Anyone burning the progress hybrid in this subzero snap?

What kind of burn times do you get with a smaller load, say half full? I'm assuming a half load in the PH would be close to a full load in the Keystone.. Any problem with the secondaries taking over and having it run too hot when you want a low and slow burn?

 

In my case, 1/2 load set at low will give me 8 or 10 hours with hardwoods (black locust and red oak, sugar maple). I find split size makes a BIG difference in burn times. If you do a 1/2 load with smaller splits, you will greatly reduce the burn time and get more secondaries fireing. It's much easier to slow down larger splits, for example 10 or 12" rounds simply split in half rather than quartered. I'm now splitting my stuff much bigger.

 

I agree with the 1/2 load, 8-10 hours with hardwood. I'm still playing with split size, but so far I'm not seeing a huge difference in burn time.

Yes, smaller splits definitely make it harder to quiet down the secondaries, but the funny thing is I'm still not seeing a big difference in burn time even with smaller splits and more active secondaries. I half loaded the stove with really small splits of soft maple this morning at 6:30 (3-4" max) and am just reloading now 9.5 hours later w/ stovetop of 200F.

 

How many sq ft are you heating, Fireman? How big is your stove room? Sorry for all the questions....Just don't want to regret our decision. You and Macharia have been a big help so far!

 

Have the secondaries firing been a problem for you in the past? Seems like some people have an issue with them. Thanks for all the replies!

 

Always really glad to help. Sites like this rescued me from almost making a really bad decision.

I'm heating a 2300 sq ft colonial with tons of double hung windows, average to below average insulation. The stove room is 480 sq ft but 10' of wall opens up into a small kitchen, so it's really directly heating about 630 total sq feet of open space.

I don't think you would want the Progress to be installed in too tiny a room - it does put out a lot of heat. What is your floor plan like?

 

Will go through my pictures for a few photos of the stove. If I don't find suitable, I'll take some pics later tonight or tomorrow.

I love the light gray. Have it on the now retired Fireview as well. Have a dark blue marbled hearth pad from Woodstock that is now in its 11th year and looks like it did out of the showroom. Really compliments the stove. I sprayed the stovepipe to match the stove. Usually take the slipsection outdoors to clean and respray when I sweep the chimney, about every two years. Have just installed the flue damper, so it isn't sprayed yet...was too cold outside to do it an installation time. Will spray in the Spring. Stove would look better if that piece was sprayed to match...One of the reasons I'm going to look for some older pics...

This stove has had heavy use for three years. I do all my cooking on it for over half the year.

I usually have some of the soapstone off the top, because I am usually cooking on the stove....so if I take new pics they won't be quite as pretty as the stove can look.

I wanted to put in a soapstone hearth, but Woodstock advised against it, as they said the soapstone would crack if I dropped a heavy log on it. For about 9 years I regretted going with their recommendation as I never dropped a log. With the Progress Hybrid, longer lengths, bigger loading door, larger diameter logs, and I HAVE knocked a few logs over hard on the pad with no ill effects. So, I should be thanking Woodstock....

 

Our PH is in the kitchen, which is about a 17'/side square, with 2 doors plus a 10' opening into a hallway for heat to move to other parts of the house. When we are pushing it along, the temp a foot down from the ceiling runs in the mid 90's, but the thermo on the far wall from the stove at head-height runs at 70 in cold weather, and is at 75 now on a mild evening. Where I sit at the kitchen table I get a cool breeze coming in from another room, so generally don't get cooked out of this room. When having guests over for dinner in the mild weather we are apt to play it safe and under-fire.

 

It's very easy to control the burn in the PH. You will be able to control the stove temp by when you start to shut down the air. Without exception, my experience has been that when I shut down the air the temp does not climb on me. So, if I want a hotter fire because it is colder out, I let the temp climb with the air partially open until the stove top has reached the temp I want to burn at, then I close the air. I have already closed the bypass to engage the cat, that was done as soon as the probe flue thermometer registered 500.

I am one of the persons who has had difficulty maintaining a straight cat burn in the PH. My stove would go to a secondary burn very quickly. But my average stovetop temp was between 350 and 450. And I never had trouble controlling the amount of heat I was putting into the house....I just had trouble getting a fire with no flame and only red coals glowing. However, I have a tall chimney, internal, cold climate, exposed site, and I had a terrific draft. So, my flue would get hotter than ideal (but not dangerous) and I lost a lot of heat up the chimney, and the draft pulled a lot of oxygen through the stove. I recently installed a flue damper, and that has made all the difference. My flue temps have dropped, it is easier to get a slow all cat burn (very easy to do, actually). Last night, for example, the low was about 23 degrees...warm for here. I loaded 2 sugar maple splits and two hickory splits at about 10 PM. The stove was probably a little over half full. Because it was mild out, I just let the stove get to about 400 before shutting the air completely. I had a low cat burn all night. 7AM I still had a lot of wood in the stove, so I left things alone...stovetop was still about 350. About noon the temp started to drop so I started opening the air. Opened it gradually until about 3 when I noticed the temp had dropped to just under 250, but I still had lots of coals and the house temp was still about 67. So I opened the air all the way, temp went up to slightly over 250, then dropped, and by 4 most of the coals were burned down and the house was at 65. I took out a few shovels of ash, raked the few coals to the front, put in four small ash rounds. Fifteen minutes later the stove was settled in for the long burn and I went out for a walk. When I came back the house was warm and comfortable.

So load to reload was about 18 hours. But that was a straight cat burn on a milder day.

8 hours burns are a snap in any weather with a half load, 12 hours to small amount of coals. I'm sure those times are longer for persons with a lesser draft.

I would not be concerned about the PH heating you out of a 1650 sq foot home. As long as you can move the heat around, the PH would be my recommendation over the Fireview at that size. It is a beautiful stove, gives you the reserve of a great deal of potential heat in a very cold snap, is far better than the Fireview for cooking on, whether for pleasure, for all your needs, or for use during a power outage. It also has a large loading door, which makes loading much easier and enables you to load larger pieces of wood. And it has a much larger viewing window which gives you both a beautiful view of the fire and much more heat quickly out of the stove.
If you cannot move heat around because of home layout (and thus are really trying to heat less than 1650 sq ft), and would not benefit from the cooking or esthestic aspects, then you would probably be fine with a Fireview. It is also a very impressive heater and is rated up to 1800 sq feet, and Woodstock is conservative in its ratings. It is also a beautiful stove. I had one for 7 years before the PH, and I have kept mine, even though I am not using it now.

Additional info: The PH is significantly bigger than the FIreview. However, Woodstock tweeked the PH until it passed inspection when placed on the same size hearth pad as the one designed for the Fireview, because they knew many of their customers with Fireviews wanted the larger stove because their homes were really too large for the Fireview. So both stoves take the same footprint in the house, use the same hearth pad and flue (with Fireview rear vented(only option) and PH top vented[can be top or rear vented]) and are easily interchangeable. This makes it easy for you to buy the stove you think you would prefer. If that choice turns out to be wrong and you want the other stove, then you can return the one and get a full refund and replace it with the other.

Also, the PH, while much larger, has much closer clearances to combustibles(6 inches vs 18 on Fireview) and can be top vented, so the stove actually comes less far into the room on the hearth, so feels like it takes less room. It also has a few more inches in front of it on the hearth pad, which I like.

 

I agree with what Sherwoods saying (didn't want to quote his long post), the PH is very easy to control, if I need heat I let it climb to 550 then turn it down, it'll top off about 625, if I don't need as much heat I just turn it down sooner. Of course the more heat you need the more wood you burn. I'm able to turn it down at 350 and get a mostly cat burn and that can go 12+ hours. I love this stove, I hesitated because I had to pick it and get it into the house but I found a way as everyone seems to do. I guarantee if you get one you'll be happy you did.

 

We have a Cape Cod with a one story addition off the back of the house. Good insulation. Our stove is in the addition, which is just shy of 400 sq ft, with 11 windows and one door. There's a 5' x 7' opening from the stove room to the dining room. The Dining room is a somewhat open layout to the living room and kitchen, with the stairs to the 2nd floor adjacent to it. 1150 sq ft down stairs, 500 upstairs. Full uninsulated basement..not included in the sq footage.

I installed a jumper duct from a bedroom on the first floor to the stove room, so with a couple well placed fans we are able to get a convection loop (don't know if that is the right term)going. We also have a through wall fan installed close to the ceiling in the addition which blows warm air to the 2nd floor. We only occasionally run the through wall fan for a couple minutes at a time, and you can feel the warm air working its way through it when it is not on.

I wouldn't say moving the heat out of the stove room to the rest of the house is a problem for us, there just isn't enough heat to move! We always have the blinds down in the stove room to help insulate, but on very cold days it's still a little chilly sitting by the windows. We'd love to have the blinds up to enjoy the view and I'm thinking, along with using the through wall fan when needed, these things would keep the stove room from getting too warm.

Decisions, decisions....

 

The Progress Hybrid won't be too much for you. With that much fenestration in the stove room, I'd go for it in preference to the Fireview. You will lose a lot of heat out of those windows, especially on windy, cold days. Does the addition face south and east, or north and west? If it faces south or east and is protected from the north and west, you'll have both less heat loss and more solar gain. Facing North or West, you'll just have to burn hotter on colder days, but the PH will manage it.

 

3 sides exposed. The back of the addition faces North. East side of the addition is set in from the main house about 2'and West side about 8'. The main house shades the addition for most of the day.

 

That's like my stove room: bright, but no direct sunlight and very exposed to the weather. I'd say the Progress Hybrid is in order.

 

I only had a "problem" with the secondary's taking off too much when my stove was new and it had a leak which Woodstock fixed. Now I can pretty much control the 2ndaries with the air control. If I want em, turn up the air, if I want to kill tem, shut down the air, your always in control. Sure, if you load a really hot stove with lots of coals in it with a bunch of small, really dry softwoods like pine, sassafras and cedar.... you'll probably get the 2ndaries firing for an hour or 2 like it or not, but it will settle down and become controllable again afterwards.

Somebody once posted on the old site, "you can't over fire the PH, I've tried!". That user said they filled the firebox to the brim with kindling sized splits of really dry pine/Douglas fir or something, it might have been 2x4's that were split up into splinters... anyway, he lit it up and left the air wide open and he said he had a raging fire for a few hours, but it never over fired. I ordered my PH the next day after reading that, and have been extremely happy with that decision.

On top of the stove being the best looking stove out there if you ask me (it's a piece of art really!), it runs so good with long cat burns, an unbelievable amount of heat output, it sips wood, and then throw in what a great company Woodstock is to deal with. I'm not sure why everyone doesn't have one!

 

The light gray PH:

 

This one didn't load for some reason...

 

And now it loaded twice.....I'm going to find a better picture for you.

 

A bit dark....

 

Here's a couple photos of my PH with my newly installed firewood rack made of black pipe. I'm heating an almost completely uninsulated 115 year old farmhouse that's about 1700 Sq ft. The PH will heat the stove room nicely to 70 - 80 degrees and the rest of the house will sit in the high 60s to low 70s. I'm definitely investing in some blow in insulation this year to hold in the heat generated by this stove. It's pretty comfortable for me as is with no insulation in the house however my soon to be wife is always cold even if it's 78 degrees in here. However she has stated that the PH is, by far, her favorite addition to the house. During warmer 30 to 40 degree weather the PH almost cooks us out of the house. She gets real worried when I do all cat burns where the firebox is dark because she still can't believe the stove is producing a lot of heat even without active flames. She tells me often that I need to restart the fire because it went out. She's too used to the smoke dragon we used to use in the basement which needs a raging fire that's almost constantly in need of more wood every 2 hours compared to the PH which is reloaded 2 or 3 times a day. Yesterday I came home late to a cold stove and a 48 degree house and the PH warmed it up to 70 in just over an hour and a half after I restarted it. That's pretty nice for a heat source that costs me nothing to run.