WS Ideal Steel or BK Ashford for me?

Thanks for the info Jeff T! I read about that gasket in the manual as well. Sounds pretty simple overall

 

I'm an IS owner. I love this stove and it does very well for me, but I do wish that it had a thermostat to open up the air and burn the coals down. A lot of us have been packing the stove full at night for maximum heat and waking up to way too many coals and a reduced temperature.

I can respect Blaze King for providing a way for the air to open and burn down the coals. I personally believe that is the way to go. I do love the Ideal Steel, I just think a thermostat control would top it off.

 

BK owners that push their stoves hard have coaling issues also. As reported by them, the thermostat does great at controlling the burn rate but doesn't open the draft enough during the cooling period to burn down the coals. The thermostat doesn't have enough "throw".

While the Thermostats work great, they don't seem to help the coaling problem.
I think it still boils down to stove size vs heat needs. My little Keystone never has a coaling problem because I never need to push it.

 

As I have said in the past, the air is coming at the coals from the wrong direction. Wood coals require a lot more air to burn at anywhere near the heat output rate of the wood itself so all stoves go through two basic cycles; the first is the burning of the actual wood, and the second is the burning of the coals. The second cycle cannot and will not perform as the initial cycle did. The fix for this is to burn the coals down as they form rather than at the end of the cycle; air flow from underneath the entire fuel load will accomplish that; a stove with a grate that is at least partially bottom drafted will burn the coals down near the grate as the wood above is burned.

At the end of the day, it is the stove design that is causing this problem, not any particular stove, draft setting, etc.

Brian

 

As far as soft wood goes, I did a burn last winter in our Beta Ideal Steel with a big load of lodge pole pine, it produced at least 10-12 hours or so of good strong heat in moderate PA winter weather:
Time Lapse video: Lodge Pole Pine in Woodstock's Ideal Steel stove

 

Bridgeburner, If you ever experienced a soapstone stove, you wouldn't be wanting Woodstock to switch to cast iron. There are plenty of cast iron stoves out there. If you want one, get one. Woodstock makes a beautiful, well engineered product that extremely easy to operate and excels in quality and longevity.

I would not call the PH Victorian. It has a rather classical appearance. Quite simple. Just enough decoration to give it some class.

We all have different tastes. Woodstocks are what they are, and many love them. If you don't, don't "settle" for one. Get what you want. You are going to look at your stove for a long time.

 

Many times people act like pine will burn crazy hot and fast but much like you I have found I get 10+ hour burns with pine. This year I have burned only pine up until about a week ago and had no problems heating 2500 sq foot with two loads a day.

 

The coaling issue isn't a huge deal. Infact, it does help keep the stove temperatures up when your away.

You Would love operating this stove. It's 15 degrees out. My upstairs thermostat went from 69 to 76 degrees in 1 hours time. The stove is in the basement. I set the air half open.

 

+1

 

I've owned a BK (princess) and now own the PH, both great stoves, my burn times are about the same with both stoves but I get more heat from the PH when needed. When I had the princess I always woke up to a half a box of coals, I would turn the stat up to burn them down, with the PH (maybe because of the soapstone) the stove is hotter in this stage than the BK. you cant go wrong with either one with your size house.

 

And still doesn't have the burn time of a BK stove.

Not really a fair comparison due to one being an insert and one being freestanding. The Progress also has a larger firebox than the Princess.

The BK t-stat doesn't open up past the setting you have set. If you set the t-stat on "2" it will only open back up to that point as the stove cools. Even when the t-stat opens to that point it doesn't provide enough air to burn the coals down. You have to treat it the same as any other stove, pull the coals forward, turn the air up and burn them down. The magic of the t-stat is how it handles the burn early on.

I know a lot of people talk about something that opens the air at the end of the burn but I personally don't like the idea unless I can flip a switch to either burn them down or not. When I'm gone for 15 hours I don't want to come home to a cold stove due to the t-stat opening up at the end of the burn and roasting all my coals away. If I'm home the burn down feature would be great but with long days I'm not a fan. A feature that opens the air would tear into what manufactures can post as "burn times".

The fire show of any stove is overrated for me. My first stove(tube stove) had a great fire but that part of the burn is small. I have a wood stove to heat my house and that's it. The Ashford or the IS will serve you well, both are great companies with great products. For me it comes down to burn time and how well it can be controlled. It sounds like you will have a well insulated home which will be perfect for a BK stove that you can dial down to barely more than a space heater. The Ashford is also better looking(IMO) than the IS which may mean something to some people since there is a large part of the year the stove is stone cold. I do think the IS will throw more heat than the Ashford but in your well insulated home I don't think that matters.

 

What is the difference between the belly depth of these two stoves?

 

Not sure on the IS, I want to say the Ashford is about 4 inches which is one of my knocks on the stove. I wish it was a little deeper like the Princess but even at 4 inches it should be plenty deep.

 

I agree, if it was possible to automatically control the air damper, burning the coals down and getting some more heat of of it may work itself out someday.

 

One thing to mention is that the IS can, as an option be lined with soapstone so you get the qualities of the soapstone stoves with out the soapstone look.
Soapstone absorbs heat really well and stores it, takes the harsh peaks out of the heating curve and makes a more comfortable heat.

 

After spending 3 years with a stove that did not work well at all (it was pretty) looks are not important to me any more, stove could be uglier then a mud fence for all I care.

 

That might not really be true. I have personally gotten this stove to run with the air fully closed and the cat still active and clean exhaust. It did not create enough heat for me so I didn't keep it there long, but a full box on that kind of setting could no doubt burn 20-30 hours or more. We are still experimenting with this stove. If I wanted it to last 30 hours I'm sure it would, but I would rather it give me 12 hours with good output. It does that flawlessly.

Also since the efficiency numbers are almost identical, your keeping the same amount of heat in your house per load. The Ideal Steel does have an automatic air feed to the cat keep in mind.

 

I think there are 3 stages of the burn, the gasses (outgassing), then burning the bulk of the wood, followed by the coaling stage. CAT stoves (at least mine anyway), give off a tremendous amount of heat during the coaling stage. I'm pretty sure I get most of the heat out of my stove for the longest period of time during the coaling stage, until the very very end of it, like the last hour after coaling for 4 to 6 hours.

 

Agreed, there is no magic in any stove (of the same basic design) so the same amount of firewood will burn for the same time at the same output regardless of the stove. So any stove of about the same size firebox, with an insulated firebox and a catalytic combustor over the firebox should burn for the same time. I understand the Blaze King adds a temperature driven draft and that may have an advantage in keeping a move even burn but still, no stove can, say, double the burn time while having similar heat output as any other stove. Assuming we are not throwing 150 year old pot belly stoves in for comparison

So a modern, cat. based stove with a 3.2 cubic insulated firebox and a cat. should be able to very closely match the performance of any brand, same design stove.

Brian