What kind of Woodstove should I get?

[fitwind]

I had bought a vogelzang mountaineer stove a couple of yrs. ago, this is my 3rd winter heating the house with it. I am not real happy with this woodstove, it does not do the job adequately. I was careful on getting a stove I thought.. this was suppose to heat up to 2000 sq. ft., but it won't even keep our 800 sq. ft. home warm. The warmest I get it up to is 69 and that is with it running all day, then when I wake up it is down to 52. I have a 800 sq. ft. small farmette, it is 85 yrs. old , and old windows.This is our only source of heat in the house. I live in Southwest Missouri and we do get some cold winters. What kind of woodstove should I get? Has anyone had any good experiences ? I really like not having huge electric or gas bills by using a woodstove. I love the wood heat...any suggestions would be great !!!

[RiverPines]

Somethings not right.

Our little box stove with a heat reclaimer heats 700 sq ft to 74 degrees when its -20 outside.
Our place is a old trailer with almost no insulation and windows that are one pane and drafty as heck!
We wake up and its 48 in the house and 4 hours later its 72.

Our little box stove can only burn 2, 24 inch split logs at a time because its so small.

I sometimes wonder if the old fashion little cast iron wood burners are still better than all these newer ones that cost a heck of a lot more!

We got ours for 150, 3 years ago.

Grant you it needs more room and safety measures because the whole thing gets hot...but thats heat coming off it!

Its great when we have all been cold and we circle around it to get all warmed up again!! Just dont stand too close.

[mdharris68]

How familiar with woodstoves are you. That stove would heat my 2200 ft2 house easy. The problem may be that you are not operating it correctly.

1. Do you have an outlet damper in the flue pipe?

2. Are you burning dry seasoned wood?

3. Have you learned how to control the stove to burn a hot fire?

[cbcansurvive]

Vogelzangs are typically way overrated as far as square footage/BTUs. Good draft, dry wood, etc...will all help, but they're just not ideal. The other issue with most radiant stoves is that no matter how much heat they put out, they're space heaters. Oftentimes to heat an entire house you need to run the stove as hot as possible without overfiring which is fine, but it will make the room it's in unbearably hot. This is why I went with an Englander wood furnace. It's a forced air furnace that plumbs into my existing ductwork (I have oil heat) with its own blower, but I use the furnace fan to supplement the air movement. You can read more about it here:

http://englandsstoveworks.com/28-3500.html

Basically there are two kinds of stoves-pretty space heaters and ugly workhorses. The 28-3500 is the latter. Not something you want in your living room, but it will heat your entire house just as evenly as a gas or oil fired central furnace. Not that the space heaters don't have their place though. If you have a really small home or a really open layout they can work quite well. Personally I'm going to get an Englander 30 (small radiant stove) when we add on to provide heat for the addition, but it will only be a small one.

[Beltane]

Hummmm...I'm not an expert but we purchased an older (no-reburn) Hearthstone this fall that we love. It's really a workhorse, so it has a big appetite for wood. I believe it has an 18 hour burn time with a huge firebox. We have a small two-story cape that it heats very well, but it would probably be much more efficient if we could replace the windows and add insulation to the walls. At least we don't wake up and have frost inside anymore!

[ericjeeper]

Their wood stoves and furnaces on clearance right now.

[marvella]

would tightening up the house help? old houses often lose a lot of heat. insulation? sealed windows?

[GREENCOUNTYPETE]

i have a quadrafire 3100 step top , it has a lot more to do with stopping the drafts into the house and good insulation my house is avrage to poor for insulaton for around here walls ar decent with dence pac celuloas but attic only has about 6 inches

i was able to knotice a difference with every few windows i sealed added 2 inch foam to the pantery window and clsed th ebasment door ,

my stove heats our 1300 sq foot 2 story house enought to keep it 69 when 20 below if you stay on the fire and 84 then 30 above usualy when an average 20 outside 74-75 is doable but with fewer reloads 68-69 is easily accomplished

with the vogle stove you may want to try adding a majic heater heat reclamer to the stack a freind of mine had very good luck with this in his work shop

my understanding is that the voges are not air tight epa rated high efficency stoves you will find the stoves in the high eficency epa rated catagory will not need a heat reclamer

but for now get plastic on all your old windows and maybe try the majic heater heat reclamer this can be done for i belive about 150 dollars much less than a new high efficency stove , by the way how much wood are you using i have gone thru about 2 t 2.5 cord and i am over half way thru my heating season i plan to insulat a lot more for next year to reduce that

[fitwind]

Originally Posted by mdharris68

How familiar with woodstoves are you. That stove would heat my 2200 ft2 house easy. The problem may be that you are not operating it correctly.

1. Do you have an outlet damper in the flue pipe?

2. Are you burning dry seasoned wood?

3. Have you learned how to control the stove to burn a hot fire?

My DH has plenty of experience operating a woodstove and has had wood heat most of his life. He is from England and it can get pretty cold there. I personally have not had a woodstove I grew up in California and Nevada and had no need for one. So to answer your questions.

Yes we do have a damper in the flue pipe
Yes we are burning seasoned wood, not green wood
Yes DH knows how to to control the fire so it will burn hot.

I can tell you for a fact that this stove would not heat your house easily that I know for sure.

[fitwind]

I will have to check that out and look at the quadrafire 3100 step top

Originally Posted by GREENCOUNTYPETE

i have a quadrafire 3100 step top , it has a lot more to do with stopping the drafts into the house and good insulation my house is avrage to poor for insulaton for around here walls ar decent with dence pac celuloas but attic only has about 6 inches

i was able to knotice a difference with every few windows i sealed added 2 inch foam to the pantery window and clsed th ebasment door ,

my stove heats our 1300 sq foot 2 story house enought to keep it 69 when 20 below if you stay on the fire and 84 then 30 above usualy when an average 20 outside 74-75 is doable but with fewer reloads 68-69 is easily accomplished

with the vogle stove you may want to try adding a majic heater heat reclamer to the stack a freind of mine had very good luck with this in his work shop



my understanding is that the voges are not air tight epa rated high efficency stoves you will find the stoves in the high eficency epa rated catagory will not need a heat reclamer

but for now get plastic on all your old windows and maybe try the majic heater heat reclamer this can be done for i belive about 150 dollars much less than a new high efficency stove , by the way how much wood are you using i have gone thru about 2 t 2.5 cord and i am over half way thru my heating season i plan to insulat a lot more for next year to reduce that

[fitwind]

Originally Posted by marvella

would tightening up the house help? old houses often lose a lot of heat. insulation? sealed windows?

I know that would help alot I was going to start doing that next year I know we looked at the insulation thta we have and it is pretty good but the windows we want to replace...

[fitwind]

Originally Posted by cbcansurvive

Vogelzangs are typically way overrated as far as square footage/BTUs. Good draft, dry wood, etc...will all help, but they're just not ideal. The other issue with most radiant stoves is that no matter how much heat they put out, they're space heaters. Oftentimes to heat an entire house you need to run the stove as hot as possible without overfiring which is fine, but it will make the room it's in unbearably hot. This is why I went with an Englander wood furnace. It's a forced air furnace that plumbs into my existing ductwork (I have oil heat) with its own blower, but I use the furnace fan to supplement the air movement. You can read more about it here:

http://englandsstoveworks.com/28-3500.html

Basically there are two kinds of stoves-pretty space heaters and ugly workhorses. The 28-3500 is the latter. Not something you want in your living room, but it will heat your entire house just as evenly as a gas or oil fired central furnace. Not that the space heaters don't have their place though. If you have a really small home or a really open layout they can work quite well. Personally I'm going to get an Englander 30 (small radiant stove) when we add on to provide heat for the addition, but it will only be a small one.

Is this something that you can have inside the house. I read the info from the link you posted. Could you tell me how you have yours setup. Do you have a pipe to the chimney and a pipe to your duct work too? I would love to hear more about this.

[fitwind]

Originally Posted by RiverPines

Somethings not right.

Our little box stove with a heat reclaimer heats 700 sq ft to 74 degrees when its -20 outside.
Our place is a old trailer with almost no insulation and windows that are one pane and drafty as heck!
We wake up and its 48 in the house and 4 hours later its 72.

Our little box stove can only burn 2, 24 inch split logs at a time because its so small.

I sometimes wonder if the old fashion little cast iron wood burners are still better than all these newer ones that cost a heck of a lot more!

We got ours for 150, 3 years ago.

Grant you it needs more room and safety measures because the whole thing gets hot...but thats heat coming off it!

Its great when we have all been cold and we circle around it to get all warmed up again!! Just dont stand too close.

What kind of stove do you have?

[Cabin Fever]

Every modern air-tight woodburning stove, that uses either secondary combustion or a catylst (for added efficiency), should but out pretty-near the same about of heat (BTUs), assuming they are all buring an identical load of firewood. Possibly a woodburing stove with a built-in fan will but out a little more heat.

The primary differences between quality, modern woodburning stoves is how "fast" the heat is provided to the room (ie, BTUs per hour). Some stoves will let air in faster, thus the wood burns faster, thus the heat per hour emitted is at a higher rate. Other woodstoves, like those utilizing soapstone, provide the heat slower to the room, but a given amount of heat is proved over a longer period.

I don't know much about vogelzang woodstoves, but based on your description I'd say the house is the problem, not the woodstove. Is your home fully insulated and air-tight? Do you use insultated windows or storm windows and storm doors?

[cbcansurvive]

Originally Posted by fitwind

Is this something that you can have inside the house. I read the info from the link you posted. Could you tell me how you have yours setup. Do you have a pipe to the chimney and a pipe to your duct work too? I would love to hear more about this.

I don't have any pictures of mine but yes, this is not an outdoor wood boiler or anything like that. This is simply a forced hot air furnace that burns wood. If you click on the enlarged view of the furnace in the link that I posted you can see two outlets on the top of the stove. The one in the front is the hot air outlet. The blower on the back blows air up through the jacket around the firebox. The hot air exits through the 8" hole at the top which you would connect via standard 8" round galvanized HVAC duct to the plenum on your gas or oil furnace. The plenum is the large rectangular duct sitting on top of the furnace that carries air to the rest of the house. If you have central air conditioning you'll want to install a damper in the ductwork so that you're not blowing cold air into the stove jacket during the summer.

The outlet in the rear of the stove is the chimney. This would be vented like any other wood stove. It must have it's own chimney and cannot use the same chimney that vents the gases from the main furnace. As I said before the Englander has its own blower, but its only 850 CFM so it helps to use the furnace fan (most furnaces now have the ability to run the fan only) to distribute the warm air throughout the house. Also you want to try to mount the wood furnace as close as possible to the main furnace so as not to lose too much heat in the ductwork. I was lucky because I had a basement window right next to my main furnace so I was able to place the wood furnace 6" away and run the chimney right out the window. You can search for more information on these furnaces at www.hearth.com I know there are pictures of various installs there but can't find them at the moment.

[copperpennykids]

I vote for a KUMA. Those stoves are awesome! We had an old Fisher stove many moons ago and it couldn't heat the house nearly as well as the Kuma does. Plus the Kuma uses less wood than the Fisher did.

Many many people up here in North Idaho have Kuma stoves and every single one loves them. Perhaps not the fanciest/prettiest stove out there, but they do the job. And not bad looking...just more about function than form.

[fitwind]

Originally Posted by Cabin Fever

Every modern air-tight woodburning stove, that uses either secondary combustion or a catylst (for added efficiency), should but out pretty-near the same about of heat (BTUs), assuming they are all buring an identical load of firewood. Possibly a woodburing stove with a built-in fan will but out a little more heat.

The primary differences between quality, modern woodburning stoves is how "fast" the heat is provided to the room (ie, BTUs per hour). Some stoves will let air in faster, thus the wood burns faster, thus the heat per hour emitted is at a higher rate. Other woodstoves, like those utilizing soapstone, provide the heat slower to the room, but a given amount of heat is proved over a longer period.

I don't know much about vogelzang woodstoves, but based on your description I'd say the house is the problem, not the woodstove. Is your home fully insulated and air-tight? Do you use insultated windows or storm windows and storm doors?

Our house could be more insulated than it is and our old single pane windows do need to be replaced. At the same time I believe that something is not right because I forgot to add that I use 2 space heaters that warm up the place usually a few degrees by themselves. I can take one space heater out and the place will drop two degrees easily. Our weather is usually in the 30's and then 20's at night. I just think that it is the stove for I know some stoves have a adjustable vent for airflow in to the fire this stove does not I am almost thinking that this is part of the problem because we cannot have our damper adjusted properly so we can get more heat in the house.

[sugarbush]

Stay away from Vermont Castings; They are all looks and no heating value. Duchwest is owned by the same company and is a great stove for heating.