Owb
No myth guy. My brother owns a welding shop. Never done a repair on a steel stove, 4 stainless boilers in the last 3 years, all welds
Ok, i did alot of research on this when i bought mine, i too was torn between heatmor and cb. Firt on the stainless, yes cheap stainless will crack, welds will break, etc. Does heatmor use cheap stainless no, i believe it is mixed with nickel to prevent this, also they carry a lifetime warranty on the stainless, yes it is somewhat pro-rated but, at least they are going to help you out 25 years down the road. Insulation, let me ask this. When you put spray foam over metal as the metal cools, heats, wouldnt that cause a sweating issue under the insulation? Therefore causing the cb to rot from the outside in? Also, when the mild steel needs to be re welded, how are you going to get all that crap off there to reweld so it doesnt burn all off and make a big mess? I will tell you that on my heatmor i have had ice on the edge of the roof in mid winter, dont worry about the fiberglass it works fine. Fire brick, heatmor has fire brick, better heat transfer and storage of heat. When i was researching i found a site were a guy had put fire brick in his cb and gained in effency big time. Ash auger, grates, Heatmor has all of that, nothing comes out of my stove unless it is completly burnt to a fine powder, it takes me about 2 minutes to clean it out. My bro in law has to remove his wood on the inside, and shovel out his coals, and throw all the ambers, etc away with his cb. Last year we both bought our owb, during the course of the year i have maybe one wheelbarrow full of ashes, him he had at least 3 in January when i took him wood. Sand bottom, what a nice feature, there is nothing in the bottom to rott out but sand, and the grates (cast iron) or auger pan (stainless steel) on a heatmor. On a cb you have mild steel with wood sitting on it along with the acids of the wood. There are no fancy electronic stuff on my heatmor that can go bad, basically all it is is a wood box with three thermostats that i can go up town and replace if i needed to, can cb say that? Forced air induction in the burn chamber, cb will tell you that it will blow your heat right out the chimney, yes i am sure some heat does go out the chimney, i am also pretty sure it goes out the cb chimney also. One thing with air induction is if you run out of seasoned wood you can put in the greenest crap you can find and it will burn. I have no worries about running out of wood with my heatmor, if i get low i find a tree and cut it down. My bro in law always has to have dry wood for his cb, he claims it wont burn green,. i dont know i always sell him dry seasoned wood it cost him more than green. I sell alot of fire wood and i can honestley say that the heatmor guys use less wood all the time, and most of my heatmor guys heat two houses with them rather than one! Finally if stainless steel was such a bad product why wood cb want an xtra 1,000 over the cost of thier std mild steel? Could it be that they figure if you are going to pay the xtra 1000 for stainless that you are better off buying a heatmor now that you are at about the same price? One last thing, I dont care if you have a cb, heatmor, woodsman, etc, there is none of us that will telll you that you did not make a good decision on your purchase. You just saved yourself thousands of dollars in heating cost! And you are no longer supporting the middle east with your heating dollars. Anyone can be a good decision, but try to make the best. This is just my opionion, based on my exsperiances.
