Review: Jotul F 400 Castine
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Jotul F 400 Castine
We've had ours for three winters now, and it is used constantly from about October to March, everyday. It heats our living room, but our house is big and four finished floors. The rest of the house stays cold and we use a gas boiler to keep the house around 65 degrees. The living room is over 100 near the woodstove, which feels great in the winter. It drops to 75 or so just 15 feet away, so everyone tends to hang out right next to the woodstove. I wouldn't want my whole house to be 100 anyway. We only open the door when the coals are red but the flame is gone, otherwise there is a puff of smoke that is annoying, and a source of contention between my husband and me. He is learning to only open the door to reload when the wood is glowing coals, not still burning. We keep it going continuously, day and night, and it still has coals at 6:00 AM after being loaded up with three big pieces of wood at around 11:00 PM. We run ours over 600 degrees all the time with no problems. If the wood is down to glowing coals you can open the door wide and no smoke will come out. Sometimes I do this just to feel the intense heat and enjoy the bright coals. It would be impossible to put a screen on this woodstove and burn a fire from start to finish. I broke the glass once by pushing logs with the door. We are now aware that you cannot push logs with the door of this stove! My husband is now getting into the habit of stacking the logs in a way that they tend to fall against the glass every time, so I'm waiting for the glass to break again soon, as he cannot break a habit until something terrible happens that would force him to stop. We'll probably be up in the middle of the night trying to get the fire out as the house fills with smoke, but I digress...
I think he would like a bigger woodstove. The Castine is medium size, but smallish. The 3CB or whatever is TINY. We had one at first but we had to send it back, it was just too small, and it was installed incorrectly. We installed this one ourselves, with an insulated steel pipe going ALL the way up the chimney, which is critical for a stove like this one, but here we are with the pipe and our stove till smokes with the door is open when the fire is burning!