Just moved and looking to switch from pellet to wood

[chanlon1974]

Yeah absolutely. I got 7 cords of wood outside waiting for the stove. Shouldn't be a problem!

 

[Highbeam]

Since I have a large area to heat, I'm going to be running my stove at higher temps therefore negating the difference between a cat and non cat stove.

A better word is reducing. The difference will still be very noticeable both in terms of burn times, efficiency, and constant heat output. I've run both types hard and the cat stove gets hot and stays there for hours while the non-cat blows its load up the chimney during the first few hours and then tapers off quickly. This is one of those times when you have to run it to know. There is no specification that can capture the constantness of heat output.

There is a reason the Progress has some of the lowest emission numbers out there. Low emissions = more complete combustion.

Low emissions means low emissions which are measured on a grams per hour basis of junk that actually flies up the stack. There are some very low emissions stoves that are also very low efficiency. Woodstock seems to have accomplished both high efficiency and low emissions with their hybrid stoves but you can't assume that any other stove has done this without reading the specs.