Hey nice to make an acquaintance with a fellow PNW’er, up in Washington. Looks like you’re pretty prepped to go. Last stove I had was a Timberwolf 1400, this thing was my first burner and everything went well. Expensive to put in but having laid the brick and went on my own online search for it, it kept my 736 square foot house pretty warm I should say. So warm sometimes I’d find the cube of butter in a serious puddle on the counter. You’re good on wood, I hadn’t read much further than you first posted but the PNW part just granted my jumping in. Hopefully you have got the stove and everything else ready to go by now.
I’m thinking about this being my next buy in a stove. Apologies Gweedo996, but even though BigPapi here has it right, any stove may be overkill but having had such a small house and the wood stove I had was rated for 1600 sf ..... I guess I did overkill but I also burned Alder. This was some of the best kind of wood because it was just absolutely right down the middle heat. Any of my oak I used and if it wasn’t below freezing outside, it was just cooking inside. If I had one of these soapstone stoves, I’d feel better having something like the survival stove. Small heating area if possible. I’m ok if it’s slightly bigger than that because the winters here have yet to really freeze in my lifetime. The difference is East and West and the western side stays warmer. After all is said and done, yes build smaller fires. It’s no big deal to keep one going depending on how long you’re home as insulation is important first. The houses built at that time frame are often pretty drafty because of small inlets. Mine was in a bit of a wind tunnel too at times. Sometimes that was ok though. If you need those long burns, scrounge the maple if you can for overnights and then there might be coals in the morning, then get the doug fir into kindling splits, put em in, make your coffee and then add some more splits for the morning burn, you’ll be set pretty soon. If you find oregon white oak in a scrounge or find some in heat treated pallets, try that? The key is finding burning wood for those longer burns. Doug fir is the staple here but don’t forget that sparingly you can add those hardwoods. Having a little bit of everything, I only burned about a cord and then some to about 1.5 cords first year. That’s not going to be too far from what you’re likely to burn but as always: your mileage may vary.
Sorry I missed this response from last year! Just in case someone stumbles across this thread and wonders, yes, we've heated primarily w/wood for 20 years. We moved from a nearby house with a soapstone (non-cat) woodstove and a huge woodlot, so we had plenty of wood already dry. We negotiated with the folks who bought our house, and took half the wood we'd cut and dried. We did run low by March, so we bartered with a friend for some dry wood, in return for maple syrup (and boiling that down uses up our crappy wood!).
