I am one who said you may be wanting a bigger stove. I’m not going to tip toe around that and I don’t expect you to either. My shoulders are pretty big. Congratulations! You seem to have found the perfect stove. I am happy for you. Now, I’ll just be patient and sit back for when the real cold sets in and see if you change your mind. I am really hoping you prove me wrong. I mean that...don’t want to see anyone spending more money than they have to when the goal is buy once and hopefully get it right. It sounds like you have exactly what you want and what I want too. We like to maintain 68*-70*F here and it sounds, from your last post, it might even fit what I need out of a stove...for the same reasons. I don’t need a giant stove...I already have an old giant...of course I can run it however I need...just right, or blast you out of the home...either way with no smoke out of the stack. Now factor in PM and I am toast compared to that nice little stove you have. The hard part for this stove is the shoulder season weather...the rest is cake... with still using a fair amount of wood. No one’s trying to be a ‘downer’ on your stove. I said what I did for just the reasons you mention...most people want an extremely warm room. Nothing wrong with either scenario in my eyes, so long as people are happy. You sound ecstatic. Great! I am happy as can be for you. I still am little skeptical for deep winter..., but again, I hope this winter proves me wrong. If it does I will be looking into that stove myself. Congratulations!!!!! There is not a nicer looking small stove made than the one you have.
I want to say I really do appreciate your input in particular. I also want to say I believe I will one day eventually come around to your suggestions. For the time being- I'm so much more comfortable in my home, with way less worry about how much wood I'll go through to keep my home livable. Again- I think you're right, this stove wont be the way I do it forever- but for now (not to cry poor) I'm putting my best foot forward. (I'm a public school teacher and my wife is a social worker. I've got access to more time than I do money, and she's got neither. I'm making my home as comfortable for my wife as possible. Before I had a stove and I was single I kept the house at 55. I feel like Louis XIV sometimes with all this surplus heat LOL!)
You have just mentioned something I haven’t seen talked about too much with regard to using a stove...wood or coal ( there’s that offensive word again) ... and that is the worry about having enough fuel for the coming winter. Isn’t it nice to know you have a unit that can give you at least some peace-of-mind with regard to you fuel supply? I’d say you’re on cloud 9 right now, and you should be. With regard to crying poor, I resemble that remark more than you probably care to know. You know what though...it keeps me humble and patient. I’m learning more and more about the patience Job had.
Palladian, keystone and the fireview are absolutely beautiful stoves. In my opinion they are also around the perfect size stove for a fire place hearth. However they are also too much money for me to buy one new. 3,000+$ is a lot. AS and IS are more than likely too big for my space and would stick out too far into the living room and I would need to extend the hearth to far as well. Survival Hybrid isn’t much bigger than my too small stove I currently use. It doesn’t offer the option to rear vent and it too would stick out into my living room because of its shape. So this leaves me with the only option to buy a used Fireview Palladian or Keystone. Which is a bummer.
Sounds more and more that the Survival is the perfect size for me. (A little under 900 sq ft. ) To replace a less than 1 cu ft stove. I'm liking the Absolute steel for the big window and the low output capability. But I've done the small fire in a big stove deal and although it sounds good in theory it just doesn't work in the real world on a most of the time basis. I find it is just easier to have a short complete healthy burn and then start a fire again later. I'm throwing solar gain into the mix here as well to complicate things. I'd really like a small stove that will leave me a few coals to start with in the morning like our bigger stove. Not really caring if the oil heat comes on at 5AM when it is really cold out because we have a super efficient oil boiler that also makes the hot water. This makes it tough to justify an expensive stove because the payback is kinda long. ( I tend to also calculate payback vs our old burner because the numbers work out so much better )
Last year I exchanged a lot of messages on here with a gentleman in the Boston area who had an IS in this beautiful antique home in the Boston area. He had rather small rooms, (older homes are like that) and airflow was an issue. But, because of the size of the IS and his install was on a hearth in front of the fireplace, it took up way to much space in the room. Also, it's look didn't exactly fit the antique woodwork and beautiful period design of the hearth area. But he had found on line, a Fireview that was for sale inexpensively. It was pretty beat. He called Woodstock and talked to them and they asked for pictures which he supplied. After reviewing the pics they said they would restore it. Last I heard, it was in restoration at WS. I'm not sure of the outcome, but it was good to know that if you find a used Fireview, and if it makes sense for your home, they may do a refurb if it's something you don't want to take on yourself. Still, depending on where you are you'd need to deal with the shipping, but WS has lots of experience with that aspect and could probably help with the shippers vendors etc. Just a thought. There are Fireviews on the used market pretty often if you keep an eye out. PS Totally respect the OPs keeping the Survival Stove, sounds like it's working nicely for his needs. That's what counts.
I wanted to update briefly with an observation that contradicts something in the stove manual. I was raking the coals forward with the tool set that came with the stove, and noticed that the flanged decoration on the poker and the rake were even with the front opening when the tool is pressed against the back firebrick. I thought this was pretty neat, and could be used to indicate if a log was perhaps too big to fit in the stove, so you didn't need to guess. I also thought that the pieces of firewood that I've been putting in the stove were bigger than the 16 inch wood length they advertise in their manual and on the site. So I measured the tool, and its 20 inches from the tip to the decorative winged arrow on the tool. In short, I'm able to put 20 inch logs into the stove, and for the record, I have one of them in there right now.
RG almost all new stoves if they are new to a product line, generate a thread that just goes on forever. The PH had one and now the IS has one, the AS not really yet, but your thread here could be "the" Survival Hybrid thread. Keep us posted as you cruise through the winter. Are you liking the warmth?
RGrant, same thing with my stove different make and model. I think when they tell you what is the largest log size, they are actually saying what they believe is the most optimal size for the performance of your stove; and as to not overfire it, and ensure it lasts longer. Sometimes I throw in longer ones anyway. I’m sorry for jackknifing your thread earlier. I was feeling feelings again.
Most (N/S) claimed firebox recommended lengths seem to be ( a little bit shy of) the length of the firebricks on the side, not the distance from the back to the door on cigar burners. On an E/W stove there's usually a little extra room from brick to brick because wedging splits in at an angle/really tight is likely not a good idea for brick longevity.. That said, I'll load longer than recommended into our N/S stoves but I really wouldn't want someone not 100% sober or on certain meds to be trying it. Let's face it, using the same dollar bill to test a door gasket is probably a poor idea for split fit. A good margin is often a safe one.
Woodstock Soapstone Company is giving away a Survival Hybrid Stove for free- announcing the recipient New Years Eve via email to that person (so you don't need to be there). To sign up for the giveaway all you need to do is go to their website and the promotion pops up. (I went via my computer, not my phone, so I'm not sure if there is a difference from the device you're using) Edit: This is obviously time sensitive- I'm posting this on December 11, 2019 and the drawing will be announced December 31, 2019.
Wife entered us for that. If we win, I will encase it in grease and save it for a future house where we have a basement to hear rather than the stone lined hole in the ground we have under our house now.
Hey all that follow this thread. I have a few minutes, and the desire to write this, so here we go. Now that its March, and the very mild winter we had over here in Connecticut seems to be winding down, it looks like this will probably be my last month of regular burning for a while. I can still foresee a couple of nights getting the fire going in April.... but I think things will be winding down. So here's what I've found using this stove every day through the winter. The stove is small, and is sized to heat 1000 square feet, but I found it to be more than adequate for this home. I find that it will burn through the night, and can be brought back up to a full rolling fire in the morning easily, usually without kindling. I need to empty the ash pan about every 10 days / two weeks. I find the stove to put out better heat with the air controls closed about half way, which was surprising to me. Does anyone know if that's normal? It probably has something to do with slowing down the burn rate, while still maximizing the heat output by the catalyst. So that seems good. We used about 2 cords of wood, down from the 3 we used last year. We also used less than a third of the wood bricks that we had used in the years previous. The wood that I had this year was arguably better than wood I've had previously, but still not as good as it should have been. Often times the wood sizzled out quite a bit of moisture which gave me a bit of a headache, but ultimately didn't give me any issues. So that's why I relied on some of the wood bricks. When I would get the fire established I'd put in 2 wood bricks at a time with almost a full load of wood and that would seem to stabilize the moisture content at large and I'd get a clean burn- no visible smoke and I'd be able to cut the air down low and the stove worked perfectly. I was lucky enough to come across a nice wood score and I've got that cut and stacked in the back yard for hopefully 2 or 3 years from now- but the hope is still to get some more wood for next winter that would be worthy of burning. With all that in mind, my wife and I decided we'll buy two pallets of the wood bricks this summer to get ready for it. So- what's my take? I love this stove. It does everything I want, and leaves me wanting nothing. The burn times are longer than advertised. The area heated is larger than advertised, and from a personal standpoint I don't think the pictures do the stove justice... however, the soapstone stoves out there look like they belong in museums, and this isn't one of those. We have a forced hot air system fueled by natural gas, but basically never used it. It came on a hand full of times when we were away from the home overnight, when I was lazy and.... well if I'm speaking among friends, there might have been a night or two where I put away too many beers and fell asleep before loading up the wood, and so there you have it. Lol. What don't I like about it? Wood should be 16 inches, but you can get away with logs 20 inches long, but you can't get too many of those in. The splits should probably on the thinner side than I had them this year, so it might be a little more effort into processing this summer. I don't know exactly what my opinions might be if there was a real serious winter, so if one happens I might jump back in and give an update on what's on my mind for that- but for the few nights that it got down to about 0 degrees F here I didn't have a problem keeping my house warm.
On modern (tube type) stoves, closing the air down once the firebox is fully up to temp will lower the stovepipe temp, and raise the stove temp (best efficiency) so sounds pretty normal...I'm sure it applies to cat stoves too...at least to a point anyways
The main thing Richard is that you are satisfied. You made a guesstimate and it worked for now...and maybe on into harsher winters. Then you will know for certain and be overwhelmed with your purchase. Now’s the time to start gathering wood, splitting and stacking, or buying it that way. Try to get ahead as much as possible. Last fall I started with a plan to burn coal all winter...that didn’t get started until January 20, 2020. I’ve been fully satisfied with that experience. Let’s just say...that is an understatement. So we burned some fuel oil this year up to that point. This kick started my plan of of wood drying. I already had some dry wood, but in early fall had 3 cord delivered, so it will have had a full year to dry before needing it at all. I plan on buying another 3-5 cord in the next few weeks. All this wood hopefully can sit for 2-4 years before I need it. I do have a source for even drier wood, so when it arrives it will be burned first while the rest is continuing to dry. Burning coal in the coldest months will help save my wood supply and vice-versa. I may even try some of those eco-bricks you’re talking about. My hope is to add in to the house, put the big wood/coal stove in the addition and buy another wood stove. Sounds like your plan has worked well. Hope I’m so lucky finishing mine.
Yes The lower air actually increases the temperature on my IS.. As your wood dries out your notice, it’ll actually burn better at about a quarter depending on your draft
