Joyboy, that Esse looks awesome. Having secondary combustion is pretty sweet to get extra efficiency when it is also your main heater.
We have a kitchen queen 380. This is the 3rd year heating, 1st I was still building the house, second it was our only heat source, this year I installed a ductless minisplit as backup. The stove easily heats the house, almost too easily. It went down to around 5F last night, and woke up to 70F downstairs, threw some logs on the coals and we're sitting at 78F inside and 8F out - that's with having doors open to load up our firewood rack
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Our house has a lot of insulation and is very air tight. One issue we have is that we only need 1 or 2 fires a day, so sometimes it just isn't practical to time the fire with cooking. Especially with a toddler..
Without a toddler, even single digit weather you could do 1 fire at night and heat our house if you are ok with temp fluctiation between 64-72-ish. Anyhow, the thing throws the heat off. Doing 2 fires per day you can always restart from coals. One fire a day usually requires kindling.
The oven especially cooks better than anything I have used before. Food also seems to be more tolerant of a range of temps. Taking the main cook plate off, and sticking a wok right over the fire, there's also just nothing else like that. It really can be a pleasure and something to look forward to in the long, cold, dark winter.
In a couple years I may plumb the stove for hot water, it does come predrilled for hookup.
I have admittedly wondered if a blaze king would be a better fit in our house. Being able to burn at the lowest setting for 24-40 hours most of the winter would probably save us a fair amount of wood. It also would allow us to tighten up the temp swings in the house.
Here's a pic of some fried rice I cooked the other night.
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