I have a dilemma. The girlfriend and I plan to put a stove upstairs in our front room. It will be used all year, in the very cold months I'll fire up the Woodchuck in the basement to help out if needed. My question is should I build a stove or buy one? Stoves can get pretty expensive and I know I can build one way cheaper. I'm a welder/fabricator by trade and the company I work for is also a steel distributor. Thanks in advance guys.
Buy. Buy an EPA stove. You'll get good efficiency, a clean burn, a safe stove, and a stove that will be insurable. Price range is significant. If you need to stay within a fairly low budget, look at the NC stoves. They tend to go in sale at HD now or soon, and can be had at very reasonable prices. Many, many people are very happy with them.
You can build a stove and many people do, i don't have the ability so it's not even an option for me. But I will say that a good stove will drastically reduce the amount of wood used. From a pre EPA stove to a cat or secondary burn you can save 30% in wood usage. So I would think that from homemade to EPA stove you would use 30-50% less wood. If it was me I would buy, but could be good to build. Another thing to consider is the insurance, if something happens and it's a homemade stove will your insurance cover the loss?
Buy one if you can for the above reasons. You don't want air quality issues or to have to burn excessive amounts of wood. You say you plan to use it all year. does that include cooking? Take you time, shop around for some good deals and get the stove that meets your needs.
I've built many things but a wood stove is not something I would trust my family with not to mention the lack of UL listing and insurance issues. If it was in a small shop or outbuilding then it is a grey area. You maybe the only other person I have heard or seen that has burned a woodchuck. FYI they are still in business in Wisconsin. One fine forced air heater, but they chew through wood like a woodchuck. I miss that beast when it gets cold.
Thanks a lot guys. Those are all points I had thought about and why I was leaning towards buying one. I meant using all year as in the burning season. I doubt we would ever cook on it unless it was chili or a venison stew. Chew through wood?!!! I guess so! 65% efficient in a new construction home. My house is old, the addition was built in '74 and the main house has a stone foundation if that says anything for the age. We need a few new windows and better insulation. So I'd say it down to about 45%. We've burnt 15 face cord already this season.
You can get a Blaze king like I have and jump to an 88% efficient stove. Or go with a less expensive non cat stove and still get great results and not break the bank. The Englander/Summers Heat stoves are very well priced for what you get. The NC 30 is a popular stove for not too much money.
Two pronged approach if you can swing it. Insulate anything you can over the course of the next few months, and buy a new stove, or a used EPA stove. I had my eye on an NC30 on CL for a bit, and the guy was down to $200. It needed new glass, and I don't know what else. Maybe you could find something like that if you keep your eyes open, and replace a part or 2. 5 cord to this point would kill me, since we're only about 1/2 way through the burn season.
I think the homemade one you would enjoy it more but because of regulations of the epa its better have a tag on it for insurance reasons. I also have a Woodchuck 2900 what's your model?
I've been looking on CL. Everything I find lately is old junk. I guess I'll bite the bullet and buy new. My Woodchuck is model 526.
On the insurance forms I have filled out regarding wood burning stoves, there is always the question about what inspection standards company is the stove tested with. They do make you jump through hoops and circles from time to time.
And improve insulation throughout the house. I've cut my heating bill in half with the little bit I have done.
You've burned about 5 cord of wood already this year so that means you are burning a lot more than most folks do. In our case, we used to burn 6 cord per year and one year I remember 7 1/2 cord. When we got the Fireview (a cat stove), we cut our wood use down to 3 cord per year. Not only that, we used to have to close off part of the house in winter and still were not comfortable. Now we keep the house around 80 and keep on smiling! I love putting up wood but not to the point I want to cut that much every year.
Alot of good points made already. Mine will go along with some of them. Buy new, get the most state of the art EPA stove you can, because you are buying wood burning technology that has improved so much over the years. I'm not sure (unless you copy one) you could produce one any cheaper with the clean burn secondaries or a cat.
Having built my last three stoves, I would strongly recommend buying one. The basic underlying problem is that a single person cannot achieve the 'economy of scale' that a production facility can. Even given free access to all the needed components, there are just too many man- hours in a modern stove to make it cost effective. My last stove was built with 24/7 woodburning in mind and it did fantastically well as far as loading (a top loader), ash handling (a sealed ash chamber that was 9" X 12" X 30" long- far, far bigger than anything else on the market) and overall user friendliness. It was also catalyst equipped but it was troublesome to keep it engaged in an efficient cat burning mode. It was absolutely better than a pure smoke- dragon but not the equal of a well designed, insulated firebox, 'combustor on top' design. I am now using an Ideal Steel from Woodstock Soapstone and while there are advantages to both stoves, the I.S. is using less wood and burning much more efficiently. And at approx. $2K, I could not duplicate this stove in any kind of economically reasonable manner (and I too have access to sufficient fabrication equipment as well as the ability to design / model the device). My last stove that the I.S. replaced: all steel plate construction, all the silver parts are stainless steel fabrications too. Twin windows with fireplace grates used as andirons. A 'door within a door' on top, the small one is 6" square, the medium sized one is 6" X 12", and the large one is 12" X 24". A built-in 2.4 gallon water trough on top, made out of stainless steel welded into the top of the stove, w/ stainless steel cover. The stove is probably bigger than it looks with a firebox of approx. 10 cubic feet (no typo: ten cubic feet). It was easy to load, easy to remove the ash, and easy to maintain in a burning condition. There is a fireplate 10" above the bottom of the stove with a 6"X6" port into the firebox on the right. So reach in with a long handle rake, pull all the coals and ash to the right end of the stove and load wood. But the uninsulated firebox was inefficient, so too was the stove. So having been both ways, I recommend an efficient, cat. based stove rather than building anything unless you have some really specific, peculiar need that only a custom will fulfill. Brian Brian
From above reasons I would buy. And look used or buy an NC30. There cheap and good heaters. Insurance would be my concern. Also you will get a way more efficient stove. No way you will come up with a more efficient design than the manufacturer did with all their trials and money.
What is your price range? What size stove do you need? How far are you willing to drive to pick up a stove?
