie's suggestion . GOOD luck

 

[Andre B.]

I picked up one of the larger DroLets last fall, paid $1000 at a Fleet Farm. As for there smaller ones the simple plain ones look good but I did not like that fancy one with the three pains of glass in the door, just too many small parts to go wrong and the firebox is an odd shape.

Old stove http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i208/andre_b/House Stuff/Stoveold1.jpg
New stove http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i208/andre_b/House Stuff/Stovenew1.jpg

Anyway took a while to get used to, burns very different from my old non airtight, but it has been working very well since I relearned how to build a fire. I do heat the entire house with the stove, two floors 20' by 36'.

I burned just a little more then 1/2 the wood that I have normally been burning. Some of that is the shorter warmer winter but a good share of it was the stove. One possible problem is the new stove does not have the raw max continuous heat output that the old one did. We had a few days with highs of 0°F and lows of 25°F and it was harder to get the house temps above 70°F, with the old stove I could have run it up to 90 with no problem.

When I opened the box the door glass was broken but I just called the store and they called the factory who sent a new one. Well, first the service counter girl said I needed to bring it back for exchange like as if it was a toaster, had to explain that this was a 560 lb. toaster.

I had pictures showing the broken glass while it was still on the pallet with the box around it but no one wanted to look at them. So now I have a new glass in the door and the two halves of the old one, it was broken in one crack top to bottom almost right in the center. Should be useful for future combustion research.