Lopi liberty

Hi everyone. I’m new here. Just cruising around reading a lot of interesting stuff. I’m getting the liberty installed in a couple of weeks. If anyone could give me pros/cons and tips on this stove it would be great.

 

Let me welcome you to the place, great things about Lopi and the Liberty here. I don't have one personally but parents have an insert made by Travis industries. You made a good choice either way. Good luck on the install! How's that wood supply? Dry? We'll be here to help you out. Enjoy and read the primer on burning and wood. Dennis should be along soon to tag you with it.

 

I have 2 good cords of nice dry ash. But need another 2-3 to get me through the burn season. Just bought a lake house and need to cut down a few trees. So gonna buy a splitter and start my stock pile. Until then I’m gonna have to buy it and start looking for it.

 

Sounds good. I'll tag Backwoods Savage in this as he's one of our mods. Maybe you can tell us about your lake house you plan to heat, floor plan in general, Sq footage and if you know it's tightly sealed or not. The ash is a great start and you'll understand you'll burn some possibly wet wood this year but if you cut down some standing dead trees, this can reduce this greatly and mix your dry ash with that a bit. Soon you can get yourself on the 3 year plan if you have enough forest to pick from as well! Lots of us also do the roadside scrounge or use Facebook ads to find free options people cut down and give out the wood.

 

Welcome fellow CT hoarder 203coffeeman. It's my understanding that the Liberty is a somewhat scaled-up version of the Evergreen, which I have. The max length I can fit in my stove running east-west is 20.5" while you'll be able to fit 24". I found I get a much better burn using shorter lengths though, and loading the stove in a north-south orientation, especially when I'm going for long, unattended burns. Of course doing it that way, it's best to already have an ample bed of coals established first. Check out this thread and you'll see what I mean:
Stove Tetris

 

We've been using our Liberty since 2013. It's an impressive stove with lots of glass "view". I wanted it a little higher, up off the floor... so we landed it on top of 4- 18"dia x 6"h round concrete pads. Worked well. I chose not to install a damper in the pipe... and sealed all pipe joints (for air leaks on windy days) with high temp silicone. You'll find that very small changes, with the stove's air intake draft, can make big fire output changes. Easy does it.

All in all, it's an easy stove to get used to. Congrats and enjoy...

 

I have a 60”x41” fireplace that I’m putting the liberty into. The heating area is about 1500sq ft with cathedral ceilings. Not sure on the insulation. Windows r god awful. Original 1940 single pane. We’re replacing all of them except the 2 rooms I want to heat. Those windows r 24ft x 8ft and the other room is 30ftx6ft. There gonna b big bucks to replace and not in the budget this year. Thanks for all the feed back. Greatly appreciated. Keep it coming.

 

Is there a possible efficiency program run by your energy companies? One of the big ones here has a window replacement program that gives rebates on windows and changes over lights to LED. Shower heads. That sort of thing. I would look into it I'd anything would give you a lift or you're gonna be burning just to keep the draft away. My former house had gaps it seemed to be so big but they were just lacking the seals. House we are moving out of are single pane all original. Likely same age as yours but on aluminum tracks. They're sealed shut. Couldn't get an air conditioner in them. I'd get the windows sealed off if you can with the 3M stuff so you can conserve that heat. Others may recommend something else.

 

Yes. The wife and I were thinking on putting up plastic on the windows or some sort of black out curtains. Then we won’t see the lake. We could always take down the plastic on those warmer days and weekends when we’re home.

 

With such a large fireplace do I need to seal off the damper so I don’t loss a lot of heat up the chimney??

 

Yes, if you are putting the stove in the fireplace you will want to put a block off plate up to seal between the fireplace ceiling/damper and the liner attached to the stove...but many stove shops will balk at doing it, they say its "sealed" at the top...yeah, kinda...but there is still a lot of heat to be lost up into that unheated masonry cavity.
You might consider putting storm windows too...properly installed storms can make a huge difference!

 

If my stove shop doesn’t do that. Do they sell them on line or does it have to be custom made

 

They sell them online really easy to find.

 

Your comment sort of stuck me as odd so I did some checking.

Wasn’t quite sure what you meant by saying the Liberty was a “somewhat of scaled-up version of the Evergreen”. From memory and from knowing my own Liberty (and older version) that didn’t sound right. So, I went to their site to double check my suspicions.

As odd as it seems their site confused me even more with regard to your comment compared to newer stoves.

As it turns out your Evergreen puts out more btu’s than the new Endeavor and the Liberty, which I really find strange. However, the home size recommended is smaller as is the burn time shorter for your Evergreen. Even more strange the new Endeavor is rated for higher btu’s than the new Liberty.

So I looked at the discontinued Endeavor and Liberty models before this last EPA regulation went into effect and those models are in order of Answer, Evergreen, Endeavor, Liberty…that follows for firebox size, home size, btu, and burn times.

Had I not looked there was no way I’d have thought your new Evergreen would put out more btu than the new Liberty, but the Evergreen cranks out more btu’s. Odd, for sure. I wonder if there is a misprint of some sort???

Discontinued manuals …
Manuals - Discontinued

Current manuals …
Manuals

 

Interesting. I based my “scaled up” comment solely on what size splits the firebox can accommodate, irrespective of how many square feet the stove is rated for, or burn times, or BTU output. All I can say for sure is that I’m happy with the performance of my Evergreen and my local Lopi distributor has been great to work with. For whatever it’s worth, I can easily get 10 hours of burn out of my stove, and occasionally have gotten even more than that. One other thing ~ my stove is a 2015 model. I’m not sure if they made any major changes since then.

 

That is fantastic information to know. I had looked at the Endeavor and Liberty and considered those two mostly. I bought a used Liberty, but haven’t used it all yet. One of those things where I was comparing physical size of the stove to one already in place and as it turned out the one in place was too big, so now I have two stoves that are too big. That’s when I realized that maybe even the Endeavor was too big and I started looking more at the Lopi Answer. For some reason I must have completely forgotten about or passed over the Evergreen and I’m not sure why now. It might just be what the doctor ordered…a medium sized stove capable of some serious heat.

 

Just got my stove installed. It says burn at 400 for 45min then 600 for 45 min to cure paint. Where do u take that temperature. Is that just for the top of the stove or the whole unit

 

Scroll down to the bottom of manual page 19 … just above the door in the center of the bottom step of the stove.
https://www.travisindustries.com/Docs/100-01511.pdf

Also, take note what it says about the dot gasket sticking to the paint.