Woodstock stoves are straight stone with a cast iron frame. Two layers of soapstone, one inside, one outside, one is thicker than the other.
My 2 cents on soapstone heat lag after 3 winters with the Keystone, coming from a lifetime of plate steel. Soapstone is slower to warm than plate steel. If you light soapstone cold and are waiting for heat, it takes awhile to come through the stone, you will feel heat pouring through the glass first. How long does it take to get good heat through the cold stone? Maybe 30-45 min, I don't really notice. If you where trying to heat up a cold house this might be a factor. My house stays warm so I don't wait on it, for many reasons- good insulation, tight house, milder winters, etc., but I think ONE of the main factors is the heat retention of the stone-if my house is 70F (typical) on a -4F morning ( non-typical) I'm not waiting on the heat, if the house was 65F on the same morning, I would be wanting some heat soon. How much difference in house temp does the stone make in the morning? Probably varies a lot by the house. All in all, I really like the stone. It acts as a heat sink, leveling out the highs and lows of a burn cycle. If I ever have to buy another stove, it will probably be another Woodstock soapstone cat stove.
I have the Hearthstone Homestead. It's one of their smaller soapstone stoves. I love it, but wish it was larger. My issue is I had to run it through an existing fireplace, so it was the only Hearthstone model with rear vent. You say you want a smaller stove because you have a sizeable shoulder season. In my opinion, you need to be more worried about your peak needs, than your marginal needs. Considering PA is generally colder than Maryland, I would suggest going with the largest stove you can afford. Obviously the area you are heating and insulation are big factors on choosing a stove size. So if it's a small house, you don't want a Mansfield. It's easier to tone a larger stove down, then make a small stove hotter. During shoulder season, you can burn lighter wood such as Poplar. It burns hot and fast. It heats the soapstone up, which then gives off a steady heat for at least 5 to 8 hours. You can also feed it a few splits at a time to keep it toned down, but that makes it harder for the secondaries to kick in, so it may smoulder a bit. I prefer to load the firebox at least half full for the stove to operate properly. The last few days have been around 40 degrees during the day. I will load the stove up around 6am and get a strong burn going. It will heat the stove to around 400 to 450. I won't touch it again until that evening when it's time to reload. It keeps the room around 75 degrees all day. The soapstone is incredible at retaining heat. If you are ever in Maryland this winter, feel free to come by. I will give you a demonstration.
The heritage is either...but not much larger than yours....how bout a pic MarylandGuy ....does your stove have the ultra slow secondaries wen you shut dwn the air?...
I'm not sure what you mean by the ultra slow secondaries. When I first load the stove after raking the small amount of coals left over to the front, I open the air up fully for about 5 to 8 minutes. This gets the new wood roaring pretty well. At that point I usually shut the air totally down. Most of the time the secondaries start slow, but build to an inferno within about ten minutes. Provided my wood is perfect, my air is always shut totally off after getting the initial fire going. I have experienced a poor secondary burn in the past. I shut it down and vacuumed the holes coming out of the secondary tubes. What an amazing difference. It really brought the stove back to life. There are times when the firebox isn't that hot at reload time, (usually at dawn) where I may need to close the air lever back in increments instead of all at once. But that only takes about 10 minutes of effort. In regards to burn times, if I load the stove at midnight with good, dry hardwood, by 6am there are a few coals left and the stove hovering around 250 to 300. In my opinion that's a downfall for this stove. The firebox is so small, it's hard to get heat out of the stove for 8 hours. The other complaint I have, which others have complained about is smoke coming in the room when the door is opened. This is nothing new for modern woodstoves, but seems to be worse with the smaller Hearthstones. You have to crack the door slightly, and then gradually open the door. The stove is awesome. Is it the best stove out there? I doubt it. But the secondaries kick in fast with good wood and it burns hot. By the way, when someone mentions you need seasoned wood in these stoves, they mean it. My Hearthstone Homestead hates unseasoned wood. I bought my stove used and I think that's why the guy wanted to sell it. He was burning oak that had sat for about a year and it clogged the thing up. It took me a while to scrape all that stuff out before I installed it. The rare times that I have burned less than seasoned wood, I had to open the air a little for it to burn well. It was miserable. I really don't look at my oak until it's at least two years stacked and covered. But most of the time, it has been stacked for three years. Lastly, my Homestead really likes the splits in the 4" thick range when burning hardwood like oak or locust. That is pretty small compared to what wood suppliers deliver. So if you buy your wood, you may need to split it down a little. Sure the stove will burn the larger splits just fine. But from trial and error over the years, it seems to enjoy the smaller splits.
Yea i have to open the primary..crack the door fer a sec...btw i love mine too...im gonna keep it a couple more years....the progress is next
So I pushed about 30 cords through a hearthstone heritage non-cat before switching to a BK cat stove a few seasons ago and also installed a second plate steel non-cat in the shop. I heat 100% with wood burning PNW softwoods. The hearthstone looked good and performed as advertised to heat my 1700 SF in a mild climate with a long burning season. It was slow to warm up and slow to cool down but I never felt like it needed to go hotter than 550, I didn't miss that top end. I could get overnight burns with it just barely. After those years I noticed the hinges sagging and the latches wearing out. These are nonservicable parts and Hearthstone told me I would have to do a total rebuild to replace them. Sold it. 8 hour burn time. That heritage, maybe all hearthstones, are just not built for long term use. More of a decoration. Same flue, same house, same wood I installed catalytic BlazeKing ultra. The stove is bigger at 2.85 (accurate volume) vs. 2.3(it measures much less) CF from the hearthstone. The cat stove is much much much better at the job. It burns for 24+ hours on low and is much easier to load with no silly soft baffle on the roof. Long burn times are very important when you are heating, really heating, with wood. Even a dependable 12 hour reload cycle is worlds better than trying to eek it out overnight. In all conditions, even single digits, I can run on a reload cycle of 12 hours or less when burning low btu softwood. I almost bought a woodstock fireview to replace the hearthstone but be warned, all but the biggest woodstocks require huge clearances to the wall. It wouldn't fit on my hearth. Soapstone is not important. It looks good for sure. If you have a stove of any material that can burn for 12+ hours then the fire keeps the stove hot, no need for the stone to store heat. I would highly recommend a woodstock or BK cat stove for primary heat of any regular house.
Here's my heritage and BK. Threw one in of the NC30 too. Stoves that load straight in whether through a side door or the front door are way cool.
Thanks for the honest real world comparison. Always better than just rehashing the companies advertisement propaganda. I will have to give it a long thought. We will likely not be using a stove for our primary heat source so the small size and decorative value of the Hearthstones both the actual stove and the fireshow are attractive. However, as a former engineering student, I actually like the technical aspect of fiddling with the controls to optimize the cat/efficiency. In the end, I guess it's hard to go wrong with any good quality stove these days. (?)
Cat soves are so simple to operate, there isn't much fiddling to do. Reload, get it going, engage the cat- repeat in 10-40 hours.
Yeah, I like that answer. I like the idea of thinking about what I'm doing, instead of just doing for the sake of doing.
I will warn you while you may be just looking at a woodstove for supplemental occasional use its extremely likely that both you and your wife will like it so much it could become primary. Also while oil and gas prices are down now you never know when they will skyrocket again. I would recommend looking for something that you can heat the whole house with if its needed.
The key damper in my princess flue was removed and replaced with a straight through adapter. No need for it. If you are interested in efficiency then the hearthstone will drive you nuts. It is terribly inefficient. The stove shoots 800 degree flue gasses when on low cruise and easily 1000 when on medium. That's why it looks good, it's a fireplace. The BK for comparison shoots 400 degree flue temps which is just enough to keep the draft moving and reduce condensation in the flue. Even on a full blast burnout with the BK for an hour I couldn't get it over 800 degrees. The BK brand has some better looking models now. Enameled cast iron looks pretty great too. I wouldn't consider another hearthstone with those dainty hinges and latches. Check the model for particular improvements in that area.
I have restarted without matches after 30 hours burning doug fir. That was a record. Long burns are also low output burns so it's not what you would get when you need more heat. Still, 12 hour cycles are easy with higher outputs.
Last year we put in a Hearthstone Castleton. We love the even, constant heat of the stove. For what we want and how we use it we love this soapstone stove so far.
