You won't need to feed the 30NC every 3 hours. In fact, you will probably not touch it for about 8 hours. As a rough guideline, you can expect a fire for about 4 hours, reasonable heat for another 4 hours, and coals for an easy relight for 4 hours more. Wood quality/species, draft, operating procedure may shorten or lengthen those times. I would think it is possible that the 30NC can provide all the heat you will need. However, you will need to work on your heat distribution. How far is the stairwell from the stove? Did you try placing a fan at the top of the stairs blowing cold air down into the stove room?
Thanks. It's almost hard to believe, since we don't get anywhere near that kind of mileage from the dragon. Just to clarify, the dragon will stay in the lower level, and we hope to only need about 2 good fires a day down there. I'm still trying to figure this all out in terms of heat retention and distribution, but the lower level stays warm long after the fire is out. My current theory is that it has something to do with the two exposed brick walls; the bricks are hot to the touch when the fire is burning and stay warm for hours afterwards. I suspect that the brick walls are retaining/releasing heat and keeping the lower level super cozy with very little work. However, when we push the dragon to heat the entire house, then we roast ourselves out of the lower level and start going through wood like crazy. My office and my son's bedroom are on that level, and it's not uncommon to have sliders and windows open when it's 22 degrees outside (90 in the lower level). Therefore, we want to put the 30NC upstairs in the masonry fireplace and use it to heat the upper level only (roughly 1450 square feet, with cathedral and vaulted ceilings). I know some heat from the dragon will rise from the lower level, but in a perfect world, I won't be running up and down the stairs all day and night reloading the dragon (and we won't go through so much wood). And the truth is, I want a fire upstairs that we can actually see. What fun is heating with wood if you can't watch the fire?
Oh, and we did try the fan. Our German Wirehaired Pointer is obsessed with the stupid thing and knocked it down the stairs 4 times before we gave up. We do have a small fan on the floor down the hall to the bedrooms. When that is running on low, it sends cold air along the floor in the direction of the stairs to the stove room, and the warm air travels above into the bedrooms. Seems to work pretty well. And the dog, for whatever reason, leaves that fan alone!