questions about using an old parlor stove

Thank you to everyone for all the helpful feedback!

I emailed Emery at The Stove Hospital about the Happy Thought and he gave me an idea of would a restoration would run. About half is for nickle plating and I'm curious if that is something which needs to be done or is a cosmetic consideration. We like this stove and the only minus (aside from cost) for us is that you don't see the fire.

I appreciate all the info on the different types of stoves. Did I understand correctly that the Happy Thought was designed to burn wood? I had thought it was either / or but designed for coal but am well out of my element here and certainly could be wrong.

We are still interested in the Sterling and also looking at some local stoves. They are mostly enamel box style parlor stoves, less expensive than the Sterling but not as well maintained. The Easton Stove (below) is an example of what we're seeing.

If people are willing to take the time to comment I will post pics of any we are interested in. Again, I really appreciate how helpful everyone has been!

Don't know if it's just my old eyes, it could be dirt or cobwebs but I see what could be a crack at around 10 o'clock on the inside of the first stove & a hole above the door handle with a crack as well. If there is no hurry I'm sure there will be more stoves so I would take my time & make sure, the second stove looks good from the picks but it all comes down to personal preference as to looks. Anyway that's my 2 cents & most here know far more than I about performance & price, so welcome to the forum you will get lots of good info here.

Someone had asked about specifics on the house we're trying to heat.

The house is an older house. The deed says 1935 but I'm not sure that's right. The bathroom fixtures appear older and were obviously installed after the house was built. The walls are plaster and the outside has aluminum siding. Blown in insulation was installed in all the walls between the lath and siding but the insulation has settled in most places we accessed to varying degrees.

There are 8 average sized rooms plus a front hall, 2 baths and a pantry. There is a front and kitchen staircase. The front staircase is open and we took the door off the back one because it was annoying. The house is about 2200 square feet of livable space.

We want to put the stove in the front room which has double doors that open to the hall and staircase. It is not a central location but the layout of the center rooms won't work for various reasons.

All the windows have been replaced with double pane windows and there are awnings on the west and south facing windows. There is a gas furnace now which feeds a combination of hot water baseboards and radiators. I have had a similar systems in another house and know it can be pricey even with gas.

We are looking for a coal stove that will cut down on our use of the furnace, be functional without power and able to heat the whole house if necessary. We prefer something older as everything else we have is old but are concerned with both cost and safety. If it can burn wood and stove that is a plus.

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read all this!

*Correction to last post - "burn wood and coal."

barbaragraver wrote:Someone had asked about specifics on the house we're trying to heat.

O.K. I think you just opened up a door for "the boiler guys" to jump in and offer some advise, your options are many and maybe it will simply come down to the amount of work, i.e. hand fed or stoker furnace or boiler, antique, classic, or modern, dust, first floor or basement. Good luck and I know you will get your answers here. Mike

Gas in many areas is now cheaper than coal. There is a fuel comparison calculator at the top of the page that you can use to compare costs.

I did look at the comparison calculator but am not really sure how to estimate the efficiency of the heating system. The house we are selling has gas forced air and it is very cost effective. My experience with hot water heating systems in older houses however is that they are not very cost effective. The idea of this stove however is that it would decrease not necessarily eliminate heating costs, be enjoyable and a good back up system if we ever lost power as recently happened in NJ/NY. We have a handicapped family member to think of so things like this are a consideration.

Thanks Mike. All those things are worth factoring in for sure! I would like a parlor stove particularly but don't want an unmanageable amount of dust. I don't mind a little work and fussing with the stove but would like to understand what I'm getting into.

Seeing the kind of ugly Easton Stove tomorrow because it is close by and inexpensive and another similar stove on Saturday. If anyone has any pointers on what to look for, they would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for the info!

pretty much just grates function, handles where needed, cracks, doors are not wharped to prevent tight closing, etc. Hell Barb, you'll be an expert by the time the search is over. I'm sure people will come up with other things to look for.

Welcome to the forum Barbara.
I got a brand new coal/anth stove and beleive me, now I have 2 antique ones and they perform very well, they can take all comparisons with newer stoves anytimes.
Take time to learn all the high-tech you can find in antique stoves and the choice will be easy for you. Before reading and studying about antique stoves a little more, I wanted to stay as far away as possible from antique things but fortunally, I got ""contaminated"" for antique stoves and never loved a contamination so much
But burning anth is a learning course for new or antique stoves, every stove, installation, house, location...are different and can make a lot of difference...
Good luck

Welcome to the forum.
If you have an old house where the older cylinder stove looks good in, then consider it first.
The Nickle plating is cosmetic, and if you buy this stove, you can polish the plating it still has, and it will probably look OK, maybe even pretty good.
But the older stove needstto get to the rebuilder for a close inspection and estimate,, broken, missing or cracked items can be very costly.

The cabinet stoves usually are inexpensive, mainly because thay don't appeal to most people, and don't look good in a living room or parlor.
Some however are very good heaters..

The main difference between a wood stove and a coal stove is the design of the grates and the ashpan area.
Be carefull with the 'other' stoves you are looking at !! a coal stove MUST have a moveable, shaking, rotating or aggitating type of grate,. The
air for a coal fire must come from underneath,

A wood stove, like the typical fancy 'parlor' stove from the early 1900's does NOT hve an ashpan area, and while thay are often advertised as
wood and coal',, they really are a wood stove, and also don't put out as much heat as you are likely to want and need.

If you buy the cylinder stove, before you take it to the rebuilder, PM me and I'll tell you a great trick for easlily cleaning the remaining Nickle plating
on the stove, so you can see what it looks like before it goes to the rebuilder, this will make the decision about replating the stove easier.

By the way, do you have a good chimney in the room you plan on adding a coal stove to?? you might want to have someone give it a quick inspection
before you buy a stove.. And DON"T fall prey to the 'chimney liner salesman'.. most old chimneys are good, just need a cleaning, and maybe the removal
of old bird or animal nests.. The Stainless steel chimney liner is 95% of the time a scam or worse.

Take a photo of the back of the first stove, and we can be sure if it's a base heater or an Oak stove.. Since William says it's an Oak stove you have a
99.9999% probability that it IS and Oak stove..

Take care, hope this helps
Greg L

Thank you again for all the tips on what to look for. I really am so glad I found this forum and do appreciate everyone's time and patience.

We do not have a chimney in this room. This was a big part of the cost of the new stoves that we looked at and something we will definitely need to price out on an older one. I have probably not done my homework here by assuming we can find someone who will do this.

We were lucky when we put our woodburner in years ago to have someone do the install (in a room without an existing chimney) at a reasonable price but I no longer have his info and only remember that he was from somewhere in the Poconos.

Our only chimney is in the kitchen and already being used for the gas furnace.

Boiler guy checking in...

In your position, and knowing what I know now, your most cost effective solution for your heating problem would be a dual fuel, (coal and gas) boiler. Most of the new style boilers run stokers, requiring only refilling the hopper and removing ashes every couple days. This would install in the basement and use the existing chimney, assuming that you have a masonry chimney now.

I'm a retired heating/air conditioning mechanic. FWIW there is no better way to heat a building than hot water or steam. You can move a lot of heat a long way quickly, and the rads/baseboards will stay warm and eliminate cold spots. Hot air tends to give a "roast and freeze" cycle esp in an old house where there will be a lot of compromises to get ductwork to fit.

Shame you don't live closer, I'd like to look your job over in case there is something we are overlooking by not seeing the place.

FWIW, after spending most of my life in the trades, I run heat pumps (one on each floor) with a hot water coil in each unit fed by a boiler in the basement. Had I known then what I know now, I would have installed a duel fuel (in this case, oil and coal) boiler instead of the oil only boiler that I put in. You can also use a water heater that uses the boiler to heat hot water as well. It s a separate tank and I cannot for the life of me remember the technical term for it.

When it comes to stoves, if its hand fired, you can burn wood iin it, it just isn't very efficient at it.

Feel fre to IM or Email me thru the site. I REALLY like older homes and making them livable by modern standards. We are considering selling out here and finding a big old Victorian somewhere and opening a bed & breakfast establishment.

Either way you decide to go, good luck with it, and keep working on your older home. It becomes a labor of love..

Ops

Thank you Greg. I appreciate the information and will definitely get back to you on the nickle plating if we go this route!

Thank you for the info on the boiler, Ops. I will keep that in mind. I am learning so much here in such a short time! I don't know where you're at but there are a lot of big old houses just waiting to be rehabbed. This is my fourth and hopefully my last

Wish I had the time to respond to each post personally. All have been a help!

I'd like to add that the Happy Thoughts grates look to be in fine shape and are better suited for coal than the cabinet Sterling which look a bit like wood grates to me or combo wood/coal.

You would need to get some refractory lining in both stoves if you were to burn coal. Me, I like the Happy Thoughts Great name for stove! It will certainly do a fine job heating that space if it has a 15" pot. If that's measured at the bottom then it probably a 16" and the same size as the Glenwood in my avatar. I heat 2500sqft of a 226yr old house on the Maine coast with my Glenwood aided by another Glenwood cookstove in the kitchen during the coldest times. These two use about 6 tons of coal a year between them and I have only used maybe 50 gal of oil at most when I was traveling for 10 days. My steam boiler is just my backup.

SteveZee wrote:I'd like to add that the Happy Thoughts grates look to be in fine shape and are better suited for coal than the cabinet Sterling which look a bit like wood grates to me or combo wood/coal.

You would need to get some refractory lining in both stoves if you were to burn coal. Me, I like the Happy Thoughts Great name for stove! It will certainly do a fine job heating that space if it has a 15" pot. If that's measured at the bottom then it probably a 16" and the same size as the Glenwood in my avatar. I heat 2500sqft of a 226yr old house on the Maine coast with my Glenwood aided by another Glenwood cookstove in the kitchen during the coldest times. These two use about 6 tons of coal a year between them and I have only used maybe 50 gal of oil at most when I was traveling for 10 days. My steam boiler is just my backup.

I think this post would be so much better if it had pictures showing the stove and cook stove you refer to .
(I never get tired of seeing your cook stove and mo116)