Hey, I'm late to this thread, but looks like I may be the only other Woodstock user posting so far.
First, the main difference with the Fireview is just that you can burn longer between loads - the maximum output won't be all that different. Essentially, a Fireview takes away the ashpan to make a deeper firebox. But with the catalyst system, you control the burn rate, and if you still keep the surface at 600 degrees, you're not making a whole lot more heat than a Keystone running at 600.
As for getting 600 degrees - it's easy - but you need good wood! The first year, I had OK wood that I split between June-August - not a lot of drying time. Far from perfect, but useable. Some days I could easily get up to 600, but when I started running low, I used some real junk wood in there that was hard to get much past 400. This winter, I had much better wood - split between November '05-May '06. Not quite a full year of seasoning for all of it, but all wood had the entire summer to dry. I also built a proper woodshed to stack and store the wood so it was kept dry all winter. Previously I used pallets and tarps. It was much better all winter, but by the time I got to the back of the pile this spring, which was wood split about 15 months prior, it AMAZING. In fact, I had to take great care to make sure I didn't let the stove overfire. I was generally running it about 1/2 a notch from completely closed air flow, getting 600 degree surface temperatures whenever I wanted it and really long hot burns.
Now while this was great, could be better! So, for next year, my wood was mostly split last fall - I may have to split one more cord over the next month, but not sure I will need it. Additionally, I am leaving most of it piled in a very sunny field all summer on pallets with a dark brown tarp only covering the top. In late summer, I'll bring it up to the woodshed. Last year, I piled it all in the woodshed because I already had it split in a heap up by the house. But that wasn't ideal because the woodshed only sees a little bit of sun, and when I had the wood stacked 4 rows deep, I'm sure it wasn't drying as much as it could have.
As for what you can heat - I agree with all the advice that you should absolutely drop $500-$1000 on some insulation/sealing activities. But I disagree with others telling you this stove is not big enough. If your goal is to heat 100% on wood, you will need more. But if your goal is to cut that 1100 gallon oil bill to ~300-400 gallons, much of which is going to be your domestic hot water use, then you should have no problems.
To give you some perspective on our experience w/the Fireview... We have a house built in 2001, 2800 SF; roughly 500 SF is two bedrooms in a separate heating zone upstairs that I close off and keep at 50. House has 18 ft. ceiling in modest sized living room; 9 ft ceilings downstairs, ~44 windows. New, so insulated reasonably well, but a lot of glass and high ceilings. We were burning about 900 gallons per year prior to installing the stove.
Two winters ago, with the stove, for a full year we used 382 gallons. Based on summer oil deliveries when not using heat, I calculated that we were burning about 0.76 gallons/day just for domestic hot water and standby losses. That's about 277 gallons/year for hot water, not correcting for the fact that groundwater is a little colder in winter. Therefore, with the stove, we cut our heating portion of the oil use from roughly (900-277)=623 gallons to (382-277)=105 gallons to heat the house.
Now you will sometimes hear crazy claims of people cutting 1500 gallons of oil with two cords of wood or a few bags of pellets
As a sanity check, I burned about 4 cords of wood. If I have a well maintained oil burner, and I use dry wood and follow good practices, both are roughly 70-80% efficient - I'll call it a wash for now. A cord of hardwood has energy equivalent to ~160-180 gallons of oil. On average, you could say that we should have saved 4 cords X 170 gallons/cord = 680 gallons. In fact, I saved about 518 gallons. That reflects my house being a little warmer with the wood heat, which took more energy, and not having perfect wood all winter which meant my oil burner probably still came out a few percent ahead on efficiency per BTU of fuel. Nonetheless, the numbers are at least in the right ballpark to be scientifically valid.
So what does this mean for you? If you burned 1300 gallons of oil pre-stove, look at your summer burn rate between deliveries to figure out how much is domestic hot water. Then roughly take that out over a year, and subtract it. What is left is what you need for heat. It may only be 1000 gallons. You can estimate about how many cords you'll go through - 3 is probably reasonable unless someone is home to load frequently - take the number of cords of good dry wood you plan to burn X 170 - that is how many gallons you should expect the stove to help displace. Finally, the insulation suggestions should take you to a number much closer to zero after accounting for your hot water use and wood burning. Probably not zero, but hopefully not more than one tank of oil - this is really good advice from others.
This winter, we are still on the first tank of oil - however, we also now have solar hot water. While the solar HW doesn't make a ton of heat in the winter, it helps preheat the water enough that it's cutting more of our oil use. And we've now shut down our boiler for the season
We still use some oil for heat if we're on vacation, out late without coming home, or when it is a bitter cold snap. But we don't use much. We're getting 80% of our heat needs in a lot more challenging situation with a stove that is not really much bigger output - just one that has longer burn times between loads - so I think that you can do a lot more with your current stove.
-Colin
...LOL...
