Suggestions/Insights for heating with wood in South Texas

Woody Stover said:

You could step up from the basic "value" stoves with a PE Super 27, about 1700 for the base model..
You are obviously good parents, and being woodheads makes you even cooler.

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Thanks, Woody. I appreciate your engaging with me on this.

edyit said:

that means that they might have a list of approved inserts. contact the manufacturer and see if you can get that list.

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I will see what I can do. Thanks.

begreen said:

I think Lopi lists Superior fireplaces as tested with their Revere insert. This is a 2.2 cu ft insert. Check for fit. I second Edyt's suggestion to contact Superior. They will want the model number.

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I bucked up some branches/small trunks today while my husband was feeding the shredder. When I asked what length, he said, “Just make them 18 inches as we did for the Revere.” We really enjoyed that insert back in Virginia. I was trying to check earlier on what brands of fireplace are tested, but without success. I’ll keep digging as well as checking with Superior. Thanks.

begreen said:

The house is spread out. One stove in either location will only heat that end of the house well. A little heat might migrate to the other side, but it wouldn't depend on it being cozy. So yes, do both if comfort is the goal or just hangout in the warmer side when a big chill comes down from Canada.

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We hang out in one side an awful lot anyway. We really want a place where people can bask. Our heat needs aren’t that great, so we’ll see. Some of what we’ve got going on is a bit of competing desires with each spouse seeing the merit of what the other wants. A good problem, I suppose.

Sodbuster said:

DuaeGuttae, a lot is going to depend on what is behind curtain #1, which means tearing out your existing fireplace, or drilling a hole big enough to see whats behind the stone veneer,(drill through the stove). I would say don't rush into anything, it makes for a very uneducated and sometimes expensive guess. I've torn into things before, only to wish I could have a do over, and not have touched a thing.

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I agree, Sodbuster. We aren’t planning to do anything other than research and learn right now. Quite frankly we don’t have our wood in order yet, so it wouldn’t do us a whole lot of good to rush into anything. (We do actually have some seasoned wood, though, because years ago a neighbor took down a red oak on our land, processed and stacked the wood. He and his wife plan to put their house up for sale soon, and they’ve offered us the wood.)

This forum is great for people helping to think through the issues. I appreciate it. It’s been great for raising points for us to research further and discuss.

Texas123 said:

I live in Texas as you can tell from my hearth.com name, and within fifty miles of the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. For almost ten years we heated our house with only a Wonderwood non EPA stove before the upgrade to a Jotul 500, so I have a good idea of what the winters are like.

You are correct, in South Texas the temps are from the 30s to the 60s but the coldest feeling days are the days in the 40s where it is overcast and the north wind howls down. Given the facts of these temperatures and the once in a while power outage here is my advice.

You have the blessing of a working fireplace that can do the emergency heating for the rest of this year. Not as good as an insert with the blower but it is good for the foreseeable future.

So, this is what I recommend.

I would keep the fireplace with no modifications for now, as it works well for an emergency heater or sweater weather nights.

Then on the appropriate wall in the living/family room, I would install the free standing wood stove of your choice. Whether it is small or large is up to you. If I was in your situation and had the funds to do so, I would install the prettiest and largest stove I could. I am thinking the Ideal Steel with your choices of designs on the frames as the most attractive one to install. Whichever stove you install, I would go with a rear flue design into a 90 degree T for the clean out as you probably don't want to move hundreds of pounds of metal several times a year.

Finally, "Yee Haw!" and Welcome to The Lone Star State.

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Hmm. Somehow I posted without saying anything, so I’ll try to edit.

Thanks for the welcome and the insight. I’m really interested in hearing about your heating with wood exclusively and how that works with the daytime highs during Texas winters.

I looked up the forecast for Stephenville this week, and I actually had to check that I wasn’t mistakenly checking on Virginia. Highs in the 30s and lows in the teens! Our forecast for Christmas isn’t quite that cold (39/25 if I remember correctly), but it does include ice.

In talking to my husband about using a stove in case of a power outage, I think he’s coming around to a freestander being more practical (and it still is a huge question whether an insert could even be an option). It would be nearing the kids’ room, and we could sleep in the living room during an outage to keep warm.

Once we settle on a route we’ll start exploring stoves. I do have a concern about overheating with wood, so I’d love to hear about how you find yourself running your Oslo and what kind of space you’re heating with it.

Thanks so much for chiming in.

Woody Stover said:

Another approach would be to put a telescoping connector pipe coming off a top flue exit. then you can take the screws out of the collar and slide the telescope up and attach a bag to the bottom. Can be hard to slide that telescope sometimes, though. Or, some stoves have a removable baffle so you can run a SootEater up from the bottom. But yes, I have a rear-vent setup into a tee that you describe..pretty easy to sweep. All I do is take out two screws holding the tee cap on, put a bag on and brush down from the top. It all depends how steep your roof is, and how comfortable you are up there.

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A key installation point for us would be ease of cleaning bottom up with a sooteater. We already own one, but my husband used to prefer to clean top down with it at our old house. I think that will be an absolute impossibility here. The roof is very high and very steep, and I don’t see either one of us going up there at all. I’m shuddering at the thought.

begreen said:

That's a reasonable request. Some stoves are easier than others to clean, bottom up. I wouldn't worry too much about overheating. With a moderately sized stove you should be fine. Cast iron jacketed stoves have less dramatic temperature swing than unjacketed stoves and you can also control the heat output by the size of the fuel loading and air control. How much area would the stove be heating and how high are the ceilings there?

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The living room is a pretty big open room with 12 foot ceilings, but there are four recesses that go even higher. There is a ceiling fan there to help bring heat back down (and I suppose we could just let heat collect up there if things did get too hot). It’s also open to a foyer and what’s supposed to be a dining room but serves as a room for board games, books, and puzzles for my kids. That has 10 foot ceilings. That whole space is perhaps 500 sq. ft. There is a small hallway that opens to the two bedrooms that my four kids share and their bathroom. We would probably try to encourage a convective loop toward that area, and that might add another close to 300 sq. ft.

The living room has a western wall full of windows (double pane) that can contribute to heat gain and loss. In the summer we keep blinds closed all afternoon. We haven’t found any solar heat gain to be too much in the winter. We do have a lot of trees, and I think that keeps a lot of afternoon sun out with the shorter days.

Begreen, do you happen to have any contact number for Superior in your files? Their website directed me to my dealer for support. I have talked to a company that sells stoves about coming out to talk options after I’ve done research on what they offer. I called them this morning and gave them numbers off my fireplace. They were very polite and said they would check into authorized inserts, but I just didn’t come away with the sense that they were as concerned about this as I am. I’d like to do the due diligence myself, and I’d appreciate any suggestions for how to get in touch with Superior? (This May all be irrelevant if we decide on doing a freestanding stove, but my husband does want to pursue whether an insert is even an option.)

Thanks.

begreen said:

Sorry, no contacts at Superior. Be be polite but persistent in requesting info, understanding this is the holidays.

For a freestanding stove I'm thinking a mid-sized stove. A cast iron clad steel stove will soften the heat a bit. Not sure what is available down your way but consider a Quadrafire Explorer iI, Jotul F45, Pacific Energy Alderlea T5, and Enviro Boston 1200 for starters.

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Thanks, Begreen. I’ll give the dealer some time to check into things and get back to me, as the salesperson did indicate that she would do so. I’ll inquire again in the new year if I haven’t heard anything. We aren’t looking to install this winter, so I can wait.

The dealer I’m talking to carries Jotul and Pacific Energy but has indicated a willingness to provide another type of stove as long as their distributor carries it. I’m not sure exactly what that means for options, but people down here don’t keep a lot of stoves in stock. I had actually already looked at the Alderlea as a possibility. It will certainly stay on the list. I appreciate your making suggestions because It helps me focus some research.

Ashful said:

Begreen is much more an expert than me, but why such a large stove, man? Seems to me, an F45 or a T5 would be awful big, for any home in South Texas. The only way I’d go even as large as 2.0 cubic feet, is if it were a cat stove that could be turned WAaaaay down. Even then, I’m seeing this owner wanting a lot of 8-hour fires, at pretty low heat rates.

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Thanks for chiming in, Ashful. I value hearing from a Blaze King owner because I keep wondering whether we want the low and slow or the pump and glide approach. We’re paying attention to our temperatures and when our furnaces run (we have three) to try to help us answer that question.

I will say that prior to December the idea of a 2.2 cubic foot stove made me want to melt into a puddle. (If we were back in Virginia that’s what we’d traditionally have started running in October, though I understand this year was unusually warm there.). Once “thermal winter” moved in down here, though, I’ve been cold in our house, and so have my children, and that’s during the day. That really surprised me. Sure we still have warm days (tomorrow is supposed to be 73 degrees and sunny, so we’ll be outside in short sleeves), but we certainly get stretches of cool/cold, gray, and windy.

After our interlude of warmth we’re supposed to be highs in the 40’s and 50’s with lows in the 20’s and 30’s for the next six days. How would one of your Ashfords handle that?

For full disclosure, I have bought into the “Blaze King Kool-aid” enough that we bought a Princess Insert to replace our Lopi Revere this spring before we had any inkling we’d be moving. We never installed it and sold it this fall since our new house doesn’t have an acceptable fireplace for it. The two main reasons we were interested in it were the ability to use it more in Virginia’s shoulder seasons and overfire protection (the aesthetics weren’t our favorite, but it would have been in our basement family room). We never had the Lopi run away, but there were times I stayed up later than I wanted to keeping an eye on it.

Down here in Texas we have lots of live oak (high BTU) and Juniper (low BTU but resinous). The idea of overfire protection is still appealing to me. I’ve thought about the smaller Ashford if I could get someone to order it for me. I’ve thought about a lot of others, too, though, but I would be interested in your thoughts on a Blaze King knowing that we could see ourselves using a stove from sundown till noon the next day pretty often and even keeping it going 24/7 for some multiple day stretches.