Short Bus wrote:I have never seen a warm morning stove, in fact finding a real traditional coal stove in Alaska is darn near imposible, just searched coal on craigslist Fairbanks, Anchorage and Alaskalist only one "traditional wood coal cook stove" between the three. I have typed coal into those web sites for almost three years now and never seen a stoker for sale, mine was found in a wrecking yard twenty years ago. Just a side note, coal cook stoves are not the best for heating. Some new box like stoves that are welded up and lined with brick are available new, but I'll bet some more traditional design has serious advantages. Most pot belly stoves don't look to have good grates or room for our ash volumes, but I could be wrong.
When you are heating eight or more months a year you can afford to spend some money on a stove.
I woke up to -30 this morning at 5:30, sun all day 15 above now, predicting low 40s this weekend, ya hoo!!!
Get a good stove that will work with the stuff you can buy, insulate, insulate, and seal.
Some people on this site enjoy saving money for a few months in the winter, extend that hobby to seven months hand fired, and you won't even look at the price tag on the stove.
Yep, we've been heating 365, and we don't even see your kind of weather - I don't know how you guys do it up there.
We can get away with one load in the morning during the summer to kill the chill if the weather's nice. But when we get a rainy streak, even in July, we're burning all day & night. There's just no way I'll do fuel oil at this point, the cost savings are just so tremendous.
The thing that's blowing me away about the DS Machine - it's about the same dimension as our Harman, it has a 33% larger firebox, more sophistcated burn technology with their airwash & dampering systems, is twice as heavy, and costs 25% less. I do feel, that just with the ash management problems I've had the past two seasons, the stoves we have now were overpriced.
I'm still investigating the base burners however, something that was made for bit. I won't say price is no object, although, a restored base burner for us will probably run at least twice as much as the DS, probably more.
It may be worth it I'm sure, but it's hard spending that money when you can't get to a place to actually see them, and experience what they're about.