I'm looking for suggestions and people's experiences in heating a house similar to the one listed above. The house has a fireplace located on the side of the house in the basement, within 10 ft of an open stair case. I currently have a Buck Stove 28000 installed in the fireplace with a liner kit in the chimney and it's not really working as well as I had hoped for my needs. I burn long slow fires, while I'm at work and school, and it's difficult to keep the house comfortable by the time I come home. The stove is great all weekend long as I'm normally there to feed it every 4 hours and the stove cranks out air at 450 to 600d all weekend and the house is 72d when it's 25 to 35d outside. During the day and night throughout the week the house will drop to 64d on nights in the low 20's. I def want to upgrade to a more efficient stove so I don't have to clean the chimney so much and don't have to cut 4 or more chords of wood a year. I have just about decided on looking for a used Quadrafire 4300 stove and have been thinking about adding an inline cat to the stove pipe to make sure its working as efficiently as possible. I know the 4300 stove relies on secondary burn to reach EPA standards but adding the cat I would think would be best for long slow burning fires. I'm planning to reconstruct the fireplace so I can use a free standing stove and stove pipe outside the chimney fire box, but still use the existing chimney and liner to exhaust the smoke. Any suggestions or comments are welcomed.