Woodstock Ideal Stove - Getting Close

[Fanatical1]

Hi guys,

First post so bear with me as I introduce myself and tell you a little about my situation and what I'm thinking about doing.

I have a place that we bought a couple years ago in Hocking Hills Ohio to use as a family get away. We love the wooded area and the state parks nearby. It is 20 acres, all wooded. The building is a unique set up to say the least. It's a pole barn aprox. 65 X 50" with half of the interior being finished for living space and the other half is the garage space. My wife is deeply concerned some day I will make her retire in a "steel barn"!

The living space is 1300 Sq. Ft. on the lower level and 700 Sq. Ft. above it for a total of around 2000 Sq. Ft.
I have a propane furnace currently but would like to add a woodstove in the lower level of the living space.
One thing I have is firewood! Tons of white, scarlet, pin and red oak, maple, hickory, sassafras, and a few tulip and big tooth aspen. I have about 3 cord split and stacked for 1 - 2 years already.

I have my eye on the Woodstock Ideal stove. I think It will serve two functions well from what I see. Heating up a cold space when we show up for a long weekend and the ability to taper down the heat during the shoulder seasons and still provide a long burn. I have a door between the living space and the garage that I can open up if I choose to help heat the garage space a bit also.

Thanks for the bearing with me on the long post, I already have picked up a ton of great info lurking here.

Mark

 

[webbie]

Sounds like it may be custom made for a big honking steel stove with high efficiency.......this assumes you can wait until next season and keep in mind that promised dates and prices are just that. It's not unusual for a stove promised for delivery in the summer to actually hit the shelves in November. But you have other heat in the meantime, so you are golden.

You could also dig around for 3+ cubic foot stoves under 2K.....there are others, but probably nothing with as high a promised efficiency.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Welcome to the forum Fanatical1.

Hopefully you won't retire in the barn! It sounds as if this would be a nice match for the new stove and we wish you well with it. You no doubt have read some of the early reviews as there are beta testers out there now. The square footage doesn't sound bad. The firewood sounds great but only if you continue to cut, split and stack. Remember that all that oak likes 3 years in the stack before burning. You'll get the best result from it this way. Good luck.

 

[Fanatical1]

Sounds like it may be custom made for a big honking steel stove with high efficiency.......this assumes you can wait until next season and keep in mind that promised dates and prices are just that. It's not unusual for a stove promised for delivery in the summer to actually hit the shelves in November. But you have other heat in the meantime, so you are golden.

You could also dig around for 3+ cubic foot stoves under 2K.....there are others, but probably nothing with as high a promised efficiency.

Can't agree with you more. Lots of great stoves out there and this ones not even for sale yet. I'm not too hung up on the stove choice just yet since I already changed my mind 3 times so far. That's the fun in doing your homework. More concerned with slow burns so I don't cook myself out in the shoulder seasons no matter which stove I pick.

I have been using a VC Winterwarm insert for 20 years in my house and it's very much undersized if my intention is to heat the whole house. Long ago, I realized its best to be used as a supplement to the main furnace during milder weather. It works for us.


Mark

 

[Fanatical1]

Welcome to the forum Fanatical1.

Hopefully you won't retire in the barn! It sounds as if this would be a nice match for the new stove and we wish you well with it. You no doubt have read some of the early reviews as there are beta testers out there now. The square footage doesn't sound bad. The firewood sounds great but only if you continue to cut, split and stack. Remember that all that oak likes 3 years in the stack before burning. You'll get the best result from it this way. Good luck.

Thanks for the welcome! Remember I'm the one that wants to retire in the "barn" (unlike wife).

Interesting that you talked about the firewood drying. I always thought I knew what I was doing with firewood drying, but have found out a great deal more lurking on your site. You have a lot of knowledgable people and with moisture meters!

I think for the most part I season my wood properly, but what I don't think I do very well is bring it out of the weather for any extended period of time. I'm going to change that. I'll season the wood and then bring it under cover (inside garage) for a few months (stockpiling for winter) in the future.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Fanatical1, you don't have to worry about the weather if you do it right. Here is a picture taken when we were still leaving it all outdoors. We had done this for many years; actually most of the years we have heated with wood. We had no problems. But today we do move some wood into the barn in October and that is what we use during the winter.

That is old galvanized roofing covering the wood stacks. It works like a charm.

 

[Fanatical1]

Backwoods, looks like a nice system you have there! I think it helps to bring it inside for a few months also, if nothing else than to dry all the rain/snow off the wood.

That's a pile of wood you have there!

 

[Boiler74]

Fanatical1, you don't have to worry about the weather if you do it right. Here is a picture taken when we were still leaving it all outdoors. We had done this for many years; actually most of the years we have heated with wood. We had no problems. But today we do move some wood into the barn in October and that is what we use during the winter.
View attachment 126502 View attachment 126503
That is old galvanized roofing covering the wood stacks. It works like a charm.

Do you attach the metal in any way? And do you cover from day 1?

 

[Brick (ware)House]

More concerned with slow burns so I don't cook myself out in the shoulder seasons no matter which stove I pick.

I wouldn't worry too much about cooking yourself out. It sounds like your living space has tall ceilings and that extra head space requires a lot of heat to get the area down by the floor comfortable. My place has 12' ceiling height and there is about a 12 degree difference in temp between up high and near the floor. Also take into account the amount of insulation in the living space as drafts, windows and poorly insulated areas eat up their fair share of heat. You can also open the door to the garage if your living space gets a little stuffy. If you intend to provide some heat to the other half of the building without the propane kicking on I think you will need a big stove. The PH in my place (big open space 38' X 45', high ceilings, drafty in some spots) puts out quite a bit of heat and even it struggles to keep the furnaces from firing when it drops into the 20s or lower outside .

My recommendation is to make sure you get a stove with the ability to generate some serious heat. I think you will be disappointed otherwise and you can always burn smaller loads or use the turn down capacity of the stove when you don't need maximum output. The Ideal Steel sounds like a really good stove and it will likely heat like a PH at a lower price point with good turn down control.

 

[Fanatical1]

I wouldn't worry too much about cooking yourself out. It sounds like your living space has tall ceilings and that extra head space requires a lot of heat to get the area down by the floor comfortable. My place has 12' ceiling height and there is about a 12 degree difference in temp between up high and near the floor. Also take into account the amount of insulation in the living space as drafts, windows and poorly insulated areas eat up their fair share of heat. You can also open the door to the garage if your living space gets a little stuffy. If you intend to provide some heat to the other half of the building without the propane kicking on I think you will need a big stove. The PH in my place (big open space 38' X 45', high ceilings, drafty in some spots) puts out quite a bit of heat and even it struggles to keep the furnaces from firing when it drops into the 20s or lower outside .

My recommendation is to make sure you get a stove with the ability to generate some serious heat. I think you will be disappointed otherwise and you can always burn smaller loads or use the turn down capacity of the stove when you don't need maximum output. The Ideal Steel sounds like a really good stove and it will likely heat like a PH at a lower price point with good turn down control.

Thanks for the input it's appreciated! Helps reassure me that I'm on the correct path. You are correct with most of your
assumptions above. I can open the door to the inside garage area to let out any excessive heat if needed, also I wouldn't mind having the door to the garage open on occasion to heat the garage when I'm working there. The garage area is 25 x 50 with 16 foot ceilings and fully insulated (its a big area to suck up heat). My main living space however is 8' ceilings and pretty tight and insulated well.

The key for me, I think, is to have a stove that I can get a large fire going when needed and then taper it down to a low
BTU burn when needed. I think there would be many times I would just have a 1/2 to 1/3 load to accomplish this during the shoulder seasons. Also picking the right wood types and sizes.

I also need a stove to fit as tightly to the wall as possible with a top vent. I need this for the space I have to work with.
Woodstock thought the Ideal will be similar to the PH in that regard which is good. Think 6 - 7" rear clearance (with double wall to the stove) and a reasonably thinner stove depth. Ideal wont be thin but may have the close rear clearance. I would also consider other stoves including the PH (and others) that fit what I'm trying to accomplish here.

Mark

 

[jeff_t]

Got nothing to add that hasn't been said, but I do want to say I love the Hocking Hills area. We stayed at the state park campground a number of times. The last time we were there was two years ago at the end of June when that storm went thru, which was pretty darn scary, to say the least.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Do you attach the metal in any way? And do you cover from day 1?

We have screwed a couple of them down but usually just throw some of the bigger uglies on top and that does the trick 99% of the time. I did have one blow off this past summer and the previous summer had 2 blow off. My fault though as I just did not have enough weighing it down. I may also try filling some milk bottles with sand and tie a rope to 2 of them and throw that over the stack in maybe 3 or 4 spots. But it just has not been a big problem for us yet and even if they did blow off in a big wind, there is not much it would harm as our wood stacks are mostly quite some distance from the house. Like the two I wrote about above, those wood stacks were about 200 yards from the house and any strong wind would blow them just into the woods so no harm would be done.

No, I do not cover from day 1. We usually have the wood stacked in April but do not top cover until around December1. We believe this allows for better evaporation of the moisture in that first summer and fall. However, some areas would benefit from being covered from day 1.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Backwoods, looks like a nice system you have there! I think it helps to bring it inside for a few months also, if nothing else than to dry all the rain/snow off the wood.

That's a pile of wood you have there!

That picture was taken one time when we had over 20 cord stacked. This is our more normal way of stacking:

 

[Fanatical1]

Got nothing to add that hasn't been said, but I do want to say I love the Hocking Hills area. We stayed at the state park campground a number of times. The last time we were there was two years ago at the end of June when that storm went thru, which was pretty darn scary, to say the least.

We like it very much there also and have camped there many times. I was there when that storm hit! It was a on a Friday later afternoon and we were driving to our place. Trees down everywhere. When we pulled up to our long driveway we had a hickory down over the driveway and a huge red oak. What a mess. Ended up sawing wood up all weekend just to make the driveway passable. Lost power for 10 days on that storm! In fact I plan to burn some of that very same wood in the new woodstove this fall.

We went to Lake logan the next day to hang out with the kids and ran into people from the campground. They said it was a scary experience with all the trees and branches coming down around them. Lucky no one was killed in their camper.

We like camping in Michigan also and go to various places like Silver Lake and Sleeping Bear Dunes. Very nice up there.