Need help purchasing 1st stove

Hi All,

Thanks for the add. Looking to purchase 1st wood stove. Came across this Vermont Castings, which is right around the corner from me. Craigslist link below with a number of photos. What questions should I ask the seller?  How difficult are they to install?  Price seems too good to be true. Thanks

https://philadelphia.craigslist.org/app/d/washington-crossing-vermont-castings/6790914206.html

It looks like it is in pretty good shape, but the price seems kind of high. These stoves were pretty popular so there are plenty of them. I would offer the owner $250, but pay no more then $300. You can get a non-epa stove for Free if you keep looking.

James Kleiner wrote:Hi All,

Thanks for the add. Looking to purchase 1st wood stove. Came across this Vermont Castings, which is right around the corner from me. Craigslist link below with a number of photos. What questions should I ask the seller?  How difficult are they to install?  Price seems too good to be true. Thanks

https://philadelphia.craigslist.org/app/d/washington-crossing-vermont-castings/6790914206.html

Looks in good condition. A catalyst will set you back $100 to $200 although you could run it without. I don't care stoves that have fragile expensive parts that need replacing. I could be wrong and can't tell from the pictures, but it appears the stove doesn't have a secondary burn feature. That may be because of the catalyst.

Installation can get expensive if you hire it out. We did ours in single wall stainless steel flue pipe inside with double wall where it goes up through the roof. A 4 foot length of single wall SS runs about $50 and will last forever.





YouTube has lots of really good advice on installing stoves.

Not the cheapest, but among the most efficient you can get:

https://jotul.com/us/home

Most casual wood stoves use some kind of grill to be able to also run with coal, though it works it is not optimal while burning wood.

Stoves with catalytic converters are not my favorite. The ones I have been around do indeed lack secondary burn in favour of the catalyst. In order to keep the efficiency up they cannot be turned down too far, so burn time is limited.

They also do not play nice with alder, apparently the ash is too fine and this causes a problem with the catalyst... alder is by far the most readily available half decent wood in my area.

Dillon Nichols wrote:Stoves with catalytic converters are not my favorite. The ones I have been around do indeed lack secondary burn in favour of the catalyst. In order to keep the efficiency up they cannot be turned down too far, so burn time is limited.

They also do not play nice with alder, apparently the ash is too fine and this causes a problem with the catalyst... alder is by far the most readily available half decent wood in my area.

That's one reason we have non-catalytic, secondary burn, coal rated stoves so we can be free to burn anything in them.
They are our sole source of home heating so they need to be able to work every time all the time.