Regular commenter Phssthpok (please don’t ask me to pronounce that) suggested that since I installed mine over a year ago, a long-term Vogelzang review might be in order. That sounds like a good idea.
The first thing you’ll notice if you shop for wood-burning stoves is that most of them are very expensive. Like even a no-frills model can crowd four figures. If you just want to heat a weekend cabin or BOL, that is going to seem excessive. And then as you do your research you’ll find another sort of stove entirely, a “boxwood” stove, usually made by Vogelzang*. You’ll notice that the price difference is extreme. A standard boxwood stove such as the one above is still on the right side of $200. You’ll wonder if there might be some qualitative difference between these two sorts of stove. You’ll be right to wonder this.
A modern “airtight” stove burns cleanly, efficiently, and most of all in a controllable fashion. You can build a fire, heat up the stove, then damp it down to where it will provide heat for several hours, even overnight. Airtight means you control all the air inlets. It’s rather like having a half-ass thermostat.
A boxwood stove isn’t like that. It’s a much older design, really just a bunch of iron castings bolted together or even just laid on top of one another. It does have a damper for the main air inlet and another on the flue collar, but neither is anything remotely like airtight. You’ll have some control over how enthusiastically the fire burns, but that’s all. Build a fire in one of these babies and it will burn until it runs out of fuel, and then it will go out. If you’re not there to feed the fire, say at least once an hour, there won’t be any. What I’m saying, a cabin heated with a boxwood stove gets cold at night. Other than EPA approval, that seems to be the principal difference between the two types.
The main question from potential purchasers would have to be “Will a boxwood stove heat my BOL?” Yes of course it will. It’s an iron box in which one builds a fire. How well it does that depends on your installation. Here, if you’re concerned, you need to find an expert. Regular TUAK readers know that I am not an expert, but I will tell you that Here There Be Mysteries.
The Secret Lair is a funny-looking building. At the front it’s taller than it is wide, because it contains a fairly large sleeping loft. That high roof requires that my stovepipe be really long, like fourteen feet long. A wood-burning stove won’t start drawing air efficiently until the stovepipe is heated up its whole length, for fairly obvious reasons. The fire won’t burn well until the stove is drawing well. You ever try to heat sixteen feet of stovepipe, five feet of which is sticking out in the cold to clear that tall peak? I have and will probably always have problems getting my stove really hot. (This causes other problems like creosote condensing in the pipe, but that’s another subject.) I don’t particularly mind because the Lair is a 200 square foot microcabin and my stove can drive me right out of it. But it could be a problem in a bigger structure. The first eight feet of my stovepipe is single-wall, which goes a long way to heating my interior structure but doesn’t help keep the stovepipe drawing well.
Phssthpok asked if I can cook on my stove. Hell, I’ve never successfully boiled water on my stove. Landlady, however, has a smaller model stove with a shorter (and double-walled, which internally heats more efficiently) stovepipe and she is getting downright creative with stovetop recipes. So it can be done. But it wouldn’t be my first choice.
The conclusion of the matter, everything having been said, is that a cheap(ish) boxwood stove can keep you toasty during the day and evening with two important caveats: It won’t keep you warm at night (mornings can be a bitch,) and a lot depends on the installation. The stovepipe is as important as the stove.
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*Similar stoves are made by other companies, but proceed with caution if at all. Vogelzang seems to be the gold standard in cheap cast iron stoves. I’ve seen others in the same price point with exactly the same design but far inferior quality.
And beware of the small “pot bellied” stoves. I’ve not seen one in ages, probably for a very good reason… We had one 45 years ago in a small house with no other heat. Unaware of its limitations when we rented the place, the first cold fall nights were a revelation. It looked so charming… but it was nearly useless for keeping the small house warm.
The major problem with it was that the firebox was too small for anything much beyond what I’d call kindling. It had to be fed CONSTANTLY, and one had to cut regular stove wood into small chunks to do that. Thank goodness we lived in Southern California then. And you can bet we found another place to live as soon as possible. Desert nights can and do get very cold.
ML a lot of old pot bellied stoves were made to burn coal not primarily wood. I use a sheet metal version of a box wood stove to heat my sauna. We have about 4′ of single wall then insulatedpipe through the roof. We can go from minus thirty to 180 in the heat room in 2 to 3 hours. This is an 8 x 16 .Also heat our bathiing water in a large pot on top. For obvious reasons we have airtight stoffe in the house.
Alaska
I’ve two glass fronted stoves. I didn’t buy either. I’m in an oldish (probably built 1750 to 1800) 2 storey stone cottage.
first stove has a water jacket. it will take the chill out of the room, but that’s about it. It will heat a tank of hot water sufficeint for a bath in about 40 minutes to an hour from cold with really dry sticks. with wet sticks, forget it. it will hardly burn at all. The water jacket just steals far too much heat from it.
There’s a circulation pump for when I’ve got the generator running, and really stoked up, it will get the radiators nice to touch (about 40 C) in two or three hours, but uses over 100 pounds of wood to do it, and the inside of the stove cokes up with tar.
The old stone chimney has been lined, and draws really well. I find I have to use a wooden wedge to close down the upper air inlet to the stove further than the maker intended, or it seems to blow all the heat straight up the chimney.
The other stove I got second hand, and I cobbled together an installation with a fireproof board and a single wall flue pipe into the old open fireplace. I should get around to using more silicone around the edges of the board to try to improve the draw, although there are probably some jackdaw (a small crow that specializes in nesting in chimneys) nests in there too.
I think that stove was meant to work on coke, rather than wood, as the ash falls straight through the coarse grate, and the only proper air supply is from below – not ideal for wood, although I can vary how tightly I seal the door to give it a little air from above. It’s lined with fire brick and when it gets hot, it gets round to burning the tar off the inside of the glass and gives pretty flame effects. It will happily take the chill out of the whole cottage.
Once it is up to temperature, it likes to be fed little and often, one log onto the glowing base of embers, and plenty of free air space above for nice flames. It will happily burn wet, rotten or even green wood when it’s up to heat. Dead rats go in there too. you certainly don’t want to expose bare skin in front of it when the door is opened, and it blazes up too when you open the door. I find it wise to open the door very slowly, otherwise I get a waft of smoke into the room.
With big logs, I can get it to burn most of the night, which in frosty weather keeps the chill out of the whole cottage, though if I close the bottom down completely, it tars up.
I’ve checked the stone chimney structures, and they don’t leak into the loft space, nor are there any timbers going into them, so I’m not worried about chimney fires.
My mother and my brother both have fancy stoves which blow hot air onto the inside of the glass to keep it clear, and blow jets of really heated air into the fire box to give pretty flame effects with what would otherwise be smoke. They also use welding gloves when they’re feeding theirs.
I could probably plumb a stainless steel pipe in through the flue on the back of my air heating stove, and arrange nail holes in it to blow hot air onto the glass, and have a flap to control the airflow – but I’m too lazy.
Joel,
The easiest was to pronounce Phssthpok is “Beercan”. This is the Certain Persons Cabal approved approach, and is used by all who are under that particular umbrella.
Keith, that place of yours sounds fascinating. Scary and maintenance-intensive, but very interesting.
I never got that particular lodge pin, Buck.
I use a Mohawk Industries wood stove with a 26x21x16″ fire box. It’s generally good for 3-4 hours on a load. For overnight, I load it up, get a good fire going, then close the dampers (air and stove pipe) almost completely. Most nights that get me through the entire night, but if the weather is especially chilly — zero or below — I might have to wake up a few hours early to toss in some more wood, then go back to bed. This heats a three story house, with the stove on the ground floor. So yeah, my chimney is pretty tall, but most enclosed by the structure. That helps, because the stove pipe liner runs up the concrete chimney which holds heat.
Cooking on a wood stove: I do, in the winter. Mostly rice (I’ll prep a six quart pot of rice and eat that for days), pots of beans (generally in a crock pot insert) that can simmer for hours, and flat breads- pancakes, chapatis, and pita (n the summer I just use my bread machine for more conventional ‘Merkin-style loaves).
Pot belly stoves: No real experience, but like Howard I always had the impression that they were meant primarily for coal.
“Phssthpok” is best pronounced with a beak (that “-pok” is the hollow clopping sound). You need to find some tree of life. It doesn’t grow well around here, due to soil deficiency.
I’ve had a vogelzang Sweetie for about 5 years now. Works well. Does not hold enough wood to burn all night. I consider it a wood burning space heater.it heats my 10×10 family room. I added an extra damper in the second segment of stove pipe up from the collar. Using both dampers and the one in front a reasonably evn burn can be maintained for a couple of hours. I will often have some coals buried in ash in the mornings, but no heat. I don’t cook on mine but keep a cat iron kettle full of water on top the steam adds nice humidity to the room.
first off, Pine is crappy firewood. It is cheap for a reason. Yes, it burns, but has more creosote and pitch, and it also contains less fuel per volume. If you can get some Locust, that stuff burns all night. Locust is very dense wood, so contains a lot more fuel per cubic foot.
Second, you will have fewer dry, hacking coughs if you put a coffee can full of water on the wood stove all winter. Cold air is dry, and dryer still by the time you warm it up. Your sinuses dry out, and not in a good way. This poor man’s humidifier will help. Of course, you should be careful about condensation on any non-stainless steel, and don’t let your insulation get saturated, and so forth. The moisture has to go somewhere. Some of it will go out the chimney – since it looks like that’s where combustion air comes from, and some will escape whenever you open the door. The rest will condense on something cool, or stay in the air. Still, just a little bit of humidity helps a lot.
Personally, I think the disadvantages of pine are often over-stated. It certainly isn’t my preferred fuel, but I’ll burn what I can get. Pine is usually around a quarter of what I get here, the rest being oak (most), birch, and a little maple. I just make sure that I’m mixing the pine with the better stuff in each box load. And, of course, you want the fire to burn hot. Low, long-lasting — smoldering — fires are what cause the most creosote buildup.
The other thing you want to do is use something that prevents buildup. I’ve come to really appreciate Anti-Creo-Soot. At the start of the season, I spray it very generously into the firebox, then use a bit more once a week. Anything that does build come loose quite easily with one or two passes with the chimney brush. (And I start the season by cleaning the stove pipe, naturally.)
Ditto on keeping a pot of water on the stove. It helps a lot. If the relative humidity drops below 40% I tend to get nose bleeds in the winter. Usually humidity will be vary between 40% to 70%, so condensation has never been a problem. It isn’t necessary, but I happened to have an old hygrometer left over from my smoking days (it was in the cheapo cigar box) which works well enough. Mine is pretty similar to this six buck model.
Dio here, As you know(or might know) I made my own stove for heating my RV. Last winter i used a small kindling stove, and it did pretty well. My only complaint was not being able to keep heat all night; the main reason for wanting to upgrade.
I am using a 4″ flue pipe instead of the typical 6″or 8″ and that seems to help with heating the pipe and reducing creosote. I do have to clean out the upper pipe every other week or so so this weekend I put a larger diameter pipe over the upper flue to see if that will help. There will be a further action post about that soon.
The other thing (and another commenter mentioned it) is the type of wood you burn. Knowing you don ‘t have access to hard woods like oak, locust, beech or cherry, I haven ‘t much to offer in experience. I would try to limit the use of aromatic woods though. They tend to leave far more creosote than others .
This winter I’m keeping the use of juniper to a minimum. I’ve been canvassing the neighborhood for people who want old pallets (often hardwood) hauled off, then cutting them up and stacking them in my hoop shed. It’s ugly, and the nails are hell on saw blades, but it works far better than juniper. Last winter I got into the habit of cleaning my stovepipe every week, and most of the time it wasn’t wasted effort: The juniper produces a lot of creosote quickly, especially in the upper, colder part of the pipe. This winter it hasn’t been a problem; the pipe is dramatically cleaner than last year.
Woot!
RE: cooking…I proved to a friend a few years back that he could indeed run his HUGE All American Pressure canner (the largest one they make) on his wood stove (not a Vogelzang though). he thought it wouldn’t have the heat capability…quite the reverse…we had to keep it damped down to almost nothing (with a full load of wood) to keep the pressure from spiking. Turns out that little trick saved him a TON of money on propane for his stove.
So I was thinking along the lines of beans and/or rice in your little pressure cooker on the Vogelzang. It wouldn’t need to run as long as a canning run of meat (90 min) so a single loading of wood might just do the trick (though you’d definitely want to hang around and keep an eye on the pressure). And frying up a couple eggs in the morning should be easy enough too.
In my old mountain house in Colorado I had a Woodstock Soapstone stove. The loading door was small but the top opened so at night I dumped a full log into it and it burned all night and most of the next day. The thing was great. They now make it with a top that splits so you can cook on the underside which is iron.
My current stove in a small cabin is a Morso. Great little stove but it needs feeding every 3 hours. Modern stoves cannot be shut down completely. The EPA mandated hidden vents to keep the smoke down. Not the worst thing they could have done I guess.
I do burn oak, cherry and apple which helps a lot. Nothing like 6″ of glowing coals with a chunk of oak on top.
i have to brag here about boxwood stoves. when i bought my old farmhouse, the previous owner told me the chimney hole was behind the drywall. i bought a used boxwood stove & plugged it in. after finding out how useless a fireplace is, i added a Vermont Castings Aspen. when it was new, 14 years ago, it worked pretty well. Ten years ago i got a brand new Vogelzang from Lowe’s for $150 & replaced the used one in the kitchen. after Katrina, i ditched my oil furnace & replaced it with the bigger boxwood stove for the basement.
the little vogelzang in my 11×20′ kitchen can heat that room from 40 to 80 degrees. (that was this past winter with temps of 6 degrees F.) with the ceiling fan on, it also heats the parlor. if i load it porperly, it will burn all night & leave coals in the morning. the two boxwood stoves are on stove chimneys – round inside, 6 or 8″ in diameter. i clean them myself. it’s simple to get the draft going – light a piece of newspaper & stuff it into the back of the stove so the flame goes right up the pipe.
the Aspen, on the other hand, is a BIYATCH. it cost me $600, then another $600 for a stovepipe insert into the (fireplace) chimney. since it is airtight, i can’t start the draft myself. i fill the room with smoke a few times a year. i have had to pull burning wood from the kitchen & carry it to the Aspen to get it started.
i LOVE the boxwood stoves. no more airtights for me.
Hello,
I found this forum while I was searching for ways to divert the heat from my boxwood stove to another room. Has anyone ever tried doing this?
I use mine in the winter in my greenhouse, and I was wondering if there is a way to divert some of the heat into the garage that the greenhouse is connected to without burning it down, of course? 🙂
Your response would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry, I’m pretty sure I’m not competent to answer that. You could tee off the stovepipe in the greenhouse, run it through the garage and exhaust it outside, drawing hot gas through it with a fan. But that’s just off the top of my head; no telling how well it’d work.
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I am from the eastern hills of Tennessee. I use a boxwood to heat my 1600 sq ft cabin. My stove was made by an Amish blacksmith near Crossville, Tennessee. I can cook on it and keep things heated for ten hours at a time. Never, EVER use pine in a wood burning stove, only asking for problems. Use hardwoods like hickory or oak, not green cut but seasoned for at least nine months or more. I have a few acres of woods around here and do my “killing” of tree to be used as firewood in the spring. I was raised in a large house with a big wood burning so I have been doing this most of my life.
Is answer to Wanda about heating garage, you could just put a door connecting these areas and open it when you want to heat garage as well as greenhouse.