Need advice on a new wood stove

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Countryside : One Thread

We are buying a new woodstove. Does anyone have experience with Blaze King or Century woodstoves?

The Blaze King has a catalytic converter and a blower, and can be fine tuned to heat output. It also requires an 8’’ stovepipe and 21” of clearance from the wall, which will definitely add to cost of installation, just for materials alone. (Stove alone approx. $1500)

The Century is just a plain decent woodstove, nothing fancy. 6” pipe, would fit in the existing stove chimney.(Stove alone approx. $625)

The amount of wood the Blaze King burns is reputed to be about half that of the Century.

We want it now for backup heat, but foresee that we will burn a lot more wood as and when fuel prices go up. If the electricity goes off (or we go off the grid) will the Blaze King still be the better deal with no blower?

We currently heat the whole house with a small Monitor with a blower. The open interior design of the house makes it a good one for heating with wood.

We don't have other options for brands due to remote location and shipping difficuties.

Thanks for your experience and help!

-- seraphima (djones@kodiak.alaska.edu), February 15, 2001

Answers

I would talk to a few people who have the stoves you are interested in seraphima. I personally don't like catalytic converters.They can burn very clean but many stoves without them do just a s well. They do go bad and are very expensive to replace. All manufacturers have some models that perform better than others. I dont think there is anything like firsthand knowledge from someone that owns one, and that doesn't include salespersons.

-- jz (oz49us@yahoo.com), February 16, 2001.

We avoided catalytic stoves because they fail, and we'd heard they were hard and smoky to light (the catalytic baffles block the draught). We also didn't consider a blower in case we lost power. We also had a really difficult time researching because of our remoteness. It seems that manufacturers don't want mail order sales because they want to keep a dealer network. Fortunately, Lehman's sell a lot of stoves mail order anyway, and are very helpful and knowledgeable. We bought a Jotul from them, which we are extremely happy with (excellent quality). We didn't even have to pay shipping since it was a special order shipped direct to us, the price was lower than our "local" dealer, and we saved the local sales tax too!

-- David C. (fleece@eritter.net), February 16, 2001.

We have an Englander stove with a catalyst. The catalyst is designed to cut down on pollution from the stove but it also slows down the burn time so you burn less wood. Yes, there is some expense if the catalyst needs to be replaced, ours is 3 yrs old and with proper care( removing and throughly cleaning once or twice a a yr) will last for yrs to come. The cost of replacement for ours is $85.00, but if you only have to replace it every lets say 10 yrs, you've saved more than triple that amount in wood over those yrs. As far a smoking, ours in in our basement( long draw) and haven't had any problems with smoking due to the catalyst interfering in the draw. Our stove has the 6" pipe and isn't a fancy name brand but I know it works just as well as all the others. It is our primary heat source. In this day and age with natural gas prices going through the roof, our bills have stayed at $29 this whole winter. This in contrast to most of our friends whos bills have been $200. + every month. We do have a blower but hadn't used it much until we had a week of - 20's weather , our thermastat is upstairs so we ran the blower to keep the heat circulated upstairs ( the furnance never kicked on) We have a heat shield on our stove which decrease the clearence from 21" to 10" plus we have a brick wall with an air space(1").

-- Kelle in MT. (kvent1729@aol.com), February 16, 2001.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ