Stove manufacturer efficiency comparisons

First I want to keep this friendly! (of course we all think our stove is best) A spot where we can discuss review and post real life data on our stoves..

The first few that come to mind are (in alphabetical order) Blaze King, Kuma and Woodstock but if somebody wants to add Englander NCs because of budget.. go for it!

Then when new people join up and they ask the inevitable " What stove should I get?" we have a thread to refer them too..

I know one reason I chose a Woodstock Ideal Steel, is because of members here like BDF and many others who posted real life charts and data on their burn times.. I could never find similar on Blaze Kings except for people saying 24 hour burns no problem. I never trusted most manufacturer claims! So I would also like to invite Highbeam as a BK rep, because he posts links and facts to back it up!

Thanks

 

epa results

 

So many factors go into choosing a stove. Looks, cost, performance (output, efficiency, emissions), durability, manufacturer support, etc. The good news is that we are able to investigate and compare the facts along with the opinions from people that are actually using them. I've noticed that this site has become the home of most Woodstock owners, and that other site seems to contain the bulk of the BK owners.

If BK disappeared tomorrow and I needed a new house stove, I would choose the most basic IS.

 

Great points! Maybe we should add a spot for those factors in the discussion! Highbeam, you have a Princess model.. what's the cubic feet of firebox? What do you see in real life for burn times and at what temperatures assuming you are burning mostly softwood and not hedge..

Does anyone know of a Kuma owner?

 

My princess has 2.85 CF and I measure almost exactly that (be careful here, your brand may be lying). I've regularly accomplished 24 burns measured from ignition to when the cat temperature falls below 500 (the active line). This is with softwood or low btu hardwoods at a setting above the minimum. See, I like to keep my internal flue temps above 400 to guarantee that the flue temps stay above condensing. I can easily get to the 30 if I was really going for a record! I don't measure stove top temperatures, it's a fools errand with a BK cat stove since the cat is always at 1200 or so regardless of draft setting. I only measure cat and flue temps.

When it's really cold, single digits is cold for us, then I increase the burn rate and top off the stove every 12 hours. I really don't want the stove to go cold and 12 hour reloads work as well as 24 hour reloads with my schedule. Really, the stove spends at least 95% of the time on the low setting just constantly keeping the house warm. It's sized very well for the application.

We use no other heat in my 1700 SF house built in 1963.

I got rid of a hearthstone heritage to buy the BK. Folks on forums convinced me to do this with their accurate testimonials. Most important to me was the long burn times at lower output to keep the house warm steadily.

 

great Highbeam appreciate the info.. To be honest one of things that always worried me about BK is when reading forums is someone from Oregon say it heats my house 24 hours on pine..(most didn't specify Sq ft or temps) I would look up avg temperature for state and let's say they were avg 28 in January.. my avg in January is 6 degrees. 10 to 20 below is common.. I look up how many BTU in pine and say it won't work here..

I like all stoves but I've learned a lot in past few years also

 

With the bk, you may need to use a higher burn rate to keep your house warm at times. If so, your burn times will come down but the bk can do hot too. The thermostat has a wide range of outputs while maintaining high efficiency. At higher outputs, many other stoves on the market are just as good.

Too often, folks from cold climates that grew up burning noncat stoves don't understand that a stove doesn't need to be 600 degrees to heat their home. They just can't grasp that a stove simmering along at 400 all day long will do it better. The difference is keeping your house warm instead of trying to reheat a cold home.

 

and looking at a graph that shows an even temp burn (cat) and a graph showing non cat spikes in temp helps paint the picture. I have a non cat PE stove and although Im able to heat my home in the Rockies quite well with it sometimes a more even steady burn would be nice.

 

I bought a heritage also. I was nervous about my wife being able to work a cat stove properly. Now I wish I had gone Woodstock or BK. I would like to be able to sleep through the night without waking up to load the stove.

How long do the Woodstock go between loads?

 

Sorry im seeing IS all the time but not sure what it means...the short of it.

 

IS is Ideal Steel.

 

really depends what your house needs are.. my house is 2200 square feet half with 16 foot high ceilings.. built mid 80s 2x6 std insulation.. 10 below or colder furnace kicks on basement zone thermostat 6 feet below and 40 feet from stove to protect water lines in basement.. above that no backup.. minus 10 to 15 above degrees 8 hours reloads. 15 to 30 degrees 12 hour.. in my shoulder season.. 20s at night to 40 daytime.. 24 hours.. I load at nite.. house warm in am after dinner open up stir coals reload.. I am burning ash elm cherry soft maple.. I burned about 5 cord this year and 25 gallon of heating oil..

 

I'm one of those guys that doesn't care what you're trying to heat or how cold it is outside when reporting burn time. The stove is not smart enough to know the differenc and the maximum burn time is a performance specification of the stove. Max burn time is max burn time. I don't own a Woodstock but almost did, they have lots of models that are all pretty darn small but the IS is their biggest at 3.2 CF and people have been claiming up to 24 hours of burntime which is great. Woodstock specifies the max burn time as something much lower like 16 hours. Check out their site, it's pretty good. Most of their stoves are 12 hour burners.

 

Ok this is one of your posts that confuses me. I burn more wood (reload more often) because i want more heat at 20 below than 20 above.. I do this by burning it faster with more air. I must have a Smart stove cause it draw easily twice as hard at 20 below versus 20 above.. (obviously teasing here) Difference of a low slow burn vs opening it up

Another comment, so everyone knows not trying to argue either we are different (which is good because i cannot learn anything talking to someone that thinks same as i do) or more likely the case i am missing the point he is trying to make. You stated earlier going to paraphrase here. You dont worry about Stove top Temp. you try to keep your flue Temp over 400.

I figure i only want my flue temp up to engage CAT, once Cat is engaged i like to see the flue temps as low as possible.. I work hard for my wood (we all do) heat going up my chimney is not heating my house its heating outside. my flue temp is often in 300 ish with my STT at 350 plus

 

Some good conversation here and what is great is that no one is backing any brand regardless of actual performance.

I cannot speak for Highbeam but I <believe> he is concerned about running the stove so slow it becomes a condensing system. What that means (not trying to insult anyone with this, just explain this for anyone not familiar with the term) is that as the stove flue gasses move up the chimney and cool down, they will drop below 212 degrees F, and the water vapor in the gasses will condense.... put more simply, it will rain in the chimney and all that water will coat the chimney and lay in the bottom of the chimney. If it was pure water it would not be a problem but it is actually quite acidic and attacks the mortar joints in masonry chimneys. It will attack metals too but most modern S.S. chimneys are built to be resistless to acid corrosion because they are made to use coal as a fuel, and that puts out even more corrosive byproducts than wood does.

Personally I love to run my stove in condensing mode 'cause it means I am squeezing the last couple of BTU's out of every pound of wood, as long as the stove's internal (Boys!) temps. stay high enough to ensure the particulates are burned. But I can certainly understand why some avoid that mode, and some wood boiler manufacturers actually base the speed of the burns in their boilers entirely on the temperature of the exhaust at the top of the chimney; if I remember correctly, Hertl maintains 300 F at the top of the chimney so that no appreciable amount of moisture will condense before it leaves the entire length of the chimney.

Brian

 

One thing I think should be clarified is what people consider a burn. I hear burn times of 8 12 16 24 hours and I envision chunks of logs still flaming at the end of this time frame. When do you consider the burn over? I can often have warm coal I can stir and use to light the stove 8 or more hours after stuffing the box full. Does this give me 8+hour burn times.

 

a lot of that for me goes by Stove Top TempS (STT) in winter when my stove is no longer above 300 my burn is over my house is cooling.. today yes it's snowing now... but it's 30 degrees I just reloaded on a bed of coals house is 72 degrees I have not touched stove in 20 hours.. STT was 250 I opened air raked coal bed it climbed to 300 waited 5 minutes (just to get chimney drawing) and put a load of wood in..

 

Ah, the best / ultimate question of all I think- what exactly IS a complete burn and when is it over?

Of course we all know a woodstove with a good layer of ash, fueled by a wood that leaves lots of coals, can keep coals or embers hot and "burning" for days and days. So I guess you could call that the end of the burn, when there was nothing left in the stove that was above kindling temperature. And I think some manufacturers and users use that very measurement.

For me, a 'burn' is how long the stove can go and produce sufficient heat to keep my house as warm as I like it- usually 75+ in the stove room and at least 65+ in the farthest parts of the house. Now I understand that couples 'my' burn time to 'my' house and 'my' climate but hey, that is my real world. I live in southern New England where we have real but not especially harsh winters, so normal overnight temps. in the dead of winter will be anywhere between 10F and 25F, rarely dipping below zero. And I also consider the start of the burn not when I load the stove but rather when I can leave it for an extended burn, and sometimes that takes 1/2 hour to char some wood and get the new load of fuel up to temp. So, a burn cycle for me is how long the stove, in steady- state (no fiddling or adjustments), can maintain about 400F or a bit higher on the hottest part of the stove top. With decent oak, that is about 10 to 12 hours for me, with about a 5 hour period of out- gassing (visible flame or the cat. is above 1,100F) and the rest the coals burning down. And at the end of that period the stove is not in any way 'out' but has to be attended or the house will start to lose temperature.

The whole mfg. stated burn time is, IMO, pretty much a useless number because no one knows what it is based on, and then throw in the 'salesman factor' and you could get some pretty silly printed burn times, such as <cough, cough> 40+ hours.

Basically, it all comes down to how low the stove can be set and still run efficiently, and this is where cat. based stoves really shine, and how much fuel you can put in the stove. Given a modern, cat. based stove (including hybrids), I believe it all comes down to firebox size and how well it can be filled with wood. Fuel weight determines heat output, and how fast the fuel is being burned determines burn time. All IMO of course.

Brian

 

Why I enjoy Brian, he explains things so well.. thanks again BDF ..

 

Thanks for the kind words but I think you said the same thing.... and used a lot fewer words!

"I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter."
-Pascal, English translation