Perfect insert for my application. Simple. Performs well.

I got it in a week before Christmas. Fire box smaller than I am used to, but other than that I love it.

I use mine all winter and highly commend the product. The fan need to be removed and cleaned and oiled to insure the fan does not get too loud but that is the nature of the beast.

At the end of the day, given "What" the stove is, this is a pretty good stove for the money. There is a caveat on the price however. I did not buy my stove from Amazon. I was GOING to buy it from Amazon, but I found a significantly lower price from another northern based tool store. In the end, I DID get the stove significantly cheaper, but the seller I bought if from sells the surround separately. Believe me when I tell you that the headache that ensued was very nearly worth just buying the stove pretty much anywhere else. In the end, since it did get resolved, I am very pleased with the stove for the price I paid. Moral of the story here folks is, it pays to shop around a bit if you are going to buy this product on Amazon.

What do you get for the price you pay?

If I had paid the full Amazon asking price, the honest truth is that I would have been disappointed in this stove, and here is why. I grew up with what I will simply call "Traditional" wood stoves. When we bought our house, it had not one, but two wood burning fire places. I jacked a pellet stove insert into the one upstairs, (Very happy there), and I put this wood burning insert in the basement fire place. My basement is 1052 square feet of open space. This stove is rated for I think somewhere between 1500 and 1800 square feet. Not knowing much about THIS kind of wood burning stove, I went with the advertised output. Well,,,,,,turns out that advertised output is not exactly correct. As many other people that have reviewed this stove have said, the advertised BTU's are rather a lot less than the EPA rating that comes on the tag on the stove. Roughly 50% or so less. And the square feet of heating capacity? Well,,,,,,,,let's put it this way. In thee most PERFECT lab testing conditions, This stove might produce the advertised BTU output, for a short period of time. It's like the BTU rating is the highest output they were ever able to get out of the stove,,, with like maybe a blower feeding air directly to the fire like a bellows. And in a perfectly insulated room, inside a building, being completely closed off to any wind from outside, this may heat the square feet they advertise. But very few people have Perfect Test Lab conditions in their installation. Consequently, you are not going to get anywhere near the advertised heating output or capacity. If this were upstairs in my living room, I believe that it would keep the living room and maybe kitchen, (approx 500 sq ft) toasty warm,,,, as long as you are maintaining the fire at fairly constant and regular intervals. I do not believe that it would adequately heat the back half of my ranch home, (Approx 500 sq ft). So what is the problem? Well, the REAL problem is simply false advertising. It's not that the stove is not a pretty darn good stove, for the price I paid. It just won't put out the heat that it's advertised at. I knew that this was a "Small stove" going into it. But this is not a "Traditional" floor model stove. It's a small insert that is an "Air Tight" design. High efficiency. It does NOT burn in the same way as a traditional stove. You can get a pretty decent length of wood into the stove, but I find that this stove burns MUCH better if it is split to around no more than 4x4 inches. Larger chunks of wood you will have a hard time fitting in the fire box, especially if it is full of coals. Consequently, you have to tend this stove very regularly in order to get consistent heat output. I tend it every hour or so when I am burning it in order to keep that heat coming. Some people have said you can burn this stove over night if you load it properly. HOGWASH!!!. You got 5 hours tops from a freshly filled stove, to coals just barely enough to restart the fire. That's not "over Night" in my book. But more importantly, if you let the stove burn for 5 hours, you won't be putting out steady heat over that period. The last two hours or so, the heat will drop off dramatically. What this stove really is,,, is for a "living room" in a space where you might want some extra heat, and most importantly, the ambiance of a nice wood fire. This is not in any sense a "Main Heat Source". In other words, if you are buying this with the intention of heating your home,,,, as a main heat source,,,, you are going to be seriously disappointed.

What I like.

The stove itself, again, for what I paid for it, is actually a really great little stove. It's very pleasant to look at, its well built, and the fire burns very nice indeed. I have no complaints about operation. Under different circumstances, I would certainly buy this stove again. I really have zero complaints about the stove itself. Once you learn how to run this stove, the Air Tight High Efficiency of the stove is really quite amazing. When it's burning very well, the wood burns fairly slow, not much flame on the wood at all. But the top of the stove looks like a sheet of dark orange flame. That's the gases burning off. And looks to me like the primary source of heat output. It's really something to see if you have never seen a High Efficiency stove burn before. It IS different than a traditional wood stove. But it works really really well. And you can actually see how it is more efficient than a traditional stove. Really good stuff.

What I don't like.

The false advertising. This stove can't do what it is advertised to do. If I had better understood this going in, I would have bought a MUCH larger insert, or did a bit of redneck engineering, and use a floor model stove instead of the insert altogether. The fire box is just too small to get a really good load into it. You have to cut your wood fine, (4x4) for the best burn. This by itself makes the wood burn faster. But there just is not enough of it to burn very long even if you could fit larger wood in. This is a stove that loves to be tended and tended often.

Burning the stove.

There is a bit of a learning curve to burning this stove well if you have never used an air tight HE stove before. Especially this little thing. So I will give you all the tips I have learned to burn this stove so that it puts out a decent amount of heat consistently.

When I first started to burn this stove, it never got really "Hot". You could stand inches from the stove and never get so hot that you wanted to move. That is NOT very wood stove like at all. I also had times when I ended up putting out what I thought was a pretty decent fire when I closed the draft control down. And once you put the fire out,,, you got a mess to clean up. Smoke and char and,, oh what a mess.

The secret is to let the fire burn hard at first, for essentially the whole first load. In the beginning, it even helps to leave the door open just a crack for 5 to 10 min. Then close the door, and leave the draft control wide open. Let that fire burn and produce a really hot bed of coals. Before those coals burn down, I mean when they are just broken down enough to spread out, but still have a tremendous amount of energy to release, (About an hour to hour and a half in), spread the coals out and re stack with wood. Let this burn for a good 20 min, so the wood has a good fire going. By this time, you will have a pretty dang hot fire,,,,, for this stove anyhow. Now you can turn down your draft control. There is a graduated incline scale cut out of the metal where the draft control is. I think there are 3 maybe 4 cut outs in the little scale. You don't want to turn the draft control all the way down,,, (To the Left). You want to turn the draft control down so the little rod handle is just under the division between the last and second to last cut out. So the rod is in between the last two division cutouts. Now, the fire will settle in. It's far too hot to "go out" It will burn even with the draft shut down. More importantly, you should start to see jets of fire coming out of the air holes in the air tubes. When burning really well, the whole top of the stove will look like a sheet of burning flame. This is the primary source of viable flame in the fire box. This is very different than a traditional wood stove. The wood will look like it's not burning well,,, like you would expect in a traditional stove. But it is,,, trust me. You won't be able to stand in front of the stove for long now without wanting to move away some.

The trick now is to maintain this burn. You don't want to let the wood burn down too far. You never want to let the wood burn down more than you did during the first load. You want to be able to spread the coals out, but you want them to still be ridiculously hot with a lot of "Burn" left. This is when you want to put more wood in the stove. When reloading the stove, you want to open the draft back up, open the door, spread out the coals, reload the wood, close the door, and leave the draft open for 5 to 10 min to let the new wood get a good burn going. Then you can shut your draft control back down to where I explained previously. You are going to want to do this every hour to hour and a half, but no longer than two hours in order to keep this stove putting out really decent heat. If you do not tend this stove and keep the fire going hot, your heat output will sea saw up and down. And every time you let it dip, the stove has to recover in order to put out good heat again. You will never keep a good even heat output if you don't tend it regularly.

Once I figured out how to burn this stove, I was very happy with its performance. But the stove is simply too small for my 1052 square foot basement. The walls are block, the floor is concrete, and it has never been able to bring my basement up above 60 degrees not matter how long or hard that I burn it. And you have to burn it for a solid couple of days to get the basement up to 60. It is simply too small to do what I really need it to do. As the basement is used for recreation, we are not down there all the time. We can't keep the basement with a fire all the time. Nor can I spend a lot of time tending the fire. Ideally what I need is a stove that I can load, and let it burn for hours, like a traditional stove, and have the heat out put to heat up the space fairly quickly.I want to tend the fire maybe once or twice during the time I am in the space. This insert is NOT that stove.

Final Impression.

If you are buying this stove for the right reasons and application, I think you will be very pleased. But this stove is not a main heat source. I hope my experience with the stove comes in hand for some.

I did SOOOO much homework before buying an insert for my wood burning fireplace. And in the end, I was so nervous about buying one online. But everything else I looked at was double the price and seemed to do the same thing. I went to several stores and looked at so many sites. So I finally decided on this one. And I have to say...I LOVE IT!! Installed very easily. We did have to level it but it wasn't a big deal. We were able to use it right away. We've had it for almost a year now and have had no issues. I burn fires from 10am in the morning until around 9pm at night and it works great. It gets to about 400 degrees but I don't STUFF it with wood. I always use the blower and it keeps my large family room and kitchen nice and toasty. Fits perfect in our fireplace and the clean design goes great with our contemporary style home.