Concerning an insert:

First let me say we've been using a wood insert or stove for our main source of heat for almost 30 years.

You say you have 1700 sq ft. Is that your whole house? You always want the bedrooms to be cooler than the rest of the house.

How cold does it get in winter where you live?

There's also differing opinions on blowers. The stove creates radiant heat where the walls, floors, furniture, etc is heated, while a blower converts that radiant heat to convection heat, thereby heating the air, not the furniture.

Now if you just want to move the warm air to another part of the house, you can get small doorway fans to do that. That's what we use.

You also should not get a stove that's too big for your purpose. Getting a stove with 20 to 24 inch logs seems quite large. The ones I've seen will heat 3,000 sq ft. And you do NOT need one of those! You need to "size" the stove to the main area you're heating. You see, if you have too large a stove, you will always be too hot. Then you will either open the windows or build smaller fires and creosote will build up. You want to keep the surface temperature at about 500 to 600 degrees.

My home is 1200 sq ft. It's a ranch style and the stove is in the living room. It's a Regency F1100 and is the small stove in their lineup. And it heats the house just fine in our Vermont winters. It has a 6 hour burn time. We pack the stove before we go to bed, and in the morning there are always coals to start another fire.

Now the stove is operating at it's limits when we go to minus 40 degrees, but those times are really not that often. Maybe 3 or 4 times a winter.

My suggestion to you is to Google stove and fireplace shops within a 50 mile radius of your home. And go to them! Look at as many different brands as you can, but always buy one a LOCAL dealer can service!

Let the pros tell you what size stove will work best for you. And then select the brand you're comfortable with.