How are the square foot capacity of stove rating figured? Is there an industrial or government standard or just an arbitrary number the manufacturer put on?
Arbitrary number manufacturer put on a lot depends on seller the one listed in BBS are that many square feet in alabama.
Funny. I read the initial post and thought cuft capacity not sqft. I was wondering if it was a trick question. A 2.3 cuft firebox is just that!! Anyway, I would use the BTU output to determine he appropriate size stove. If you have an existing heating system, you can see how much it runs on the coldest nights and then determine your BTU requirement. If it's a 100k BTU system that runs 50% of the time then a 50k BTU stove would be in order. Of course the output you get would be determined by your installation and the quality of your firewood. I'd tend to go oversized. You can build a small fire in a big stove but you can't build a big fire in a small stove.
This has some info. A non-commercial service in support of responsible home heating with wood - How to Buy the Right Wood Stove
That works better for a pellet stove where the BTU is steady but realize wood stove BTU vary a lot throughout the burn and dependent on wood like you say. I'm guessing the stove rating, if even close, is a peak number, and I suspect some use different methods to determine. What this doesn't tell you at all is how many hours this will last. Most stoves could probably do a lot of btu's in one hour, but if you need 8 or 12 or 16 hours it's a bit tougher to estimate, and burn time estimates are often not much better than some random number their marketing team came up with. Just to throw some numbers out there a good example is exactly what I dealt with... Jotul 550 Rockland 65,000 BTU Woodstock Ideal Steel 60,530 BTU Lets just say there was no comparison... the Woodstock can crank out a good amount more heat than the Jotul. The Jotul was an insert, so I think more of those supposed BTUs are wasted up the stack. My house really struggled even loading on much shorter load intervals than it's rated 10hr burn (couldn't get 10 on ash). The Ideal Steel on the other hand could keep the house just as warm while exceeding its 10-14hr rating to say around 16 hours, using the same pile of ash firewood. Yeah the Woodstock is a little bigger of a stove, but I'd have to reload the Jotul almost 3 times for one load of the Ideal Steel which is nearly double the amount of firewood consumed with the Jotul for the same time period. I wish there was a reliable way to figure this stuff out but I've went through 3 stoves now, well 4 if you include the crappy USSC furnace that came with the house, to finally find one (actually a pair) that work well to keep the place warm and last during my workday. My place takes a lot more btu's than the square footage in this climate would normally suggest though, poorly insulated, leaky, etc.
Thanks for the link. Very helpful. I noticed that you have a Buck Stove. My new stove is a Buck FS21. A POS as far as heat output. The ratings were 800 to 1600 sq ft. Its all it an do to heat 200 square at single digit outside temps.
yeah Woodstock was not included in my original comment.. they seem to be more realistic... do not know how many cubic feet original poster is looking to heat but after reading this and many other forums my top 3 woodstoves are basically prices are stove only... budget less than grand NC - 30 probably best bang for your buck if money's tight medium 2000 ish Woodstock Soapstone. .. huge following excellent customer service cheap parts.. 6 month $ back guarantee ( I got 1) high end Blaze king.. 4000+ for King but need an 8 inch flue.. there are others to be sure but if OP gave us a design and what he was thinking we could all steer him in right direction!
Do you have a blower on your stove. I'm convinced we wouldn't get 1/4 of the output of our store if not for the blower. It draws about 200W and runs all day. Also, after we added a stove pipe damper to the flue, it increased the stove output by allowing us to control how fast the hot gasses exit the top of the stove. Was -3 at the house a couple mornings ago and 72 in the stove room. We close off some areas of the house we don't use to help contain the warm air in areas that we are using at the time. Certainly challenging to heat the whole house when it's wicked cold out or when the cold north wind is blowing. Solar gain helps quite a bit on the sunny days.
The 30-NC supposedly can heat 1800-2400 sq ft. We are heating about 1600 in a cold climate, and it does fine. 2400 would be a sstretch, unless it were a very open plan. I would say plan for the lower end of the manufacturer's estimate. But also compare stoves to each other by cu ft (firebox size), and see how similar sizes compare with their estimates of heating area. If one claims more sq ft on less cu ft, I would get suspicious. When in doubt, buy big. I don't know anyone who regrets buying a 30-NC, but I have heard regrets from those who have bought its baby brother, the NC-13. Pretty sound advice there, from what I can tell. I went for the budget one , but it is a great heater.
Whoa, you can't trust the stated cubic feet of a stove either. I've measured and was sorely disappointed when my 2.3 cubic foot hearthstone wasn't even 2!
I wouldn't. BTU output claims by stove manufacturers are as reliable as their claims of square footage capacity. CU FT of the firebox is also iffy, but it is still the most reliable measurement to indicate what the stove can do. The ability of a stove to heat your house depends upon your location, the insulation of your home, where the stove is located in your home, and how open of a floor plan that you have. If you have awful insulation and a closed floor plan in a cold climate, you might need more than one stove to heat your home no matter the size of the stove or its claimed abilities. And if your house is completely screwy, you might need three full size stove to heat your home... My name is BrowningBAR and I suffer from PTSD; Post Traumatic Stove Disorder.
