Help with research on stove selection

My wife and I recently moved to a small town and into a 1 1/2 story home built in 1914. The lot is about 1 acre so there is space to process and stack firewood. There is a non working pellet stove in place, but I see no evidence of a previous wood stove.

There are a number of issues for me to research before we purchase and install a wood stove. I'd like to get advice on stoves for us to consider.

I am looking for a new hybrid stove with a fire box about 3 cu. ft. The current short list is Woodstock Ideal Steel, Regency F3500, Hearthstone Manchester

I prefer the Ideal Steel. My wife likes the look of the Hearthstone Manchester, but the Ideal Steal not so much. She really likes the sculpted cast iron look in black.

I'm making my best case for an undecorated black IS but would like help in getting a list of stoves to consider and in particular what stoves might look attractive to my wife and have the efficiency and ease of maintenance I'm looking for.

 

make sure your chimney is large enough for a woodstove (6")

 

Installing a proper new chimney is likely a make or break decision. The existing pellet stove chimney would be torn out. I will start a thread on the chimney install later, if we get that far.

The pellet stove is piped through the wall to DuraVent pipe. The whole install looks shaky to me, and the pellet stove was claimed to be working, but was not.

 

There is also the Progress Hybrid from Woodstock Soapstone that your wife may find more pleasing to look at. There are members here who have them and have had other stoves as well and so can offer comparisons.

Unless you are absolutely determined to get a hybrid stove, I would also suggest taking a look at the Blaze King Princess, which is another competitor to the general family of stoves you mentioned although a pure cat. stove (not hybrid). Lots of people have them and lots of people like them so information about them should be easy to find on this forum as well as other places.

For me, using a wood stove is about the entire package, including loading it, cleaning the ashes out of it, maintaining it both during the off- season as well as in use (getting ashes out while hot, cleaning the glass while in use, etc.). Unfortunately until you actually own and use a woodstove for a while you will not know what is important to you and what it is that you insist on having, insist on NOT having, and what you can live with.

Buying a new stove in 2014 my choices came down to three: the Woodstock Ideal Steel, the Blaze King King and the Regency 5100- the last two strictly because of size, and the I.S. because it is the largest stove Woodstock makes. I ended up with the I.S. for several reasons:

1) It has a grate and ash pan, making it far easier to remove ashes from a running stove IME.
2) The combustor was a lot less expensive and they require changing to maintain efficiency in my experience. The original price of a combustor for the I.S. was quoted at $125 and turned out to be $175, while the Blaze King King combustor was well over $300.
3) Long gas path to make a very efficient wood stove (cannot compare with the other two as I have not used them but they <seem> similar in flue gas path length).
4) Very well designed stove with almost no fasteners, simple and robust construction that is and will continue to be easy to maintain for years to come. Almost no internal bolts or screws to corrode and freeze into place. The combustor can literally be gotten to to inspect, and in fact removed, in well under one minute w/out any tools whatsoever.

Best of luck and there is a LOT of material to research out there. Just be wary of any GOOROOS, Internet experts and anyone banging the drum a little too hard and often for a particular stove or brand. In other words, run everything you read (including everything I write!!) through your own B.S. filter before putting too much weight on any new data, especially extremely good (this stove burns all winter on one kitchen match!) or extremely bad (this stove has the glass getting dirty before I light the match!!) comments. There are several very good brands of wood stove out there and different people have different wants and needs, so try to choose what will work best for you.

Brian

 

Yes. I've gone through the IS thread and those points make it my first choice.

I'll update my consider list like this:

• Woodstock Soapstone Ideal Steel Hybrid
• Woodstock Soapstone Progress Hybrid
• Blaze King Princess
• Hearthstone Manchester

The Hearthstone Manchester looks to be efficient, but the side door might complicate the installation and my wife and I believe it's marginal for using as a cook top.

Looking at the hearth pad on the Hearthstone Manchester product page I can probably fit it in the location it would go.

 

Here's a thread on stove selection
New wood stove advice sought

 

Isn’t the hearthstone just a plain noncat?

 

Hope you get something figured out for ya cootcraig. I’m on a brand new install myself. Nothing fancy or large suited on that list. But you can probably very well get to using your stove and enjoy it soon enough. At least someone here is gonna make sure you get working on the 3 year plan whilst knowing you’re likely gonna need to get your wood supply happening soon. Hopefully you’re up to making collections...good luck on picking the stove.

 

Yes, but we have a favorite local dealer that had it on the showroom and we liked the looks of it so it will stay on the possible list for now. Being the wood hoarder, and fire tender of the house, I'm still working on my(our) must have functional requirements.

The value of the Woodstock Ideal Steel makes it my first choice.

 

You bet, I have learned at FirewoodHoardersClub online!

We have a neighbor who runs a tree service and will gladly dump plenty of wood on our property. I am gearing up to buck and split a delivery soon. I've requested a small amount for my first stacking, so I'm not overwhelmed at first.

While I'm strong and healthy, the firewood stack will be my training camp.

How a small, mostly white town in Pennsylvania became home for Muhammad Ali

 

Good of you to start small, this goes without saying.
Who needs to pay for a gym when wood will give you a workout for free?

 

About 1000 sq.ft. main, 500 sq.ft 2nd floor.

The home is fairly well insulated, good windows and little draft. The previous owner blew a good amount of foam in the space under the roof. There is no hot air ducting upstairs, but it stays quite comfortable.

 

I'm having some trouble finding pictures of a basic black or charcoal Woodstock Ideal stove, both with and without the decoration bits. A bit of a lazy post, but help will be appreciated.

 

She designed our Beta (Fleur de lis) and it ended up being one the most popular styles when they went into production, but it wasn’t a contest per se.

 

The IS looks way better in person than it does in pictures.

Where are you located? Maybe someone has one close by that you can check out. Tell her she can customize the design. A lot of women seem to love that. Secondly the IS has a no questions asked 6 month guarantee. If you and yours doesn't like it you can send it back.

 

Close to Pueblo, CO

 

Here’s the charcoal with black accents: