Looking a gift wood stove in the, um, firebox?

February 24, 2019 3:03 PM

We bought a house! It has a wood stove! The seller is happy to let us have a matching wood stove that's on the premises "for parts or replacement" (presumably meaning replacement of the installed one). Do we want it?

Space is at a premium -- we definitely wouldn't install a second wood stove in the under 800 square foot house. We're already having to get rid of a lot of our stuff to make this move. There's a 200 square-foot unheated workshop where I suppose we could install one in theory, but we probably never will, and we've got a lot of other potential uses for that space.

The wood stove installed in the house is this one, a Dutchwest 2461, and the one we're being offered is "matching."

If you have a wood stove, is it useful to have a matching one for parts or replacement? Enough so that we should make room for it even though we're space-constrained?

If we take it and then get tired of storing it, is a wood stove an easy thing to sell (or give away, if needed) near Amherst MA?

posted by daisyace to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

Depends on whether you ever expect to use the workshop in the winter. If maybe, it shouldn't hurt to badly to keep it.

You could always try and see what people in Craigslist are asking for them in your area, either for use or for scrap
posted by Ferreous at 3:17 PM on February 24, 2019

Best answer: Oh hey, we have that one! I can’t see it making a ton of sense in an unheated workshop that size - you’d be giving up a fair bit of floor space, and running it efficiently would overheat the room. I guess you could keep it for parts, but we had no difficulty replacing the door glass on ours - there was a place in South Hadley that handled the repair, no sweat.
posted by restless_nomad at 3:36 PM on February 24, 2019

The woodstove I have is made out of very strong cast iron. I can't imagine anything on it breaking, though I'm sure since I just wrote that something will break on it tonight.

Unless I had a ton of space I would not keep an extra woodstove around for spare parts. If it's junk anyway, maybe you can take the door from it as that's the only thing I could see ever needing replacement, and even then it would just be the glass which you could probably get repaired anyway.

As you can see from the one you already have, proper installation of a wood stove requires a lot of space and ventilation so keeping it around because you might want it one day probably wouldn't be worth it. There would be other ways of heating a small workshop if you need to.
posted by bondcliff at 3:39 PM on February 24, 2019

Is there any chance you will build a sauna? If so, keep the stove. Otherwise I think you will be able to sell it no problem.
posted by mai at 4:41 PM on February 24, 2019

Best answer: It’s a catalytic stove, and someday the catalyst might go bad. I’ve also heard of cast iron panels warping and needing replacement when a stove is accidentally run too hot, but I think the odds of that probably aren’t high enough to justify the storage space. I’d sell it.
posted by jon1270 at 4:47 PM on February 24, 2019

Best answer: If you're not going to operate it, it'll take up about 2 square feet of space in the corner of the workshop. (And that kind of thinking explains a lot about the state of my cellar....)
posted by kate4914 at 5:03 PM on February 24, 2019 [4 favorites]

It takes up even less effective storage space because you can put stuff in it and stack stuff on it. Heck you can store it outside in a $30 Rubbermaid watertight tub.

What’s the rush, sell it in a month or a year if you decide that’s best. But I’d want some good perspective on the cost and time and availability of buying and transporting a local replacement before getting rid of the replacement that is already right there for free.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:32 PM on February 24, 2019

Best answer: I bought that exact stove, new, before I knew much about wood stoves. I heated my house with it for many years. It's a cheap stove, and prone to problems, but it's not terrible. On that stove the catalytic converter housing is prone to melting out or warping and the baffle is a cheap precast form that breaks down over time. It's a very common stove so you can fix it when something goes wrong. If I were you, I'd take the second one, sell them both, then buy a nicer stove. They are easy to sell in the fall, less so this time of year. You can expect maybe 50% of the new price if it's in excellent shape.
posted by Patapsco Mike at 5:49 PM on February 24, 2019

I just moved into a much smaller house and am still drowning in stuff. I would sell it (or just tell the owners they need to remove it) and not think another thing about it.
posted by dawkins_7 at 8:43 AM on February 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Catalytic stoves eventually need the catalysts replaced, and that can be a PITA and surprisingly expensive depending on the stove model. I'd probably save it; as others point out, it's not like you're actually setting up a second stove to use simultaneously. It's the sort of thing I'd probably stick in a shed, or someplace else that's protected from weather (so it doesn't rust) but isn't necessarily indoors or heated.

But if space is really at a premium, you could sell it and then deal with the replacement catalyst when the time comes. It's a matter of determining the cost to you of having it sit around.
posted by Kadin2048 at 6:46 AM on February 26, 2019

Response by poster: Leave it to ask.metafilter -- not one, but two replies from people who had that exact stove, including one in the next town over. Plus a bunch of other answers with relevant facts that I didn't know or hadn't considered. I hate to give up any space at all, but I'd hate even more needing some pricey repair later that could have been free. So, we're going to accept it from the seller for now, move in and live there a while, see how much we need every inch of space and how much use we make of the wood stove, and decide what makes the most sense after that. Thanks all!
posted by daisyace at 6:28 PM on February 26, 2019