US Stove 900 sq. ft. Cast-Iron Basic Wood Stove, US1261E

Great little stove. It looks like the old logwood stove of the 30s and 40s, but this has remarkable internal air circulation for a cleaner, hotter burn and more fuel efficiency. It works best as auxiliary heat and for cooking, as it doesn't hold a fire all night long too well (3-6 hour fires depending on your wood and how hard you run it. Install a damper in the flue to give you control of the fire. I've used mine for heating and cooking for 4 years now. The ceramic baffle can break if overloaded. The door latch may need tightening now and again. I've never had trouble lighting a fire unless I had wet wood. It often needs the door open for increased airflow to get it started, as stated in the manual. This stove wants to burn hot; it's part of the design, using recirculating air inside the firebox to increase temperature and efficiency. If you install a damper and try to keep a slow, smoldering fire, it won't do well. Use dry wood, get it going hot, then turn it down (if you installed a damper). When used properly, it should have very little smoke except during lighting a new fire. A smokey fire means it's too cool, burning dirty, inefficient, and likely to clog the chimney with crud. On par with modern stoves, it needs a clean chimney to work well. These may look old-fashoined, but are not your granddaddy's stoves. Keep the pipe clean. As for heating space, It will fully heat a shed or garage during Northern Michigan's winter. It will heat small homes just fine in less severe winter regions.

Purchased this log stove 6 years ago (1269e model) took me a couple of burns to learn how to get the draft going properly (first wood stove of my own). I used this stove steady through out the winters day and night.It has a been a work horse for me and have no complaints about it. Just upgraded to a new stove from this company simply because I want to see my fire burning. lol Anyway this is going into our shop where I expect to give it to one of my kids one day. At the end of winter I throughly cleaned it and lightly oiled it to prevent rust and it's just as pretty as when I originally bought it

The product description doesn't list that this is a single burn rate stove. There are no air controls. Quality is very low, the top casting was warped causing the sides to not seal properly. The fiberboard was damaged in shipping. The small air tubes would not stay fitted and kept falling out, their mounting tab screws were stripped. The main air tube bracket was also bent. One of the 4 compression rods was stripped making the disassembly extremely difficult. This is one of the lowest cost wood stoves available, but way too expensive for the extremely low build quality.

Door will not seal, lock nut mechanism comes loose when stove gets hot. No air flow controls built in, has serious back puffing issue. Have 15 years experience with woodstoves and will be getting rid of this one in my new place for a better safer stove.