We finally get to put our electric space heaters away, because we just finished installing our wood stove. I’ll go over the install and give our first impressions on the stove.
I considered purchasing the Jotul F 602 CB for about the same price, but we went with the Morso 1410. Both stoves are EPA certified, which I think is really important because it is going to be very efficient at converting the energy in the wood into heat. Since I’m going through all the effort of cutting the wood I want as much of the wood to go towards heating our tiny house instead of going up the chimney. The cheap box stoves that I originally looked into were not EPA certified so I was a bit shocked at the price difference. The Chinese made stoves at the big box stores can be had for a couple hundred dollars, and both the Jotul and Morso are close to $1,000 purchased new. The paperwork that came with the stove listed estimated efficiency and particulate emissions. You can view the latest EPA compliant wood stoves
here.
There were just a few details that pushed my decision towards the little Morso Squirrel. Both stoves cost about the same. They are both about the same size and heat about the same amount of square footage (800-1000 sq. ft. maximum). They are the smallest radiant wood stoves that I could find from a tried and true manufacturer without looking into expensive marine stoves. I liked the aesthetics of the Morso better than the Jotul. The Jotul was a bit wider at the top and it looked a little more boxy. Also the glass on the Jotul wasn’t as nice as Morso design. I don’t think the Jotul has a rear heat shield, which is included on the Morso. Both stoves have the option of top or rear exit of the flue pipe. The Morso has an ash pan which we are already emptying into the garden beds….SWEET! I also liked the addition of a riddling grate in the Morso, which allows you to rotate the grate through an outside handle. The riddling grate helps ashes fall into the ash pan. Also, the Morso dealer was about an hour closer to our house. For me the two positives for the Jotul are that it takes a larger log size (16″ versus the Morso’s 12″). The Jotul also has a functioning cook plate, which really wasn’t that big of a feature for us.
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| The little Morso 1410 has a squirrel embossed on both sides. |
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| I put down 1/2″ hardyboard and then added 12″x12″ ceramic tiles. Lowes cut the tiles for free, which really surprised me. |
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| Due to our roof rafter location we decided to install our stove about 4″ closer the walls than the stove instructions recommend. The solution was to install metal roofing on the wall with a 1″ air space between the metal and the wall. It works great! |
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| I used pipe nipples to create a 1″ air space between the heat shield and the wall. I drilled pilot holes and partially screwed in grey decking screws. Then, I slid the pipe nipples on all the screws and drove the screws into the wall. |
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| The blue tape is the stud locations for reference. I cut a 12″ x 12″ hole exposing the metal roof, cut out the insulation and framed the hole on all sides with 2″ x 4″. |
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| Since our ceiling is pitched we used a cathedral ceiling box to keep all insulation and wood 2″ away from the chimney pipe. The box also supports the weight of the chimney pipe. I still need to add the included metal trim around the box for a more finished look. |
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| We use a wood stove magnetic thermometer mounted on the single wall stove pipe 12″ up from the top of the stove. It is an excellent tool for easily determining when we need to adjust the air supply to cool it down or heat it up. Overfiring on this stove is anything hotter than 450 degrees, so we usually try to keep the temperature in the 300 to 350 degree range. |
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| The metal roof isn’t flat like a shingled roof, which was a problem when looking at the chimney kits you can buy at Lowes, Tractor Supply, etc. that are made for shingled (flat) roofing material. Instead of buying a ‘through the ceiling kit’ I purchased the the stove pipe, chimney pipe, rain cap and cathedral ceiling support box at Lowes, I ordered a a high temperature silicone boot with dead soft aluminum trim from a metal roofing manufacturer. The dead soft aluminum was formed to match the ridges in the metal roof. I used metal roofing screws with rubber washers to secure the boot, and liberal amounts of 100% silicone caulk where the roof and silicone boot meet. |
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| There are two sets of baffles at the top of the combustion area. These allow for gases to re-burn increasing efficiency tremendously. The left and right side of the fire box come lined with fire bricks. |
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| The ash pan under the riddling plate. |
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| The finished install in our tiny cabin. My dad came over and helped with the difficult stuff, which was really nice. I didn’t really want to be climbing up and down the roof by myself. |
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| Sarah is lovin’ the warmth on our inaugural firing. She even brought home a bottle of wine to celebrate! |
This is our first winter that we are all living together in the cabin, and we had been heating with electric space heaters. We were getting considerable condensation buildup on the windows due to really high humidity inside. Once the wood stove was running we immediately noticed a lower humidity and much less condensation on the windows, which is a huge positive for heating with wood. I was considering ventless propane heating instead of the wood stove, but I’ve heard that others using propane for heat have the same condensation problems.
The Morso is pretty easy to start and does a great job heating. I would recommend this stove to anyone with a small area to heat. It can put of so much heat for our little place that we open up the windows, but generally we don’t keep it running all day. We make a fire in the morning and let it die down, then we make another fire in the evening. I suspect if the temperature gets colder we may run it all day but so far we are in the 20’s – 30’s at night with daytime highs in the 40’s – 50’s. When the stove is up to temperature I don’t see any smoke exiting the chimney at all. It is a very clean burning stove.
I had priced out the chimney parts for a ‘through the ceiling’ install at two different wood stove dealers. They both estimated about $800 for chimney parts only, not including the hearth and heat shielding. I ended up buying everything through Lowes Home Improvement at considerable saving. They didn’t have the silicone chimney flashing, but that was reasonably priced from a local manufacturer. The entire chimney ended up costing less than $400, with the hearth and metal roofing about another $100. I couldn’t imagine what it would have cost if I had hired someone to purchase and install everything for me.
I had been cutting wood last winter and stacking under some old tin to keep the rain off of it. My next project is an open air shed for storing split wood close to the front door for easy retrieval.
