Welcome to Woodstock Soapstone (woodstove.com) Be aware though it is a common problem getting heat out of basement and upstairs. It seems it should work well but in practice, not so well. You can help this some by placing a fan at the top of the stairs and blowing down.
Yes. Do not pay much attention to that part about being slower to get up to heat. People put too much into that. I compare it to the log splitters. Some say the bigger the better and then newcomers think they have to have big. After all, they do have some hard splitting wood. Then their is the cycle time. Well one has, say a 10 second cycle time but the other has only 7 seconds. Wow! But wait! What if you don't use the entire cycle? There is no need to. Like we cut logs to 16" but the splitter cycle is 23". You do the math. Either way we are nor talking big things here. Neither are we with heating the stove. In the first place, almost all the time you are adding wood to some coals and the id still heat in the stove, or in the rock. In this case, you will get heat just as fast and sometimes even sooner. But people like to make things sound negative if possible.
We do not have a cat probe and I've not thought it would be any advantage. What we are doing is working nicely so I see no reason to attempt to fix it.
Thank you for the link!! I have a box fan that I put on low, but that was at the other end of the house pointed towards the stairs. I may try a smaller fan and point it down. We had tried hanging a fan from the stairway railing pointing up, but that just sucked the less hot air out of the basement hahaha
Yes, that should work much better. Remember it is always easier to move cool air but difficult to move warm air. Cool air is more dense than warm air and this is why pilots have no problem taking off in cold air but as the air gets hot, the are like the old fart and can't get up.
Also guys, I know they are not cheap but if I had a larger house, I would definitely have the Progress hybrid stove. That thing is a heating beast! The IS and AS are good too but I think the progress outshines them big time.
