My previous home had an older Waterford wood burning stove in the family room which I loved. Yes it is a lot of work but there is nothing like a crackling fire on a cold winter night, and we have a lot of cold winter nights in New England. So when we purchased my new home with an older inefficient fireplace I knew I wanted to replace it with something more efficient that I could use and would save me some money. My home has two gas forced hot air furnaces as well as a gas stove in the basement to heat the in law apartment. I knew my New England winter heating bills would be high and wanted to do something to offset them.
So we started looking into options. Most places tried to talk us into a gas appliance due to cost and ease of use. I really wanted a wood burning unit and I knew there were some options and we finally found a store that was able to make some suggestions. They recommended the Fireplace X 36 model and had an installer that they work with that would do the work for us. The installer came out a few weeks later and confirmed that the unit could be installed in out space and gave us an estimate. Overall the entire job cost us around $10,000. Pretty pricey but for us it was worth it. The cost broke down as follows
Stove - $3000
Stove Face $1000
Chinmey Parts - $1000
Stone, hearth and mantle - $2500
Labor - $2500
The above are rough estimates from memory but I think they are pretty close. We probably could have saved some money by going with cheaper stone but we decided to invest some money there. The stove installation was completed in February so I only have a couple months of experience using it but overall I am pretty happy.
I am still learning about the stove and how to run it and I am sure that will continue this coming season. One of the cool features of the stove is the posi-pressure system. Rather than taking warm air from inside of your house the stove have a vent and fan to outside which brings in cold air circulates it around the firebox and blows it into your house. This feature is supposed to pressurize you house and seal all of the cold air drafts. I can definitely tell it is pressurizing my home as the ceiling fan in the room where the wood stove is spins backward when the fan kicks on. Kind of freaked me out the first time it happened.
The sell different color and style faceplates for the stove and I found it kind of odd that the faceplate is sold separately from the stove. They stove did come with a thermostat, a moisture sensor, gloves, touch up paint for the face and a grate which I removed as it made it difficult for me to clean out ashes.
The product brochure claims 10 hour burn times. I haven't gotten close to than I am more like 5 or 6 but that could be my learning curve on the stove as well as the quality of wood I was burning last year. I have 2 seasoned cords stacked and ready for this year. Hopefully that will be enough, I was surprised how much wood I went though in the short time I used the stove.
Pros
EPA Certified
High quality product
Looks Great
Puts out a ton of heat - Heats my 3500 square foot house
Cons
Eats a lot of wood
Glass gets dirty
Can get smoky if you aren't careful
No cleanout drawer - can be messy getting the ashes out
Catalytic - will need to eventually replace the catalytic combustor
Overall I really like the stove and hope to continue to learn how to use it more efficiently this season
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