Your Opinion of Hitzer 503 EZ?

puglover · Post by **puglover** » Sun. Feb. 13, 2011 2:03 pm

I talked to a dealer and he's offered me one for $1450 new. Is this a good price? Today I read on here an old post saying the ash shaker was inside of it. are they still? this has to be a mess to open up the stove to shake the ash down. I thought they all came with a shaker handle outside. I like the insert part and this size fits my home. From what I've read most of these american made stoves are all good quality stoves. my concern is this ash issue and is this a fair price for this unit.

CapeCoaler · Post by **CapeCoaler** » Mon. Feb. 14, 2011 1:48 am

Not a bad price...
The 'rents put one in 3 years ago and it was about $1300 ish...
As for the ash issue...
We did an insulated 6" ss liner up the big chimney flue...
All the ash gets sucked into the stove due to the great draft...
The 'rents had the same concern and it is not an issue...
Hopper feed is great...
The 'rents never ran a coal stove before...
With a day of instruction and a week of checking in on the stove...
They were in the one match club...
The 503 heats the whole house to 72-74* the house is a 2 story Gambrel at about 2200 sq ft...

davidmcbeth3 · Post by **davidmcbeth3** » Wed. Mar. 16, 2011 11:43 pm

Good deal ... I have one, 4 yrs now....no problems. The shaker "knobs" are not on the outside .. you use a tool to attach & shake ... no big concern I think. The hopper is good ... changing firebricks is easy (but 2 bricks need to be ~1" wide so you'll need to cut a brick or two sometimes).

Thing is heavy .. the only reason why I did not do the install myself ... heating wise .. I have a 2400 sq ft house (its in my 1st floor fireplace) ... it heats the house.

I attached an in-line blower to move the heated air from the room with the stove to an upstairs register (I have AC) .. simple to switch out at the end of heating season. So this is done in my attic...seems to work OK, maybe a 400 cfm blower would do a better job v 200 cfm in-line blower.

The stove itself has 2 blowers ... no issues with them pretty quite but not noiseless.

Never had an issue with the ash ... is at room temp or about 85 degrees when you pull the pan out...

A good insert .. the only other fireplace insert I looked at was a Harman Magnafire insert .. I think this is a stoker & I wanted a hopper .. hopper is great to have ...

You can see the shaker system in action at

this is a youtube of a different model (w/o the hopper system) but shows the shaking of the coal bed well