1st stove: Catalytic or non-cat for burning Boxelder

[Fargo]

Unrelated to your question but you mentioned having an electric furnace. Why not get a cold climate rated heat pump? That would give you a lot of bang for your buck on cutting heating bills. 25F and above on average your bill would be cut to about a 1/3. Some of the newer ones are full output down to single digits, still saving money over your current heating. Add a smart thermostat set to use heat strips at a set temp you would be good for any temp. I think both a heat pump and stove, if high efficiency get a 30% tax credit.

I already have a heat pump. In fact, I have a pretty good electric furnace. Its made by a company named Steffes and it uses an Electric Thermal Storage system that contains ceramic bricks that hold 614,000 BTUs of energy. The system weighs around 3000 lbs. I have model 4130 (linked here) . Its a pretty high tech system designed to be used as part of an "Off Peak" heating system. It was in the house when I purchased it. The stored heat is intended to heat the house during times when the power company shuts down the power to my furnace during peak electricity hours. Then during the off peak hours my furnace 'charges' the bricks up again to full temp to store the heat for the next round. This gives me an all electric heating system that only runs when electricity is cheap.

So I don't expect a wood stove to really save me much money. Its mostly for emergency use and peace of mind in the case of an extended power loss. We lost power for 3 days last winter. That length of time has only happened once in the 10 years I've lived here. But we do get shorter power outages. So the stove provides some peach of mind knowing I'll have heat. The stove will also supplement my electric furnace. We run our furnace around 68 during the day and I'm always cold. So I'd love to burn some wood to bring up the heat on occasion without increasing electric bills. Maybe throw in a load in the morning to heat things up nice to start the day. (I work from home) Then let it slow burn all day (maybe another load at night) to supplement the furnace.

 

[farmwithjunk]

I already have a heat pump. In fact, I have a pretty good electric furnace. Its made by a company named Steffes and it uses an Electric Thermal Storage system that contains ceramic bricks that hold 614,000 BTUs of energy. The system weighs around 3000 lbs. I have model 4130 (linked here) . Its a pretty high tech system designed to be used as part of an "Off Peak" heating system. It was in the house when I purchased it. The stored heat is intended to heat the house during times when the power company shuts down the power to my furnace during peak electricity hours. Then during the off peak hours my furnace 'charges' the bricks up again to full temp to store the heat for the next round. This gives me an all electric heating system that only runs when electricity is cheap.

So I don't expect a wood stove to really save me much money. Its mostly for emergency use and peace of mind in the case of an extended power loss. We lost power for 3 days last winter. That length of time has only happened once in the 10 years I've lived here. But we do get shorter power outages. So the stove provides some peach of mind knowing I'll have heat. The stove will also supplement my electric furnace. We run our furnace around 68 during the day and I'm always cold. So I'd love to burn some wood to bring up the heat on occasion without increasing electric bills. Maybe throw in a load in the morning to heat things up nice to start the day. (I work from home) Then let it slow burn all day (maybe another load at night) to supplement the furnace.

Do you model 4130 in conjunction with a heat pump? I'm not sure if you are using the "electric furnace" and "heat pump" interchangeably or have a heat pump connected to that unit. Sounds like the 4130 is a standalone "electric furnace" that can accept a heat pump connected to it.

Your use case is like mine. Wood stove does 90% of the heating and the heat pump picks up the slack above 65F so it doesn't run much at all. I have electric baseboards for when its below 15F and the heat pump's output is diminished.

My vote is for a CAT stove. They are amazing with the air shut down but into season 3 mine is getting tired and the "10 year warranty" was denied based on a picture as it wasn't destroyed enough looking for them. So keep that in mind for future replacements (10,000-12,000 hours). Mine was $370 shipped.

 

[stoveliker]

Just to be clear, a heat pump gets you 3 BTU of heat for every BTU (convert to kWh here) in electrical energy used where as a (resistive coil) electric furnace gives you 1 BTU of heat for every BTU in electrical energy used.
Then your storage will have losses too, so your furnace (if resistive, as I suspect) will get you less heat energy out than you put electrical energy in whereas a heat pump will get you 2-4 times as much out as you put in.
That's where your electrical gain comes in.