I don't know if I mentioned, we have about 1200sq" of upstairs room heated by the stove, we also pipe some of the hot air from the ceiling to downstairs via fan to save on electric heat, that works well. It's a beast. Nice big firebox for large logs. Heat output is magnificent. This winter it has been 80+ when we are home. The fan kit should be mandatory since stove can get fairly hot, probably around 350 on top, so forced air help distribute the heat around without warping the wood floors. Like I said, if it's 70+, it's cold
and we got lots of glass, almost half of the floor of just old sliding doors and few have gaps that you can see light come through. Still, it has 0 problems keeping up the upstairs toasty.The "smart" thermostat is I don't know. I don't have much experience with running regular stove without one on a daily basis. It seems like it's on or off, i.e. the air supply is choked or full on. Most of he time, the only adjustment I do is to set it to 90 to keep it open and going full blast or below current temperature to cut off the air supply. The timing also helps a bit, but most of the time we want it on or off.
The size and viewing glass also look great. With a large firebox, you can see lots of dancing flames like in a fireplace, since you don't ever need to load the stove to the top. We burn bio bricks (2-3 large ones or 3-4 smaller ones) without any overfiring. Also plenty of wood, lots of it reclaimed and border line wet, I load it up an hour before going to sleep, it gets charred, then you got coals that could be effectively regulated with air on/off. Otherwise, the wood would smolder and a few times I had situation when wood is very hot, smoulder but it needs a tad more air to ignite and burn cleanly. I wish that this thing had some fire photo indicator to maintain flame, not just temp indicators. Also, some remote computer control to monitor and turn air on/off. The "smart" tech doesn't seem all that smart, but then I may be stupid when it comes to burning wood. Definitely a noob.
The other big pain is when it still outside and in 50-60 range. This stove doesn't like to burn on 1/3 capacity. It burns great full on, but partial, moderate burn doesn't seem to work well, I can even smell some smoke inside, but again, some firewood this season isn't great. Next season it would be better.
The stove can get you through the night given that you got a load of wood charred to coals and with thermostat down, I can wake up to 60+ upstairs and glowing coals that are more firewood ready. Biobricks suck because they burn out into nothing and I don't want to load the whole stove with more than 3-4 at a time. They also smolder on low air setting, so that's not optimal. Again, this stove really need a photoelement to maintain the flame on. That would make it perfect. May be as a mod for the next season. I'd really hope that these guys would opensource the control board and let alternative algorithms be used. This way users can collectively improve the experience. It seems that Qaudrafire came up with some genius routine, which in fact isn't that genius, I think.
Go for the biggest model, get the fan kit. Awesome stove!
The fan that I have, it's the same fan used in grow houses, to it has nice positive flow, about $100, pipes heat about 15' down through existing ductwork for AC. This doesn't go on stove, it's basically for using this stove to heat up other places as well. It has plenty of capacity.
Also, humidity. Never had a problem. I have hygrometer upstairs, it probably never went below 35-40, most of the time it's about 50-60, but this house is leaky. I bought humidifier earlier in the season fearing dry air and it still sits on the countertop, never used since I bought it.
Last edited:
