Well, it's been a long road, but we are finally warming our house this evening through the power of wood.

The installers came around 9 AM and left around 4 PM, and the beast just barely fits in the space. But it fits. There's one last step, which is to have the city inspector sign off on it, but I spoke with him when he came around 11 AM, and all he needs to do is measure the distance from the edge of the hearth to the front of the insert. Since I verified myself that we have the required 16 inches, there's no reason to expect any problems.

Within minutes of the time the installers left, I had the first load of wood in and burning. Within about ten minutes the blower kicked on (it's on a thermostat), and it is now merrily pumping heat into our great room. And it does put out a lot of heat. If you stand in front of it, you can feel a major blast of hot air.

Of course, it's too early to know how much of a difference this will make on our heating bills. Our meter reading was just a couple days ago, so the next gas bill will be 100% without wood, and the following bill will be almost 100% with wood heat.

The one problem which I was expecting but didn't happen is that sometimes these stoves are hard to get lit. You have to get the chimney good and warmed up before it'll draw well, and until it draws enough air, it can be hard to keep the fire going.

But fortunately that's not a problem with this unit. It has an extra "starting air" control, which opens some giant air intakes in the back. This makes starting a breeze, but you have to remember to close the starting air once it is hot. Otherwise it can draw too much air and overheat.

So first impression: cool.

UPDATE: The stove has been running about four hours so far, and the temperature of the house has gone up four degrees. That's not bad, considering that the outside temperature is 15. If the stove can heat the house a degree per hour when its +15, then the furnace will still be needed on the coldest nights of the year but not much. Also, I'm burning a mix of dry and green firewood this evening. Burning just the driest wood will make the stove burn hotter, so it has the potential to put out more heat than it is right now.

Finally, according to the manufacturer, it should go full blast for three hours on a load, so if I fill the firebox right before bedtime, it will keep putting out heat for nearly half the night.