Wood Stove/Heater

[Bajr]

I'm looking to get a wood stove/heater for 1500 sqft house. Alot to pick from. Cast iron, steel, soapstone, or catalytic or no catalytic, vs flexburn. The store in my area has vermont casting cast iron, quadrafire steel stoves and hearthstone. Anyone have any recommendations of one over the other?

 

[EdP]

Any stove has to heat up before it heats the house. That is heat stored in the stove material of construction. The different materials store different amounts of heat. Soapstone stores the most, followed by cast iron, and then steel. The more heat the stove absorbs the longer it takes to heat up, and the longer it continues to give off heat after the fire burns down. Your lifestyle and how you plan to use the stove should be a consideration when looking at options, as well as price and appearance. Soapstone tends to be the most expensive and steel the least.

Cat or non cat is something else that depends on lifestyle. We had a cat Vermont Castings many years ago. It was a great stove but took a full load burn and about an hour to come up to the temperature at which you swapped the exhaust to go thru the cat. It would be below cat temp by morning and need to be warmed back up. I don't know if that is how they still operate but it can be an issue if everyone has to get to work in the morning. (Note: I didn't have to swap to the cat but it burned cleaner and gave more heat). It was a very clean burning stove when on cat with no visible smoke coming out the chimney.

 

[loganwayne]

^ pretty much covered it.
Only thing I'll add is we used alot less like 1/2 as much wood through the winter when I sold my old insert and got a new cheapo insert with the cat. BUT the wood has to be dry dry for the stove to burn good. My old one I could thrown in some green wood in the box and no issues. The cat stove would choke down

 

[Pony Soldier]

I have a hearthstone as my main stove and it maintains an even heat for hours even after the wood is consumed.

At the other end of the house I have a Quadrifire. It heats quickly and generates a lot of heat. I use it mainly when that end of the house gets chilled such as sustained -10 to -40. I light it about 15 - 20% of the time largely because we spend most of our time in the living room.

I have propane renaii heaters in remote portions of the house like the master bathroom. That way I can sleep in a cold bedroom but start the morning in a warm bathroom.

If you need steady heat I would go with the vermont or similar. I would lean toward the Quad if your needs are more occasional.

 

[JFK]

My house is just shy of 1600 sq/ft and gets heated primarily by wood in the winter. It has an old steel Lopi, no cat or any of the fancy epa stuff and the main problem is that the house can get too hot. Granted this is Ca where we have very mild winters compared to the rest of the country. Buddy of mine has one of the new cat stoves and he goes through half the wood I do.

 

[Amos Keeto]

I started heating with a "one-eyed" heating stove.
It did very well in my 1100 sq/ft home.
It was very old and the sides eventually burned out and had to be replaced.
When I pulled it down, there were three long cracks in the bottom. As much as I hated the idea, it went to the scrap yard.
The quickest answer was a Chinese built steel stove. It does okay, but I don't think as well as the old antique!
We burn wood all day, then turn on the LPG central heat unit at night. Works great!