Oslo vs. Cumberland Gap vs. Progress Hybrid? and what of the fireplace?
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Mine is light metallic gray. I think it's beautiful. I'm in NY at the moment, will try to remember to post a picture of the stove when I get back home this weekend. I think there are some pictures of my stove way back in early 2012, shortly after my install, if you want to check old threads re the PH here.
no complaints/concerns with the light gray? Lots of warnings on light colored stoves, but I think it'd look great!
No. I love the light gray. Personally, I think it is by far the nicest. I painted my stovepipe to match. It is really quite sophisticated...don't feel like I have a stove in the living room. Just a nice piece of furniture.
I never heard any warnings on light colored stoves?? About what? The stove is pretty much the same color as the soapstone. My fireview, which I had for about 6 years before the PH, was also light gray, and looks as nice as when I got it.
I never heard any warnings on light colored stoves?? About what? The stove is pretty much the same color as the soapstone. My fireview, which I had for about 6 years before the PH, was also light gray, and looks as nice as when I got it.
Fabulous! I love the look, and am hoping to blend the stove in to our home. Just warnings on keeping them clean, etc. After hanging up with Woodstock's customer service, they emailed me pics in less than 3 minutes. Very nice.
I think we've made our decision for light gray, can't wait to get this thing installed!
and for the record, no warnings from Woodstock owners... just friendly concern from other stove owners.Fabulous! I love the look, and am hoping to blend the stove in to our home. Just warnings on keeping them clean, etc. After hanging up with Woodstock's customer service, they emailed me pics in less than 3 minutes. Very nice.
Tenn Dave
Minister of Fire
When I went up to Woodstock to get my Progress Hybrid I saw a couple of them in gray, and they were beautiful.. You will not be sorry.
mliiiwit
Member
OP:
You indicate the existing insert is in a fireplace in a sunroom. There's a couple of things you might want to consider about that location since it's not clear in the thread.
Is the fireplace a masonry fireplace in an exterior wall and exposed on the outside? Something like this can rob a lot of heat from the room, making a stove far less effective.
Are there a lot of windows in the sunroom? If so, and they're not good quality, insulated glass, they can rob a lot of radiant energy, reducing the heating ability of any unit located in the room. Radiant blocking, insulating drapes can help with this. But if the room is going to rob excessive heat, it would be better to locate the stove elsewhere to better heat the rest of the house.
What is the chimney for the insert, and how tall is it? If masonry only, it will need a steel liner. If it's at the edge of the house, you may need more height for sufficient draft. If it's exposed to the exterior, it will definitely need insulated and, even then, you could have draft problems with a stove. Also, if it's considerably lower than your roof peak, that can cause downdrafts in some wind conditions.
After taking all this into consideration, you might want to add an interior prefab chimney near the middle of the house and site a new stove there to provide a taller, warmer chimney that will draw better and get your heat source to the middle of your house. If the sun room has any of the issues mentioned, you may want to keep the insert in there for the first season to see if you will need supplemental heat in that area.
We have a PH and use it from shoulder season to shoulder season as primary heat. The NG FA furnace is officially relegated to use only when we're out of town. You can load the PH lightly during shoulder season, but if you only need a bit of heat, it needs to be such a small load that the burn won't get hot enough for the cat to light off. In these conditions. you will want to load with a lot of very small diameter rounds or fine splits, loosely cross-stacked to get it all involved quickly to get the secondaries fired so it will burn as clean and efficiently as possible for the small amount of fuel. Remember, this is a 700# behemoth of thermal mass that absorbs a LOT of heat and holds it for a long time. It's not like a steel or cast stove that heats up and cools off quickly. So a small, hot, fast fire will give heat for a very long time, relative to the burn time, in warmer weather.
Another factor to consider when choosing to site your primary heat source is air circulation. Our PH is in the middle of our long and wide, single level ranch. What works best for us is to have the ceiling fans blowing upward and, for the rooms where the ceiling fan circulation is not effective enough, to use small fans at floor level blowing toward the stove room.
The common advice is to install a slightly higher capacity stove than you know you will need as you can always burn it easier to suit your needs. I also don't hesitate to make use of the totally free, environmentally friendly and very effective window air conditioning that is available all season long when we mis-judge the situation and load too much into the PH. I'd rather burn it hot and waste some wood than smolder it and pollute the 'hood.
Oh, BTW, we love the PH and Woodstock.
You indicate the existing insert is in a fireplace in a sunroom. There's a couple of things you might want to consider about that location since it's not clear in the thread.
Is the fireplace a masonry fireplace in an exterior wall and exposed on the outside? Something like this can rob a lot of heat from the room, making a stove far less effective.
Are there a lot of windows in the sunroom? If so, and they're not good quality, insulated glass, they can rob a lot of radiant energy, reducing the heating ability of any unit located in the room. Radiant blocking, insulating drapes can help with this. But if the room is going to rob excessive heat, it would be better to locate the stove elsewhere to better heat the rest of the house.
What is the chimney for the insert, and how tall is it? If masonry only, it will need a steel liner. If it's at the edge of the house, you may need more height for sufficient draft. If it's exposed to the exterior, it will definitely need insulated and, even then, you could have draft problems with a stove. Also, if it's considerably lower than your roof peak, that can cause downdrafts in some wind conditions.
After taking all this into consideration, you might want to add an interior prefab chimney near the middle of the house and site a new stove there to provide a taller, warmer chimney that will draw better and get your heat source to the middle of your house. If the sun room has any of the issues mentioned, you may want to keep the insert in there for the first season to see if you will need supplemental heat in that area.
We have a PH and use it from shoulder season to shoulder season as primary heat. The NG FA furnace is officially relegated to use only when we're out of town. You can load the PH lightly during shoulder season, but if you only need a bit of heat, it needs to be such a small load that the burn won't get hot enough for the cat to light off. In these conditions. you will want to load with a lot of very small diameter rounds or fine splits, loosely cross-stacked to get it all involved quickly to get the secondaries fired so it will burn as clean and efficiently as possible for the small amount of fuel. Remember, this is a 700# behemoth of thermal mass that absorbs a LOT of heat and holds it for a long time. It's not like a steel or cast stove that heats up and cools off quickly. So a small, hot, fast fire will give heat for a very long time, relative to the burn time, in warmer weather.
Another factor to consider when choosing to site your primary heat source is air circulation. Our PH is in the middle of our long and wide, single level ranch. What works best for us is to have the ceiling fans blowing upward and, for the rooms where the ceiling fan circulation is not effective enough, to use small fans at floor level blowing toward the stove room.
The common advice is to install a slightly higher capacity stove than you know you will need as you can always burn it easier to suit your needs. I also don't hesitate to make use of the totally free, environmentally friendly and very effective window air conditioning that is available all season long when we mis-judge the situation and load too much into the PH. I'd rather burn it hot and waste some wood than smolder it and pollute the 'hood.
Oh, BTW, we love the PH and Woodstock.
OK... This is a tricky situation to explain... we are first time stove owners, and this has been a painful process trying to decide what to do.
First things first, we are going to completely demo & rip out the existing fireplace/hearth and all, but are not ready to do it just yet. SO, that being said, this install is somewhat temporary (maybe a couple years)...? We're going to run the PH thru it now, and slide the heavy beast forward to make room for the remodel (when the time comes)...
The fireplace has an older Heatliator insert in it. According to a couple different installers, we can drop an insulated pipe down thru it and run it to the stove, setting the stove in front of the Heatilator, everything up to code, no problems..I'd have to measure the exact chimney height, I'm not sure....The sun room runs along the back side of the house, but the chimney doesn't come all the way up to the peak of the attached house.. ? but not terribly far from it...They've (installers) said it is up high enough tho..? Should be fine... again, I am unsure of exact measurements.
The sunroom windows are newer, insulated windows, which do provide a stunning view of our 26 acres of woods.. I hate drapes, but will use them if necessary.
Also, there not a better place in the house for a stove, really no place at all... But the sunroom opens into both kitchen & living room, and we will also be opening up those doorways as much as structurally possible.... basically we're buying the stove first, and remodeling around her
Maybe the carriage before the horse, but we feel like this is going to work out just fine. The Heatilator is a bit of a joke of a fireplace, and we don't really want to rely on it for much as far as winter heat. The house has ONLY baseboard heat, so the stove should have a great impact even if not perfectly ideal. ... the hardest part of this whole things is making sure we're doing it right, given all the circumstances. I suppose we could go thru a winter with this Heatilator, but I'm hell bent on having a stove THIS year, so hopefully it all works out. You have given me a lot of great information, I really appreciate it- especially about the shoulder season burning, which I am greatly interested in. So I need to understand how to burn lighter.
That was my original concern with getting a stove:
Keep the Heatilator as is, and install the stove in the corner of the sunroom, chimney thru ceiling there... and have them both? Or just do away with the fireplace and have a stove. It's been a super tough decision to make. The PH makes me feel good about giving up the fireplace. So that's what did it.
Really sorry that I was not on top of this thread lately. I've been pretty swamped with work. I determined that I will save my money and install a Pellet boiler next year. My fiance, basically put the kibosh on me lugging wood into the house.
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