Want to upgrade from my cheapo cast iron "Logwood" stove, and am considering the Defender. Gone through many reviews/info..and found the owners manual online. Our cabin is only 640sf, so am needing a small stove, and this fits the bill. Does the size of the firebox (small) keep it from reaching the stated 8hr burn time? In the manual it states a "minimum 15ft chimney", and mine (metal) is only about 8-9ft...the wall it is near is about 8ft with a "shed" type roof. The chimney is straight up, and I have no problem with draft now, but am concerned that the stove won't work right. I could add another 2ft section of triple wall, but don't want to add 6ft. Anyone have suggestions?
15' is generally the recommended height for chimneys. We've had chimneys as low as 10' and no problems. I think ours right now is 12 or 13' but don't remember. As for the stove, I'm not a lover of VG stoves at all and there are many stoves with small fireboxes that won't give an 8 hour burn time.
I have run a short chimney for a long time (fifth year burning now), it's around 10 ft?. They are sluggish on a cold start in mild weather, and progressively draft easier as it gets colder. If my weather was mild as in the 20-50 F for the winter, I'd get more pipe for sure. But we spend so little time in that weather range when we need actual heat, that it doesn't matter. When you read up on draft one thing that makes a big difference, is the temperature differential between inside and outside air temp on a cold stove. When the weather is warmer out, I actually run higher temperatures on the flue probe to get around the problem.
Thanks...I will add the other section, and brace if I have to. As far as the VG goes, there aren't many small stoves like it to pick from, and some of the other brands I'm not familiar with. Right now we get about 3-4 hours burn time, which means I'm up a couple times a night to reload. Add to that the fact that the current stove leaks air something fierce!
Although we are in Georgia, our land is up on a small mountain and we are in the 20's and 30's at night a lot...and it is our only source of heat. Even now I usually hold some lit newspaper up to heat the air in the chimney prior to lighting. Thanks for responding.
brenndatomu Believe he had one? I had the Century S244E. Really about the same stove. 8hr burns were not my experience! Maybe something small in the Drolet line offers better burn times? Dunno. Your current stove is a problem child. Hungry at that.
I can live with 6hrs burn time...at my age I can't go all night without having to pee anyway! I'm also trying to stay in my budget, and many of the other brands are $1300 and up and I can't do that. Wish I had a Menards near me (closests is near Lexington, KY...about 400 miles away) because they had the Defender at $449 last time I saw. Shipping was almost $300...and a road trip was not easy with a 93 F-150 with 300K miles!
I'd look at other budget stoves like Englander and Drolet before a chinese vogelzang or US Stove (also Chinese).
