Buyng a new woodstove

[barko1]

I have a good size Buck Stove in the main living area here in N. GA but I think I want to add a small wood burner to the far master bedroom to heat it at night as well as the adjacent master bath. The bedroom doesn't get cold per say and is about 350 sq ft. The bath isn't well insulated and what should be the warmest room is the coldest. It has a large glass block window that measure in the mid 40 degrees during winter nights, brrr. These two rooms connect and I think I would install a through the wall fan to dump stove heat into the 170 sq ft bath (and a large closet that is open to the bath). I also have another bath fan in the house that if I turn it on would pull some of the bathroom air into another bedroom and utility room so I am not too concerned about too much heat. I plan to run the big stove in the morning and then the small bedroom stove in the evening and just let in die by morning when I would light the other one.

So I have been researching smaller stoves that are rated for around 1000'. Looking at the Osborne 900, nice steel stove at a reasonable cost, a Lopi cast iron for more money and a Craftsbury 8391 that is also cast and with soapstone inside instead of firebrick. Any perspectives on these stoves or my plan in general? Heating season is about done here but 30 this morning and did have a nice fire. Thanks

 

[yankeerider]

For the way you want to use the new stove I would go with cast iron or steel rather than soapstone. The soapstone soaks up the heat when the stove is first lit, so it can be over an hour before it starts to provide any significant heat. I'm not familiar with the Craftsbury, so can't comment there, but we use a Hearthstone soapstone in our living space, and I use our old Vermont Castings cast iron stove in my shop, and these two form the majority of my opinion.

 

[teg]

I have a buck stove that heats up the main area. I put my return air for my HVAC pretty high in the sidewall of the cathedral ceiling. I just run the hvac fan to disperse the heat to the whole house.

I would look into extra insulation and / or replacing the glass block... fix the leaks vs. burning more wood.

 

[Billrog]

Stick an in-fared heater in the bathroom ?

 

[Zerk]

I wonder if I should have gotten a bigger stove. I have heard you can always make a small fire in a big stove. I wish I could pack more wood in mine, also it fills up with ash quick. Though I probably just have to get in the habit of scooping it out in the morning.

I am in northern part of the country though.

I know someone with a soapstone. Ya it takes a long time to get it hot, but once it is hot it stays hot. If you have another source of heat to ramp up the temp when you need it, it might not be bad. Where you are at get it hot, and then let it die, and you may be ok for awhile.

 

[sd455dan]

Hard to beat a Blaze King catalytic stove for ability to burn a long time and squeeze the most btu's out of the wood.

 

[2458n]

I thought you had to sneak a wood burning stove into your house at night. Insurance companies dislike them around here.

 

[PhysAssist]

We have heated with a Lopi Endeavor in the living room of our mostly open floor plan 1875 sq foot ranch-style log home since 1994, and it is both efficient and fast heating.

We can get a 20-30 degree increase in ambient room temp in the living room within about an hour or so of lighting it, and except for the really cold (below the 10 degree F mark ) days, we basically light a fire in the evening, let it burn mostly down, and restoke just before going to sleep so the heat in the house will glide down through to the AM.

We also have a gas hot air furnace, but hate the swings in temperature which seem to be associated with using it.

The guy who built the house put the LR main air return for the furnace in the top of the living room wall almost opposite the wood stove, and made sure that there was a recirculate function on the thermostat, so if we turn it on, the heat gets cycled through into the bedrooms and kitchen even with the doors shut, but in practice, we never use it, because it gets too hot in the bedrooms.

Instead, we leave the bedroom door open ( it's just the two of us now) and have a little room balancing fan in the upper corner of the doorway for the really cold nights.

We love the Lopi stove, and the only maintenance it has required, beyond cleaning it out and cleaning the door glass from time to time, is that every 5 years or so, we have to replace the fiberglass rope door gasket, which is easy peasy.

As I/we are gettin a little long in the tooth and decrepit in body, we will likely be exchanging (removing and selling) the Lopi in favor of a coal stove, because we're spoiled by the type of steady bone deep heat we have gotten used to with the 20+ years of using the Lopi, but want to not have to deal with cutting, splitting, storing, and moving firewood, otherwise, I'm sure it would keep providing the same reliable service long after we're dead and cremated.

The only moving parts beside the door and latch is the sliding air damper and diverter for the secondary burning air both of which are of cast iron and never need replacement.

Oops, that reminded me that we have had to replace the secondary burn tubes (there are 3 of them in the top inside of the stove) which are black iron pipes with small holes drilled along them to provide extra O2 for burning the hot gases and reducing the output of greenhouse gases and creosote.

I'm cheap and have some metal workin tools and experience, so I have made my own replacement pipes, but there are some stainless steel ones available on EBay for around $75 for the set of three, and they would likely never need replacement.

I have never used a catalytic stove, but we have friends who have (the guy who built and sold us our house is one), who have and did not care for how finicky they can be and how expensive replacing the catalytic converter became, and not that awfully long after they bought it (about 10 yrs afterwards)- they have told us many times how much they miss their little (now our) Lopi.

That is my experience with the Lopi, which I would not trade for anything except a full-on built on site masonry stove.

 

[PhysAssist]

PS: Our insurance company has no problem with our wood stove, we didn't even have to get any kind of rider for it, and since we just got a local water district (which we voted against), with citified fire hydrants, we just also got a discount for that.

 

[teg]

...The guy who built the house put the LR main air return for the furnace in the top of the living room wall almost opposite the wood stove, and made sure that there was a recirculate function on the thermostat, so if we turn it on, the heat gets cycled through into the bedrooms and kitchen even with the doors shut, but in practice, we never use it, because it gets too hot in the bedrooms...

We might wear out the on/off switch since we use it so much. We circulate and heat the bedrooms just before going to sleep. Last thing we do is turn the fan off... We also have alarm clocks that display temperature in each room. Adjust the fan if it gets too high in the bedrooms. I hate a cold bedroom...