Had this stove 5 yrs still going strong! When using good wood I can get 10-12 hrs ft a burn. I only burn oak as well. Cut my heating bill by 2/3. Propane down to less than 500 gallons a year. Used 2000 gallons + prior to stove.
Yes it is hard to get it to draw when cold but line never goes out do not a problem!

I used this stove one time and it does NOT heat a 1500 square foot home and it does NOT burn 9-12 hours. It only burned for 3 hours and it filled up with ashes so we would have to scoop the ashes at least twice a day, I have contacted Vogelzang with no response. I had to go get a different stove, and I am requesting to get a refund and someone to come and get this stove because there is no way to use this as a primary heat source. I would not recommend it and again it does not heat a 1500 square foot home and does not burn for up to 12 hours this is a joke

Stove is terrible. Hard to light ,smokes when you open door, makes very little heat. Another example of the government forcing manufacturers to build efficient stoves that don't work.

I have used this stove for about 4 years. First the reburn tubes going across the top of the burn chamber started breaking off when loading firewood. The break off very easily, I think the welds are weak. There are still two that haven't broken, but the other 6 or so have broken off and are now sitting in my shed. Also the fiberglass panel that directs the combustion gasses around the firebox also fell apart and broke off after about a year. The stove still is functional without these broken parts but now it is more like a traditional wood stove where the combustion gasses go straight up the flue. All the features that increased the efficiency by reburning combustion gasses have broken off. Also the door seal has come off twice and I needed to reglue it with stove cement. I bought this stove because it was the cheapest stove I could find in this shape and I guess I learned a lesson about price and quality. Last year, for a different house, I bought a higher quality cast iron stove from denmark for only a few hundred bucks more and I couldn't be happier with that one. I would definitely recommend paying a little more and getting a higher quality stove.

This is our third year with this stove, and it has done a fantastic job on our 1,200 sq foot home as an only source of heat. It has cost us $200 per year for oak slab wood to heat our super insulated house (R31 walls), but even at higher wood prices and a less insulated house, the secondary burn (the blanket in the top of the unit) burns the creosote that would normally go up (or stick to) the flu. The chimney did not need cleaning after the first year, so we cleaned it after the second --but we likely could have gone three years or more before cleaning. The total creosote and soot filled a small coffee can half way full from about 30' of chimney/stove pipe.

Last night was the second night in a row with a temperature of -22 here in Wisconsin. We loaded the just cleaned Durango (more room without ash) full in the PM, then added a couple logs in the middle of the night which kept the house at 70+ in the bone chilling cold. Normal winter temps in the 20s and 30s requires far less, and does not require refueling at night.

Whatever you do, do NOT remove the blanket. This is NOT an old fashioned stove that will draft immediately. Learn to use it instead of breaking it to make it function like a cheap stove.