Hello all,
New here after stumbling upon this site while searching for info / reviews of the stove that we ended up purchasing (Bari floor model).
It's been installed since early September (around the same time we moved in to our house) and we started using it in earnest come late September (minus a spate of sunny / mild days). No complaints so far, however we have only been dealing with temps between -5 and +10 Celsius (23 and 50 F). Since we have some big south facing windows, we just open up the curtains on sunny days for some free heat.
The literature claims it can heat up to 1400 ft2 and our house is around 1100 ft2 (stove is on main level). We have yet to fully load it up on a cold night before retiring, but have had a pretty big / hot bed of coals and the soapstone "fully charged". Furnace thermostat is set at around 15 C (59F) and it has only kicked on once so far.
Our wood was delivered in June and was "winter cut" oak and beech with some maple in there too I believe (8 3/4 cords). That being said, we have an issue of less than ideal seasoning heading into our first winter. Some was piled outside off the ground and is showing some signs of splitting on the ends. The rest was piled in our shed (dry in terms of having a solid roof, leaky in terms of an old wooden sliding door and some missing boards at ground level in the back). In other words, the rain stays out, but the wind can get in. The piles in the shed were a little too close together (hindsight's 20/20), and when we arrived in September I noticed some fungus here and there..
I piled more outside on pallets (clearing out valleys between the shed piles in doing so) and started opening the sliding doors daily and things are looking better. I have heard that oak takes a long time to season fully though..
Some has also been piled in our unheated mud room / vestibule and I have had the fan blowing on that pile for a number of days.
We've taken to harvesting some driftwood (freshwater - Lake Superior) from the local beach ( a beach that is advertised for its rocks, not its jumbled masses of washed up wood). This beach is south facing and at the bottom of a slope, so things dry out pretty quick once out of reach of waves. It started out with reusable cloth grocery bags full of "kindling", then some bigger chunks "just to see how they would burn". Now we're loading up the back of the wagon with 5' - 6' long logs 4" - 8" around and I've ordered a one man crosscut saw to start "processing" it. Some of these things weigh 40 lbs plus I would wager (very dense). The stuff that I have been able to cut up with my "aggressive toothed" carpentry style saw has burnt well and provided us a lot of free heat so far. I hope to get enough stockpiled so that I can mix it in with our less than fully seasoned wood for as long as possible..
New here after stumbling upon this site while searching for info / reviews of the stove that we ended up purchasing (Bari floor model).
It's been installed since early September (around the same time we moved in to our house) and we started using it in earnest come late September (minus a spate of sunny / mild days). No complaints so far, however we have only been dealing with temps between -5 and +10 Celsius (23 and 50 F). Since we have some big south facing windows, we just open up the curtains on sunny days for some free heat.
The literature claims it can heat up to 1400 ft2 and our house is around 1100 ft2 (stove is on main level). We have yet to fully load it up on a cold night before retiring, but have had a pretty big / hot bed of coals and the soapstone "fully charged". Furnace thermostat is set at around 15 C (59F) and it has only kicked on once so far.
Our wood was delivered in June and was "winter cut" oak and beech with some maple in there too I believe (8 3/4 cords). That being said, we have an issue of less than ideal seasoning heading into our first winter. Some was piled outside off the ground and is showing some signs of splitting on the ends. The rest was piled in our shed (dry in terms of having a solid roof, leaky in terms of an old wooden sliding door and some missing boards at ground level in the back). In other words, the rain stays out, but the wind can get in. The piles in the shed were a little too close together (hindsight's 20/20), and when we arrived in September I noticed some fungus here and there..
I piled more outside on pallets (clearing out valleys between the shed piles in doing so) and started opening the sliding doors daily and things are looking better. I have heard that oak takes a long time to season fully though..
Some has also been piled in our unheated mud room / vestibule and I have had the fan blowing on that pile for a number of days.
We've taken to harvesting some driftwood (freshwater - Lake Superior) from the local beach ( a beach that is advertised for its rocks, not its jumbled masses of washed up wood). This beach is south facing and at the bottom of a slope, so things dry out pretty quick once out of reach of waves. It started out with reusable cloth grocery bags full of "kindling", then some bigger chunks "just to see how they would burn". Now we're loading up the back of the wagon with 5' - 6' long logs 4" - 8" around and I've ordered a one man crosscut saw to start "processing" it. Some of these things weigh 40 lbs plus I would wager (very dense). The stuff that I have been able to cut up with my "aggressive toothed" carpentry style saw has burnt well and provided us a lot of free heat so far. I hope to get enough stockpiled so that I can mix it in with our less than fully seasoned wood for as long as possible..
