I've appreciated all of the advice on this forum, and now I'm looking for some specific thoughts. We bought a house that came with a Vermont Castings Dutchwest 2478 that needs replacing. We used the stove for a year, but we've been told it's reached its end of life. Plus we're doing some other repairs (chimney liner etc), so now is the right time to replace it.
Our stove is and will be in the basement of our typical ranch house built in 2007. We seem to have decent insulation. Each floor of the house is 1500 sq ft. Especially with a floor vent and the basement door open, the Dutchwest did a good job of heating things up--sometimes too good of a job, in that I'd close the bedroom door and/or open the bedroom window so we weren't too hot for sleeping. (We were utter newbies to wood stoves, but I'm pretty sure we never overfired it since we used a stovetop thermometer, and nothing ever glowed.)
We've done a ton of research and have settled on getting Kuma for our new stove. So we're just deciding between the Aspen and Ashwood models. Square footage-wise, the Ashwood makes more sense, but as far as I understand, the Dutchwest was a 40k BTU stove, and it was more than adequate.
At first, the sales guy recommended the Ashwood based on square footage alone. But once we told him about our experience with the Dutchwest and he saw our setup and basement insulation, he thinks the Aspen will make more sense. We even followed up and told him we were leaning toward changing our order to the Ashwood, and he still recommended the Aspen. (We have to at least appreciate he's not trying to upsell unnecessarily.)
We just don't want to go too small. (I've definitely read out here how you can burn smaller/cooler in a too-large stove, but you can't do anything about a too-small stove.) But we also don't want to get something that's too large, that we'll essentially be planning to run cool. We also like that the Ashwood takes 18" logs, while the Aspen only takes 16".
I'd love to hear the thoughts of the more experienced folks here.
Our stove is and will be in the basement of our typical ranch house built in 2007. We seem to have decent insulation. Each floor of the house is 1500 sq ft. Especially with a floor vent and the basement door open, the Dutchwest did a good job of heating things up--sometimes too good of a job, in that I'd close the bedroom door and/or open the bedroom window so we weren't too hot for sleeping. (We were utter newbies to wood stoves, but I'm pretty sure we never overfired it since we used a stovetop thermometer, and nothing ever glowed.)
We've done a ton of research and have settled on getting Kuma for our new stove. So we're just deciding between the Aspen and Ashwood models. Square footage-wise, the Ashwood makes more sense, but as far as I understand, the Dutchwest was a 40k BTU stove, and it was more than adequate.
At first, the sales guy recommended the Ashwood based on square footage alone. But once we told him about our experience with the Dutchwest and he saw our setup and basement insulation, he thinks the Aspen will make more sense. We even followed up and told him we were leaning toward changing our order to the Ashwood, and he still recommended the Aspen. (We have to at least appreciate he's not trying to upsell unnecessarily.)
We just don't want to go too small. (I've definitely read out here how you can burn smaller/cooler in a too-large stove, but you can't do anything about a too-small stove.) But we also don't want to get something that's too large, that we'll essentially be planning to run cool. We also like that the Ashwood takes 18" logs, while the Aspen only takes 16".
I'd love to hear the thoughts of the more experienced folks here.
