Well, here's the start of day ten running the #6. It's working out better than I thought for my situation. The location of the cold air return in the floor right behind the stove is helping distribute the high heat this base heater.
One concern I had was if the col stoves would do such a good job that the furnace would not cycle enough in really cold weather to dump some heat into the basement. I thought I might have to run a third stove down there.
But that's turned out to not be the case. When the temps get so cold that both stoves can't quite keep up with this drafty monstrosity of a house's heat loss, the electric furnace cycles on. And that's turning out to be right about when it gets cold enough outside that the pipes could freeze. I have an uncovered bucket of water in the coldest part of the basement and I keep checking it to see if it's icing up. Hasn't since the #6 started. The furnace steals some of the heat that the stoves make and sheds it though the basement duct work. That's enough to keep the floors warmer and the pipes from freezing without losing too much heat to the basement. So now, the furnace not only doesn't come on until it's really needed, it also runs for much shorter times.
Some of you may remember that this #6 has the prototype welded, plate steel base chamber pan that Wilson makes. This was to replace the #6 thin cast iron pans of the base chamber that sometimes crack from sudden extreme thermal shock.
One other thing I wondered about was if the pan would make expansion/contraction "oil can" noises as the temps go up and down, but it's totally silent. And no worries about it cracking if the temps get too extreme,... like after I got done fitting a new ash pan.
Because I purposely made the pan a snug fit, I had the ash drawer door open for longer than normal and the stove was really starting to roar. When I closed it up and reset the dampers, the hearth board under the stove shot up to 197F reading with the IR gun.
The all steel pan never even made a sound. Thank you Wilson !!!!!!
Another thing I'm learning about is dealing with bridging. I had heard that round, tapered firepot stoves can be prone to bridging ash. I wondered if old, rough firepot lining could be part of the cause, but this stove has new cast firebricks and it bridges after every long run. No big deal, I've learned that with a quick bit of poking and scraping straight down around the edge of the pot, using a copy of an original right angled tip coal stove poker, that easily collapses the bridging. Just not used to it because it rarely happens with my range with it's straight up and down firebox sides and shallow firebed.
So far averaging about 70 pounds a day through the really cold weather (teens and single digit OAT). It's warmed up to 35 this morning. The furnace has not come on since and the temps in the house are climbing, so I've cut back the primaries a bit. Looking forward to learning how well and long the old girl will run in a bit warmer weather.
Paul