I didn't "settle", I bought exactly what I wanted. The previous furnace would fill a 5 gallon bucket of creosote in a month at times, and it consumed more than twice the wood I do now. There's nothing magic about the Kuuma, it's controlled by a computer. You feel just because a furnace isn't computer controlled, it's not efficient. What's a few grams of smoke equate to in wood consumption, not much. The Caddy line of furnaces are very efficient, and offer the long clean burns that the competitors offer.
That's not even a fair comparison though comparing today's technology to, what, the 1800's? Do you compare your new car purchases to the Model A?
LOL I prefer to tighten up the scale a bit to at least the last 20 years.
I totally agree, there's nothing magical about it, besides, magic is nothing but deception anyway. It definitely is the computer which makes all the difference and keeps the firebox in the perfect scenario in order to burn almost everything leaving nothing to create creosote from. It removes all guesswork out of it and the guesswork is what may lead to non-optimal burn which leads to in-efficiency and creosote. It's not that the furnace is in-efficient in itself, it's the human interaction it needs at times which makes it not as efficient as it could be based on the technology available today. There are a bunch of gassers out there which also don't form any creosote. It's not like it'a new thing.
Anyway, I have a bad habit of playing devil's advocate and sticking my nose where it doesn't necessarily belong....lol I mainly do this for those who are maybe Googling things looking for furnaces and wanting to document some real input from real users about their units and how they may differ. I know when I was looking for furnaces I didn't find much comparing the Kuuma to the Caddy. I do have a purpose other than to un-purposely ruffle a few feathers....lol
Bottom line is, chances are you are going to be happy with whatever you purchase, as one doesn't normally have the means to purchase two different brands, run them side by side and decide which one works best for their situation. I know back when I was looking at cameras, you can find a bazillion good consumer reviews for almost everything out there. Those meant nothing to me, as they had nothing, or very little, to compare to. What I found was a
-WEBSITE- of professionals that put those cameras through a bunch of tests and were able to scientifically compare different cameras. Some may call this micro-analyzing, I call it caveat emptor.
Laynes’s firebox is rated for 6.6 gr/hr of particulates. Let’s say he averages 12 hrs burning per day from Nov-March. Worst case that comes to 21 lb/yr of soot that was lost heat.
We’re talking 4-5 splits of wood. For the whole year. Not enough for me to worry about.
I don't think you can compute things that way. I don't think smoke is a particulate. Anyway, it's not that, it's having to clean your chimney and scraping the HX clean of creosote which I would not like. You are not going to get all of it every year so there will be areas which will buildup over the years. Like I said though, if this was the best one could do then so be it, but it's not. Having to clean chimneys once a year will be a thing of the past, it's up to manufactures to take advantage of the technology available and just do it. If a small family run business in N MN can do it I'm sure a major corporation can also do it. All I did last year was simply vacuum my HX and the fly-ash came right off and I was left with bare metal.
I saw absolutely zero black colored anything anywhere in the HX or chimney....and believe me I looked with a mirror and flashlight trying to find something....lol This is also with burning ~25% MC wood towards the end of the heating season by mistake.
My ductwork cost me a grand and that was at cost with me installing it.
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