Your results are dependent on the house, but I agree with what you are saying, as long as a cat stove would put out the large amount of heat when I needed it I think it could be a better choice for me, however I dont like a stove that struggles to heat the house.
Hybrid stoves
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When it gets cold I switch over to mostly Oak and that can play a big part in burn times and heat.
Why wouldn't a cat stove be able to put out more heat when needed if all other specs were equal?
But, again, you get the high peak temp and then the drop off over the next several hours. Where as the cat stove would give you a more steady heat. For some, this is very desirable.
Not saying it could not but would have to know it was capable of puttting out a lot of heat when I needed it, a lot of windows on south side of house and below temps with a wind chill in the negative 20's to 30's mean I need a lot of heat at times. Am planing on istalling insulated curtains so wont be as big an issue in the furure.
My experience burning the FV was that when I burned it really hot/hard my wood consumption rate went up beyond what I would have expected. That may be simply a matter of the stove being too small, but with the cat burning on high for a full load (read burning to reload in 4-5hrs which is fast for the FV) I think a lot of heat was wasted up the chimney and I wonder if the cat could really do as good a job as when on a more moderate rate.
Now with the PH (very different stove I know) when I burn very hot the wood goes away faster (of course) but it doesn't "seem" to be as bad. We kept our house warmer last year than previous two years and burned about the same amount of wood (normalized for degree days). I attribute this to being able to 'push' the stove in the coldest parts of the winter and still maintain more reasonable efficiency.
However, this is a very individual result and without additional input I don't know if it really can be generalized. Our home is too large for the FV by all official accounts and I imagine that ANY stove pushed to it's limits is likely to lose considerable efficiency.
But thats what I need right now, the house is a big heat sink and gives up the heat over night and in the morning I need a lot of heat to bring up the temp and after that not so much.
" I imagine that ANY stove pushed to it's limits is likely to lose considerable efficiency. "
Hot fires are efficient fires, not sure how that relates to our needs .
Hot fires are efficient fires, not sure how that relates to our needs .
Sounds like you have a good solution in place for you.
The counter-approach is to try and maintain a more steady internal temp (i.e. if it doesn't cool off as much in the house then you don't need the 'burst' to bring it back up to temp). If I go to light the stove in the morning and the room is already within a couple degrees of comfortable then I don't need that initial peak to bring it back - so I'd rather have it maintain a more steady output until next reload and I avoid a cool dip or overly warm peak.
I wonder which is actually "more efficient" in the big picture, but likely that is a purely academic argument.
I had hoped for (and to some degree think I have) gotten the ability to do a bit of both with the PH - not as good on the long slow as I had hoped, but certainly capable of that high burst output and a reasonable 'medium low' burn rate.
Agreed, but pushing the FV I know I got higher flue temps so that is a lot of heat going out of the house. Hot fires clearly are more efficient at full combustion, but how effectively can that heat be captured and put in the home. I believe this is the argument for the rocket mass stoves - burn REALLY hot and fast, but capture the heat from the exhaust gasses in the mass and feed it into the room over time. The cat lowers the temperature to get the increased efficiency (full combustion) burn but doesn't require as hot a flue gasses leaving (cat mfgrs do say "time, temperature, and turbulence" to get the cats to burn best - time is to combust must go down as the rate of air flow through goes up). I suspect this is part of the reason that the cats are perceived to do better at medium to low burn rates.
Why would you assume a cat stove is not capable of putting out a lot of heat. I mean that sincerely.
"Agreed, but pushing the FV I know I got higher flue temps"
I run high flue temps compared to others and dont know why, often wondered how much heat I put up the chimney.
I run high flue temps compared to others and dont know why, often wondered how much heat I put up the chimney.
Just talking about size I guess, have not looked at the BTU ratings of the cat stoves lately.
The BTU ratings Woodstock has on their web site dont match up for the PE stoves info on chimneysweep.
BTU ratings are worthless for the most part. If you base your purchases on BTU ratings you are going to have a bad time.
Yea but why the difference, the progress has a firebox about the size of the summit, on paper not gaining much.
I don't understand the question/statement, Sparky. Same size box - what kind of "gains" are you looking for?
A more steady out put with enough reserve to kick Iowa's winter in the ass I guess, thinking out loud, I think I will just tighten up the house so it makes not much diffenence what stove I have. I did not mean to derail this thread but I do like the Progress and the idea of hybrid stoves plus it has six inch flue.
The Union meets all of my criteria for a new stove but for one. Looks. I can't get past the leg design and simply ask myself "Why?".
Now back to the regularly scheduled "hybrid stoves" (trying to avoid turning this into a stove specific thread).
Now back to the regularly scheduled "hybrid stoves" (trying to avoid turning this into a stove specific thread).
Because BTU ratings are meaningless.
Vogelsang claims "up to 102,000 BTUs" on their little sub-2.0 cu ft stove. I guess that will heat better than the Summit.
You mean the Union, or "Ideal Steel", or whatever hideous name they are going with.
Well the Chimneysweep site discussed that and said their ratings were based on an average not peak even thow they gave peak, the woodstock site had a much lower reading if I am reading the chart correctly.
I agree, in the pictures I've seen the "Ideal Steel" is almost as ugly as a BK, and the name...when I seen "Ideal Steel" the first word that came to mind was CHEEEE...Z! I'm still hoping the final product will be a little nicer looking.
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