Hi all,
We recently purchased a cabin around the Boone, NC area. These past couple of days it has been cold and windy in the Northeast as I'm sure many of you already know so I have been getting to know the stove which came with the cabin... a Vermont Castings Defiant, model number 1945.
The stove was in fairly good shape when we bought it. We had someone come out to clean and inspect it and other than the stove pipe being clogged up there were no major maintenance issues. The previous owner had recently replaced all the gaskets and had done some other basic maintenance a few months back.
I had a chance to speak with the previous owner about the cabin and he never figured out how to operate the stove in cat mode (what's a cat? when I asked so I had to explain) so the cat is unused if a bit old. From what I understand most of the wood burned in the stove was fairly green so hopefully it wasn't overfired too often when always running in bypass mode.
I've installed a Condar Fluegard thermometer and the stove already had a stove top therm. I also bought and installed the bottom and ash door heat shields per the manual since the stove is sitting on stone over wood flooring and is not on slab.
The wood I'm burning is 25-30% MC so not great but since we just bought the cabin this was the best I could find in the area.
Our home is 1900SF finished with an unfinished and unheated (by the stove) basement. It is a log cabin with 1 foot thick logs with insulation between the logs and was hand built.. not a kit home. For a log cabin it is fairly tight but I realize the R value on the logs won't be what a modern house offers. We have a vaulted ceiling so taking that into account the total stove-heated SF is somewhere around 2500. There is a fan running in winter mode up in the vaulted area so the upstairs loft is only slightly warmer than the main room with the stove in it.
Initial impressions... even with higher MC wood I have found that the stove will overheat in bypass mode pretty quickly. I can get flue temps up above 1000F very quickly. Cat mode works well and is easily controllable. To keep the stove top between 500 and 600 I will have the air set on medium for most of the burn. The stove takes up to 24" length splits so I have been taking my 16" splits and putting them in centered then putting a couple up splits pointing upward to fill in the space on the sides. Doing this I can get 10-12 hours of burn time with most of that burn having stove top temps above 500.
Yesterday up on the mountain it never got above 28 degrees during the day and there was a lot of wind. The stove was barely able to keep up with the above settings. I could give it more air and get more heat but this stove seems to really go through wood. Not too much of an issue right now since we are only here on occasion but when we move here permanently in a few years it will be a bigger issue. So on to the questions...
Does anyone on here have similar experience with this stove and if so did they switch out to a newer stove with better results? I've been looking at the BC Ashford and the Woodstock Progress Hybrid as two potential replacement stoves. Really looking for more warmth and less wood consumption with a nice look for the wife. We like the look of the stove right now.
Pics are attached... one of the stove burning, a pic of the cabin, the wood we bought stacked between the deck posts, wood from our property that I've C/S/S under the deck, and the area I'm clearing to open a view and that will provide our wood for the next few years.
Thanks for reading!
We recently purchased a cabin around the Boone, NC area. These past couple of days it has been cold and windy in the Northeast as I'm sure many of you already know so I have been getting to know the stove which came with the cabin... a Vermont Castings Defiant, model number 1945.
The stove was in fairly good shape when we bought it. We had someone come out to clean and inspect it and other than the stove pipe being clogged up there were no major maintenance issues. The previous owner had recently replaced all the gaskets and had done some other basic maintenance a few months back.
I had a chance to speak with the previous owner about the cabin and he never figured out how to operate the stove in cat mode (what's a cat? when I asked so I had to explain) so the cat is unused if a bit old. From what I understand most of the wood burned in the stove was fairly green so hopefully it wasn't overfired too often when always running in bypass mode.
I've installed a Condar Fluegard thermometer and the stove already had a stove top therm. I also bought and installed the bottom and ash door heat shields per the manual since the stove is sitting on stone over wood flooring and is not on slab.
The wood I'm burning is 25-30% MC so not great but since we just bought the cabin this was the best I could find in the area.
Our home is 1900SF finished with an unfinished and unheated (by the stove) basement. It is a log cabin with 1 foot thick logs with insulation between the logs and was hand built.. not a kit home. For a log cabin it is fairly tight but I realize the R value on the logs won't be what a modern house offers. We have a vaulted ceiling so taking that into account the total stove-heated SF is somewhere around 2500. There is a fan running in winter mode up in the vaulted area so the upstairs loft is only slightly warmer than the main room with the stove in it.
Initial impressions... even with higher MC wood I have found that the stove will overheat in bypass mode pretty quickly. I can get flue temps up above 1000F very quickly. Cat mode works well and is easily controllable. To keep the stove top between 500 and 600 I will have the air set on medium for most of the burn. The stove takes up to 24" length splits so I have been taking my 16" splits and putting them in centered then putting a couple up splits pointing upward to fill in the space on the sides. Doing this I can get 10-12 hours of burn time with most of that burn having stove top temps above 500.
Yesterday up on the mountain it never got above 28 degrees during the day and there was a lot of wind. The stove was barely able to keep up with the above settings. I could give it more air and get more heat but this stove seems to really go through wood. Not too much of an issue right now since we are only here on occasion but when we move here permanently in a few years it will be a bigger issue. So on to the questions...
Does anyone on here have similar experience with this stove and if so did they switch out to a newer stove with better results? I've been looking at the BC Ashford and the Woodstock Progress Hybrid as two potential replacement stoves. Really looking for more warmth and less wood consumption with a nice look for the wife. We like the look of the stove right now.
Pics are attached... one of the stove burning, a pic of the cabin, the wood we bought stacked between the deck posts, wood from our property that I've C/S/S under the deck, and the area I'm clearing to open a view and that will provide our wood for the next few years.
Thanks for reading!
