We bought another woodstove to replace the Alpiner. We keep hearing about how we could burn so much less wood with a more efficient stove, and it’s hard to understand, a log burnt is a log burnt. Why would it make more heat in another stove? Well apparently it does, and I’m not yet convinced of it, but this new stove is riddled with soapstone so at least it’s better at spreading out the release of heat over time. In the very few mornings we’ve had with it, it’s true that it was really easy to get the fire going again with just a few embers. Everything else is… well, like any other stove, we need to get acquainted with it.
The first fire, which sounds great except it’s off gassing so it stinks up the house. It does seem to be a well thought out, modern stove.
It is the first time we have a stove with a window. That aspect is really super nice, there’s nothing like the glow of a fire warming up a room.
Now I can barely move the Alpiner by myself, and the new stove (it doesn’t have a name yet), well it weights 2 to 3 times more… We had it installed thanks to tax incentives, and boy am I glad I didn’t have to move it. I don’t think I fully fathomed just how heavy it is.
It was nice to geek out with a couple of stove guys, and to make sure I wasn’t doing anything stupid since I never had someone official review my stoves and flue builds.
The Alpiner is waiting on the porch for next Spring to be moved to storage with the tractor. It’ll be useful in a cabin or other down the road. I gave it a thick coat of olive oil to prevent rust. It’ll burn off next time we fire it.
Hi there,
We just bought this exact Alpiner stove but I can’t find any information on it as to minimum clearances and whatnot. I know your post is probably old but I was hoping you had some insight, being an owner.
I don’t have the documentation for this particular stove, we got it second hand. We kept ours about a foot off the walls, but our hearth is all tile & concrete board with a 1″ air gap between the combustible part of the wall (stick framing) and the concrete & tile part. It was completely fine operating like this. I think it would have been ok without the air gap too, but I prefer “completely fine” over “ok” :). It really depends on the space you’re setting it into. It’s a great stove, we upgraded to the one in the blog post, and it is indeed better, but it’s not $2800 better when compared to the Alpiner. And the Alpiner has a simplicity to it that I really like, there’s really nothing wrong that can happen to it. Bricking it is dead simple and the path from the fire to the smoke stack is as straight as can be. I heard that it’s also 100% thick steel which is really good at retaining heat, and indeed it did better than our cookstove at being still warm in the morning.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have any other questions.