What are the REAL Dimensions/Weights/Clearances of the Pheonix, Heritage and Homestead?

[Jaquith]

I am trying to finalize a decision on which Hearthstone stove to get for our small strawbale house in Crested Butte, CO. There are descrepency in the sizes given for the various models between what is listed on HS website and the Chimney Sweep Web site (broken link removed). Can some help me figure the actual dimensions of just the tops of these three stoves?

Also can you tell me how we could reduce clearances for these stoves by adding a NSPA 2111 Heat Sheild to the combustible wall behind the stove (we have a parrell installation). According the HS manual you can reduce the clearance to 9" on the Phoenix (pg 11), and to 3" for the (pg 24) Homestead. But I am having trouble finding this info it for the Heritage can someone help me out here? Being able to get the stove as close to wall as allowed is important. Can anyone confirm my data and get me the reduction for the Heritage?

Regarding weights, can someone clarify these for me also because there are discrpeancies that seem to me pretty large? Doen't the weight affect how fast (or slow) the stove will heat up? Does these discepancies matter to us on a day to day basis?

Phoneix 400 HS webite (manual) 450 ChimneySweep
Homestead 360 HS webite (manual) 440 ChimneySweep
Heritage 475 HS webite (manual) 500 ChimneySweep

Now let me tell you a bit about our installation so you can help us decide:

1. The house is 1.5 stories total 850 sq ft (actual interior walls - not the footprint because we have 18" deep R50 strawbale walls),

2. Room to heat is approx. 350 - this includes kitchen, mudroom, living room (open floor plan).

3. Stove to be located in the living room next to the kitchen and stairwell leading to the up bed/bath (350sqft total for the stairwell and upper floor).

4. The stove is also located close to the back bed/bath so we are hoping to have pretty good heat distribution (we are also adding at least one register to get heat to the bedroom (over the livingroom),

5. According to BTU calcuator we need about 23,000 for the whole house - 13300 for the actual 350 sq ft room to heat.

6. Our climate - very cold, 9000 ft in Colorodo, gets to -35 a few times, often -20's and -teens. Winter lasts 6 months.

7. The house is new construction (6 years old) with an overall R value of 23.5 as calculated by our building department (needed 22 to qualify for the stove - don't know exactly how they figure this but was told that most homes new or old will not meet this requirement. As mentioned, we have a strawbale house which sits on a concrete slab which stove will sit directly on.

8. Stove pipe ?straight out the back then run about 25' as per codes (20' inside an insulated exterior chase - 5' exposed at the top). We are considering sending the pipe straight up inside the house to the ceiling of the LR (11') then straight through the roof of the LR to the outside and up past the ridge (14' or so). Using triplewalled insulated pipe ?right? To get the draft we need we should go straight up? Will going right outside then up give us good enough draft.

9. The stove should remain in use 24/7 because we come home for lunch in the winter and can stoke it. We hope to use it for the primary heat for the home and turn the infloor radiant gas heat down to maybe 40 degrees just in case? I wouldl like to be able to switch the gas heat off alltogether but hubby disagrees.

OK, so there it is! Ryan helped us a lot when I called McGuckins in Boulder. We have narrowed it down to a soapstone from HS - in good part because the Keystone Woodstock sticks out into the room too far. Can anyone confirm this for me?? We would consider this stove if we can get closer to the wall but based on my research we can't get it close enough so that it doesn't stick so far out into the room.

Also, does anyone have experience with the sit on top oven accessories sold through Chimney Sweep.com and why it they told me it doesn't fit on the Homestead but will fit on the Heritage and I assume the Phoenix? Anyone have experinece using one of these on a soapstone, I REALLY want to be able to use this oven to augment our gas kitchen stove.

Thank you in advance for responding to my request. We need to make a decision in the next few days.

Valerie

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

Im not at work today, so i cant look it up. But reguardless what a third party web site says in regards to clearance doesnt mattter, you have to follow the offical manual, Which as you probably know is downloadable form hearthstone.com
If you can run it strait up it will draft better, dont forget you need at LEAST 18' of chimney at your altitude, and a strait out the back and up will cost you 5 feet of overall hight. You would still have a 20 foot chimney, so either would work, it would just work better strait up.
All those stoves are large for the space like we talked about, but if you want the burn time you will need to go with at least the homestead, even the tribute would be enough heat though.Straw bail houses rock.
Dont forget that registrars transmit heat as well as noise.

 

[Jaquith]

Thanks Ryan - when you have a chance can actuall measure these stoves for me - I'd really like to know what the size of the just the stove top? As you will notice on the HS their download mauals are hard to interpret. What we really need is the distance from the back wall to the back of the stove if we add the heatshield to the stove as well as a heat shield to the wall? This is going to help us decide.

Also to help us decide, how long will we have coals in these different stoves (estimate)? Does the burn time include the time for the coals to go out? I am confused by these numbers. The smallest of three stoves which are more likely to have a decent coal bed in the morning to get a fire going (and at lunch) is good enough for us, just so we don't have to re-start from scratch. Or is it?

Thanks Ryan!

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

Unless you go to bed at midnight, and wake up at 6 am, none of these stoves are going to have coals in them in the morning, they will have a cold firebox, but a warm stove. The homstead and heratige are going to have a max burn time with our fuel of about 6 hours, and burn time is defined by the time you light it up till the time there are no coals left. You will have to relight, which will be easy on a good chimney like your talking about. I dont go back to the shop untill wendsday.. i will check then, someone else might chime in, i dont think you can get the homstead closer then nine inches with a heat shield and wall protection, i will check it out,

 

[Jaquith]

Thanks Ryan - May I call you Wednesday? And thanks in advance for checking on the clearances for the three stoves (Also can you check for us on the Woodstock Keystone also).

Hubby often is up by 6 am (I am a hibernator) but I can keep the stove going during the day. I do like the idea of the stoves with firebox big enough to accomodate our heating needs on the coldest of days, thanks for pointing that out to us. Now we just need to determine which of these three is going meet our minimum needs (not too "big", not too "small") Am I correct in my assessment that the differences between the stoves (Phoenix, homestead, heritaage) are small enough not to really matter or be noticed on a day to day basis so we can base our decision on other factors??

Thank you! Valerie

 

[Jaquith]

one more thing, if we load the stove with hard wood at night, will we get longer burn times?

 

[BrotherBart]

If you are anywhere close to Ryan, where ya gonna get hardwood?

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

You will need to call woodstock to get there info, i have no access to it. If you burn hardwood then yes you will get longer burn times, but as BB points out, hardwood is more expensive the propane out here, better get used to ponderosa, doug firs, spruce, and lodgepole. The doug fir is the closest thing to hard wood we will fine. Feel free to call me on wendsay, i work 8-8. Yea they are close enough in size to not matter, when my stove is cranked up it heats my whole house wich is about doulbe the size of yours and with less insulation.

 

[begreen]

Does anyone sell tamarack in your area? I think that has a higher heat content than doug fir.

 

[Todd]

Woodstock Keystone back clearance with heat shield is 15". The depth of the stove is 20". So it would stick out 35" from your wall if you vented from the top of stove.

 

[Jaquith]

If you are anywhere close to Ryan, where ya gonna get hardwood?

we can go to Paonia for cherry, pear, apple, and also collect oak between here and there (just scrub oak but have collected oak trunks 12" in diameter).

 

[Jaquith]

Does anyone sell tamarack in your area? I think that has a higher heat content than doug fir.

never heard of it. We can harvest standing dead lodge pole, engelman and blue spruce, doug fir, mostly lodge pole. ORchard wood is 350 delivered per cord.

 

[Jaquith]

You will need to call woodstock to get there info, i have no access to it. If you burn hardwood then yes you will get longer burn times, but as BB points out, hardwood is more expensive the propane out here, better get used to ponderosa, doug firs, spruce, and lodgepole. The doug fir is the closest thing to hard wood we will fine. Feel free to call me on wendsay, i work 8-8. Yea they are close enough in size to not matter, when my stove is cranked up it heats my whole house wich is about doulbe the size of yours and with less insulation.

We can harvest standing dead lodge pole, engelman and blue spruce, doug fir, mostly lodge pole. ORchard wood is 350 delivered per cord. you can get yer self for ?? not sure, need to check but money not an issue. Rather spend it on wood than natural gas.

Thanks for the info above. We will be dealing with a hot LR I assume? Is the Heritage/Phoneix gonna blast us out? Can we keep it moderated while in the LR then load up for the night?

V

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

its going to be hard not to get blown out and have a long burn time, in such a well insulated building it not going to take a lot to heat it. If you could deal with 2-4 hour burns, a stove the size of the tribute would heat that place. You will be warm, no question, with the larger stoves, good news is on the coldest days of the year you will not be cold. Bad news is once that baby is cranking it will continue to heat, but that is what windows is for.

 

[Mo Heat]

... we can go to Paonia for cherry, pear, apple, and also collect oak between here and there (just scrub oak but have collected oak trunks 12" in diameter).

Cherry and pear (at least the two or three pear types we have around here) are not considered hardwood, at least not on a par with apple and oak. They might be just as expensive in some places though, but that is because they are considered exotic by some standards (used for cooking or other specialty purposes).

 

[Jaquith]

its going to be hard not to get blown out and have a long burn time, in such a well insulated building it not going to take a lot to heat it. If you could deal with 2-4 hour burns, a stove the size of the tribute would heat that place. You will be warm, no question, with the larger stoves, good news is on the coldest days of the year you will not be cold. Bad news is once that baby is cranking it will continue to heat, but that is what windows is for.

Sure. And thanks, I am starting to get a handle on these concepts. It is hard to decide what is best! I guess we could get one if it doesn't suit our needs we could sell it and get a different one. There is a HS dealer in Gunnison and one in Salida, I am going to look at what they have on display at the Gunnison location. Maybe there are some installed in our area and we can go look at them. I will stay in touch and follow up this week.

V

 

[Jaquith]

its going to be hard not to get blown out and have a long burn time, in such a well insulated building it not going to take a lot to heat it. If you could deal with 2-4 hour burns, a stove the size of the tribute would heat that place. You will be warm, no question, with the larger stoves, good news is on the coldest days of the year you will not be cold. Bad news is once that baby is cranking it will continue to heat, but that is what windows is for.

One more thing please, will we notice the difference in heat output between the different stoves? Will the heat, when running at high burn rates be a great deal different between the smallest of the three (Tribute) and the largest Phoenix/heritage? How about between the Phoenix/heritage vrs the Homestead? Is this where the different BTU's come into play right?

Will the heaviest of these 3 stoves hold heat longer? Are the increase in BTUs due to the increase in the size of the firebox? According the manual all three of these stoves will heat up to 2000sq ft. Also, according to the manual the stove with the biggest fire box holds 40 lbs of the wood, but so does the one with the smallest! Then look at the Heritage, it holds 46 pds of wood) What is GOING ON??

Phoneix manual says it heats 1500-2000sqft. and BTU's 60K, and Firebox 2.3, Weight 400 (40lbs of wood)
Heritage: 1500-2000, BTUs 55K, Firebox 2.2, Weight 475 (46 pds of wood)
Homestead: up to 2000, BTUs 50k, Firebox 2.0, 360 (40 pds of wood)

kinda confused....

 

[begreen]

Bad news is once that baby is cranking it will continue to heat, but that is what windows is for.

Thought windoz was for playing games and spreadsheets

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

Nahh macs are just for games, windows are for spreadsheets ;-)

 

[thechimneysweep]

Sorry I'm slow responding to this post, we're well into our busy season, and I don't have much time to visit the forum.

The shipping weights shown on the chimneysweeponline.com site are just that: they include not only the weight of the stove, but also Hearthstone's crating, plus any additional crating we add before we ship. Our main purpose in publishing shipping weights is to compute freight charges, so we also include the weight of the rear heat shield, which nearly all of our customers include with their Hearthstone orders.

I wouldn't recommend rear venting any stove, especially a soapstone stove, in any high altitude situation: you'd likely experience draft problems, especially at startup.

Before selecting a 2000 sq.ft. heater because it can get to 35 below where you live, I think you should consider how often that happens. It can be extremely uncomfortable living with an oversize woodstove ( especially a soapstone stove, with its inherent slow response to draft control adjustments) the rest of the year just so you can be toasty warm for a few extra-cold days. Based upon your description of your house, I'd recommend you don't go any larger than the Tribute.

 

[Rhone]

The Phoenix is a hybrid stove, part cast iron part soapstone and probably why it's got the highest btu's. Judge the units by their firebox, the more soapstone and less cast iron in your stove the less your max btu's but more btu's spread over time. Soapstone always has less max btu's over units with more steel and cast iron but that doesn't mean they're less capable heaters. Their heat is spread more evenly. A perfect example in wood stoves is, the steel PE Summit stove vs. the Hearthstone Soapstone Mansfield. The Summit is rated at 97,000 max btu's with 3.56 grams/hr and has a 3.0 cu ft firebox. The Mansfield is soapstone, it's max btu's is only 80,000 but has a bigger firebox at 3.2 cu ft firebox and more efficient at 2.8 grams/hr. How can the PE Summit that takes less wood and is less efficient be better at heating a house, it is rated at 97k btu's and the Mansfield at only 80k? Simply put, it isn't.

With a strawbale house, I'd go for units that have more soapstone which eliminates the Phoenix. The heritage is too much stove for a small superinsulated house. My in-laws have a super insulated house, 1,200 sq ft with 600 ft per floor. Not as good as your strawbale but they have something like R30 walls, R45 attic, huge south facing windows, no north windows, extra air sealing. It's on an insulated concrete slab with tubes running through it that stores & releases the heat of the 8 solar collectors they've got. In winter, until it gets below 30F they have to keep the windows open and it stays at 75F-78F. When there's extended cloudiness they have themselves a little catalytic VC encore cast iron stove. It has a 2.1 cu ft firebox and max btu's of 47,000. When they light the stove the area around stove gets 85-90F and the side without the stove will be 70F. It's WAY too much stove and they only need light it at night. But, they like the "romance" of the fire so much they light it during the day as well and try to kill me. That's when I'm stuck sitting in 90F temperatures and even on its lowest setting puts out more heat than moves around naturally so it keeps building up. You'll see me spending about 10-15 minutes every hour running outside in my shorts trying to cool off. My vote is to stay away from the Phoenix, not enough soapstone. Also the Heritage is too much stove. If MSG's house is much bigger, and worse insulated, and it heats his house just fine it's almost garunteed the heritage will overheat yours. Plus, you're stuck burning the super hot fast stuff. Most square foot ratings of stoves are for medium sized well-insulated houses. Your house is a tiny, super-insulated one. You should probably be looking at stoves that heat in the 600-1000 ft range. I really think you should look at the tribute, it's got full 1 1/4" soapstone bricks which will really help buffer the heat, many have only 3/4" splits and it's very small. You will have to light it fresh each and every time, but my guess is your house holds so much heat that's not going to be a problem... you may only need to light it once or twice a day. A good indication is, in winter how well your house holds heat. When it's 10F outside and your house is 74F inside, without heat how long will it take to get to 68F? If I got to sleep and the house is 74F and the outside temp is 10F, and I've shut off all heating I'll wake up to a 59F house 8 hours later. I'm working on that as finances allow.

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

Nice writeup Rhon, but she bought a Jotul 3cb, which i agree with her local dealer, was a good choice.

 

[Shane]

How can the PE Summit that takes less wood and is less efficient be better at heating a house, it is rated at 97k btu's and the Mansfield at only 80k? Simply put, it isn't.

Could have to do with heat transfer efficiency. What are the overall efficiency numbers for those stoves?

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

How efficent is the mansfield with no fire in it but hot stone? he he he he.
They list the mansfield at 73% but we all know how accurate those numbers are.....

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

looked up the PE, its states that its 72.5%, so just about the same.