Here is a quick review of my wood furnace burning only fir, pine and aspen. I built a cabin in the Colorado mountains this summer and installed a Kuuma Vapor Fire 200 (the smaller one) in the walk out basement. I purchased it used from Brenndatomu here on FHC. I had round metal ductwork installed to distribute heat to both up and down stairs, a total of 1540 sq. ft. of living space. I have a return air duct going back to the blower intake from the ceiling upstairs. My wood is dry and I probably split it too fine based on what I am seeing so far. The furnace seems to work a little better with larger splits and of course will keep burning longer. I cannot fill the stove up with the smaller splits without it just getting too hot in the house. I have to only pitch two or three sticks at a time in. Bear in mind I am still learning how to operate it and Dale at Lamppa has been very helpful and informative. So has Brenndatomu. Dale told me about a pot on the rear of the stove that is for setting the temperature start point of the blower. I plan to look at that when I get back up there and will also re-check/adjust my draft. My door gaskets are good. The class A is over 30 feet tall. When I compare this unit to the heater I had in my other cabin the difference is like daylight and dark. The other heater was soapstone and I always had problems with it building up coals really bad-using the same wood-probably a little dryer than what I have now. There is nothing but ash at the end of a burn in the VF200. I did enjoy the light show in the soapstone heater. I can't wait to get this beast tuned in. It doesn't have a cat but after she gets up and going it is hard to see anything coming out the chimney. I am impressed.
Not long enough, probably 3 hours or a little more with enough coals to restart. That is using 4” splits.
That's about what I would get on 3 splits...4 lbs per hr is roughly what they expect they say to expect to burn on low...
Im liking what Ive been hearing about the Kuuma Vapor Fire series. Top of the list when I either replace or add to my furnace. But I haven't used my furnace this year, so might be awhile. brenndatomu did you go with the 100 series?
Yes. I have about 20 cords here that was CSS to 20-22" long and I quickly got tired of cutting 4-6" off of every split to make it fit in the smaller firebox of the VF200...that, and I knew that we were going to be adding more space to heat the following year, so I felt the VF200 would have struggled to keep up whenever "real winter" hit. With this warm winter we have been having, the larger VF100 is almost too much...I haven't filled the firebox clear up yet...not even close. I actually stacked some extra old firebrick I had laying around inside the firebox to make the firebox "smaller" to try to make small loads burn hotter...seems to be working pretty well...certainly worth the "price of admission" anyways... On a "normal" winter I think the VF100 would be about the perfect size for the heat load that this house has. (1940 brick cape cod style, 1200 sq ft basement, 1200 sq ft ground floor, about 650 sq ft upstairs...with "average" insulation) Slowly working on beefing up the "below average" insulation upstairs to make it more comfortable up there both summer and winter. Another part of the issue up there is it is a long narrow room with only 2 small heating/cooling ducts to it...I don't think that's gonna change either.
