Hey guys, I'm new to wood stoves. Looking to put one into our newly built colonial. The house is 2400sqft colonial. Staircase in the center of the house. The only good spot i have to put the wood stove would be in the living room on the left side of the house. There is a ceiling fan right where the wood stove would be too. I will most likely just purchase from a local wood stove company and have them do the complete install. Just wondering how many people have one in a colonial and how well it heats a colonial? Thanks guys!
Wow...Nobody answered yet, but am sure someone will soon...I am not sure cause I have a tiny space, about 1/3 of yours but there is something out there for you...
Your best bet would be to put it in the center of the house. If its down at one end of the house getting heat to the other end might be a issue then trying to get get the heat up stairs. You might post a layout of your house and the size of the rooms. If the room your putting the stove in is not a real big open room then that room might be too warm for you. Your best bet would be to get a CAT type stove that can be set to low settings and will burn long burn times. As the CAT stoves keep the heat pumping out a low constant rate which is good for getting heat to other ends of the house. If you use a secondary air tube non-cat stove they have cycles with higher peak heat spikes then makes it more uncomfortable in the room your in then later during the night and early morning the fire dies down to coals and towards morning when hardly any heat is coming off the stove the rooms at the far end of the house get cold pretty quick where as the long burn time CAT stoves are still pumping out pretty good heat in the mornings when you get up so less of a chance for the rooms at the far end of house to cool off as much. As your using the Mass of your house as a storage device for the heat and anytime your stove burns out you loose the stored heat and it takes a long time to get it back up. CAT stoves are extra good for 24/7 burning.
Now Non-Cat stoves the bigger ones can get pretty good burn times but they will have higher peak heat spikes and make it more warmer in the room of your house the stove is in. Especially if the room isnt real large and open.
Having the stove on the main floor of a newer, well insulated two story colonial in the N.E. will do a decent job of warming the downstairs, any rooms on the opposite side of the stove will be cooler, but probably fine as long as you have a fairly open floor plan. On the opposite side of my main floor, I'm about 4 degrees cooler than the room with the stove in it. Your upstairs rooms will be considerably cooler especially the ones furthest away from the stove. You will need to leave all your bedroom doors open to allow the heat to enter the rooms. In shoulder season it will work better, but when it gets cold out, you will notice the tempeture difference between the rooms. The ceiling fan will have only a minimal effect in my opinion. I have one in my stove room and I can't tell much of a difference when it's on or off.
As some of the guys have already mentioned, a couple factors will help with the install of a new or used woodstove and give you the optimum heat to as much of the house as possible. Placement closest to the middle of the first floor will help evenly heat the first floor and most of the second. I heat a 2k sq ft victorian farmhouse and the stove is located in the middle rear of the first floor. This helps the second floors 3 bedrooms get much of the heat in the dead of winter that it might not get if the stove was located at one end or the other. The other big thing is firebox size and possibly having a catalyst for longer burn times and more efficiency. Anything over 3 cu ft will work for the size of the house you have. And as Fanatical1 mentioned, floor plans can help or kill how well warm air circulates. A closed up floor plan has more trouble moving heated air than an open floor plan. A few things to consider while you shop
My experience is pretty much what Fanatical1's is. My house is about what you have in style and size but 1970 or so construction. I have a insert in the family room which is to the side, as in walk in the front door, by the stairs, down the hall to the kitchen and then make a right into the family room. A such it can only do about 3/4 of my heating when it gets really cold out. Above 30 it needs no assistance from the baseboard heat. If it gets down into the teens or below the upstairs heat will kick on in the morning and the bedrooms furthest away will always be cool because the thermostat in the hall near the top of the stairs is influenced by heat from below that doesn't make it all the way back into the bedrooms. One thing that might be to my benefit is that the family room is 2 steps down. I think that allows hot air to rise out and cooler floor air to fall into it from the kitchen
I have a 3 year old cape cod house, 2400 sq ft, open floor plan, 9 ft ceilings downstairs and a ceiling fan in the living room (stove room). Jotul Oslo heats the whole house, the stairs are opposite the stove in the living room and all 600 sq ft upstairs is the same temp or within 5 degrees of living room ( sometimes it's actually warmer, the heat accumulates up there pretty good). I notice a big difference when the fan is on, warm air really builds up in those 9 ft ceilings and the fan does a good job getting it moving. The far end of the house is about 45 ft from the stove and it's also within 5-6 degrees of the stove room. Burn times aren't outstanding with the Oslo, but I also only have mostly red maple and cherry, when i get my hands on locust and hop hornbeam or sugar maple burn times are much better. I don't really know a ton about cat stoves, but when doing my initial research the non-cat stoves seemed like lower maintainace, other guys can steer you in the right direction there. My IS heats my home USED to be my Oslo heats my home, so that's saying something right there...
There's a lot of good stoves out there, the two Woodstock's should do a good job of heating your house, the Progress Hybrid has the higher heat output but also a higher price tag, the Ideal Steel is more affordable and you can read all about it in the long threads with a lot of members contributing their experiences with the stove. Other good stoves are Jotul, Pacific Energy, you're going to need a good size stove 3cf box or bigger, the Blaze King King would also work for you and gives a nice even heat for a long time. What does your local dealer carry? If you got a Woodstock you would have to pick it up (they deliver to a certain point) then get someone to install it for you, not a one stop does all like your local stove shop. I considered the Jotul and the PE line for that reason but decided to get the stove I really wanted even though it was more leg work.
Thanks for the replies. I haven't ventured out to any of the dealers yet. To heat are new home, we decided to go with a heat pump with auxiliary heat backup(electric). We have dual zones as well. Didn't want to go broke paying for propane or heating oil. The heat pump produces a different kind of heat, so it took a little while to get use to it.... mind you we just moved into the new house not even 2 months ago lolol. Getting wood is not an issue for us and thats the main reason why I want to get a wood stove.... Plus i get to play with my saws, log splitter and Mahindra 4035 lololol.
A woodstove addition sounds like an excellent idea as it sounds like your heat is all electric, do you have a generator? I heat my 10 year old colonial (2200 sqft) entirely with wood (Englander nc30). I burn in the basement (insulated), it will get very warm 100+ down there, but the rest of the house stays comfortably warm without overheating. Insulation and air sealing is the key. Have fun with the toys, we like pics.
A woodstove addition sounds like an excellent idea as it sounds like your heat is all electric, do you have a generator? I heat my 10 year old colonial (2200 sqft) entirely with wood (Englander nc30). I burn in the basement (insulated), it will get very warm 100+ down there, but the rest of the house stays comfortably warm without overheating. Insulation and air sealing is the key. Have fun with the toys, we like pics.
I have had both cat and noncat stoves with my current stove being a Pacific Energy Alderlea T6 noncat. I have roughly 2450 sq ft of finished space that it is heating with 1200 sq foot of uninsulated basement underneath causing my wood floors to be 50 degrees or less in the winter. It is a lot of house to heat but the T6 does it just fine. Even in last years cold temps we had no other form of heat and in -20 temps kept the house warm. I have nothing but good things to say about this stove and my wife loves it for how easy it is to use and run. Right now we have been keeping the house in the around 72-73 degrees with loads of pine and getting 10+ hour burns. One of the biggest things you need to understand is that how well insulated your house is directly correlates to how much stove you need. In my opinion it is always better to have slightly more stove than you need than to be wishing it was bigger on the coldest days of the winter.
