My family owns a small hearth store in Salcha Alaska where it gets 50 below and one of our best sellers are the inexpensive Timberwolf line from Napoleon. The 2200 model on average gets 10 hours which is more than the company states and can heat 1200sqft in on low fire, Napoleon says 800sqft on low but our houses are very tight up here. Our customers burn a combo of Birch and Spruce with fantastic results. I was very skeptical about Napoleon but their product has really proven it’s self. Another great brand that gets over looked is Archgard. The 1800 Archgard gets fantastic burn times with only a 2.0 firebox. The gasification tubes are located high in the top of the stove which makes for easy loading of the stove. Customers have reported solid 8-10 hour burn with one load and 18 hour coal life for easy restarts. Osburn (SBI) builds a rock solid unit as well. I don’t recommend their bay front units like the1800 or the 2200 because they can be a little difficult to get fully loaded due to the design of the firebox and they are double decked meaning that they have upper shield over the upper surface of the stove. If you do get an Osburn 1800 or 2200 get the blower you'll be happier with the stove. When stove companies make statements about burn times and how their stove will magically make your cord wood last longer look at the facts. Firewood only contains a certain amount of carbon energy and a BTU is a BTU. Example heating 1000sqft at 0 degrees outside using a Pacific Energy T5 VS a BlazeKing Princess. Get a good hot fire going in both stoves and then load 20lbs of wood into each stove. You will need roughly 32000 btus per hr.from each stove. Once going and heating the room you will find that the 2 units will burn through the same amount of wood in the same amount of time to heat the same amount of space. Remember a BTU is a BTU and no stove can make energy from nothing. A Catalyst does not give you better burn times, all catalysts do is clog up, break apart, and rob energy that you could use to heat your home. Catalytic stoves can be turned down lower than non-cat stoves but you will notice that you will never see your fire and creosote will start to form on the inner walls of the catalytic stoves. This happens because the catalytic stove has no combustion efficiency and relies on a costly catalyst to maintain efficiency, not to mention when they are run so low your flue gas temps drop to 200 degrees or less (water vapor starts to condensate at 200) and condensation ruins chimneys and creates crystallized creosote which causes chimney fires. Then we come down to catalytic stove break down, cats have to be replaced, cats have to be made in a factory and you have to pay for them... so how efficient is a stove that relies on a part that is made in a chemical factory on the east coast that creates pollution in order to make a catalyst to make a wood stove efficient and uses precious metals like platinum and palladium. The simple fact is that a catalyst will need to be replaced, whether it is in the first year of owning the stove or 10 years down the road...it will have to be replaced eventually and more than once, usually 4-5 times within the life of the stove and at $250-$300 a pop. In any modern stove you will have what is called Pyrolysis. When organic material (wood) is exposed to heat of 390-550 degrees F Pyrolysis starts which is the release of gas and liquid from the organic matter. This gas that is released from the wood is highly combustible and can be used to heat your home if you have the right stove. The only thing the "wood gas" does for you in a catalytic stove is help maintain catalytic temperature (cold cat=no efficiently and a blocked up cat) so in other words you don’t get to use the energy from the gas to heat your area. With a non-cat stove you have under fire air and over fire air so your combustion efficiency is spectacular, catalytic stoves like BlazeKing only use one source of combustion air, no over fire combustion air which reduces combustion efficiency. When you have a non-cat stove you will notice when you shut down the air supply you will get a brilliant blue/orange flame over your wood in the top of your stove, this is the gases produced by Pyrolysis being burnt or "lit off", my customers call it their caveman TV or Aurora in a box and it is beautiful to watch. The energy you get from the gases burning off is used to heat your area. So with a non-cat stove you have two sources of fuel to burn and get useable heat from, the "wood gas" burns first and when that is depleted your stove will burn the carbon rich fuel left behind called char. Non-cat stoves have fewer moving parts which is great because when metal is heated and cooled it becomes week and can break and when parts break its not going to be 60 degrees outside and it sucks when you have a catalytic stove with a bypass damper that won’t open or close because of a part failure. In my opinion, if it’s not evident by what I wrote, I would go with a non-cat stove every time. Select a non-cat stove that will heat your area properly on its low to medium setting so you have room to turn the stove up during cold snaps, use properly seasoned fire wood, if at all possible, and enjoy an appliance that will treat you and your wallet respectfully.
Happy burning
. She can wait until I come home, actually, I have been waiting till ~ 8/9pm to load it up. We figured we would only need to load the stove twice a day were with the quadrafire we had to load it 3 times, 4 times during the weekends. And another thing, this stove puts out more heat than the QuadraFire did.
I am very happy you like the new stove and that the boss of the house does too:hmm3grin2orange:. Glad to hear I was not totally full of b.s. LOL. :msp_w00t:I kept wanting to pm you to find out what was up, but life kept getting in the way. Enjoy the new stove, read the manual some good info on loading/operating stove. Load with wood and enjoy!
