We are on our third heating season with a quadrafire insert. We heat the main part of our house--an area of approximately 1300 square feet. Noise was a consideration in our puchase (it is in our TV room) as was quality and looks. We have been extremely happy with our stove. We program the thermostat just like we would for our oil boiler. The hopper holds one 40lb bag of pellets. The burn pot is self cleaning. Once per week we thoroughly vacuum the burn chamber, clean the glass, and empty the ashes from the lower tray. We have it serviced annually. The amount of ash in the tray and dust in the pellets varies with the brand of pellets you burn. This year we found a dealer (in CT) that offered several different brands of pellets and detailed the wood and size of pellets. Our price for pellets was about $2.25 per bag--purchased by the ton. We will burn just over 2 tons. Quadrafire Mount Vernon insert. (60,000 btu)

Glenn and Nick--you guys have been so nice and encouraging and helpful! I wish you lived nearby--I'd bake you a cake or make you a great steak dinner or somethin'!! :o) Yep, I will not be happy with this floor till I do some of that Henry's fill! We have one more bag of the Ardex left, and I've toyed with putting it down and hoping it will fix the slight inequities but---the stuff that has been down since yesterday around 1:30 p.m. still 'looks' uncured, enough, to me (the novice) to feel safe putting a moisture barrier on and start laying the planking down. If it's taking so long to cure then we'd be out another couple of days and we will have lost our window of opportunity to have our one SIL helps us lay the floor (he's working off a loan to do it) even though I feel very confident I could do that part on my own with hubby making all the cuts! We just need to let him do this! :o) So, I'm glad to hear I can just put 'Henry' over the Ardex without priming--I had guessed that might be the case but I also thought I might have to prime the Ardex that's down, in order to put more Ardex on top, so that would add to the delay considerably, as well, and then if the floor indeed is not completely cured, I might not should put the primer on it, just yet--which again....etc.!! So, trying to use some logic--I guess it's good ole' Henry! :o) I so appreciate the support you guys have given me, again, and I heartily thank you, again!!!! :o) We need to save as much money as we can on this project, given the 60%+ loss everyone invested have lost, and had counted on to make retirement more 'doable' and without your help we might have had to forget the flooring we have, sell it to our daughter and SIL and gotten carpet, which would still have been more expensive than the deal we got on this stuff!!! Sigh--if we were just starting out with this project, and didn't have the flooring from last summer, we would not have undertaken doing it at all, at this time!!!

mc58 Looks like asolo has already got ya helped, but figured I'd chime in again since I already did some testing here at home for ya. I picked up some Tide HE liquid yesturday and have just done a wash in my Affinity using half the minimum dose suggested. (I figured my Affinity would be a decent machine to do a comparison as it has many similiar specs to yours even though it is made by Frigidaire and not Whirlpool.) I am now on my second wash/rinse trying to get the suds out and I have hard water with no softener. From the looks of what I am currently seeing, I will have to do another wash/rinse still. Now my suds aren't high and fluffy like the ones in your picture, mine are on the flat, runny side, but I am attributing that to the fact your water is soft and mine is not. Now my water is not the hardest water. Local water supply is 8 grains, so my water is just hard (between moderately hard and very hard) on the scale I looked at. I also know Tide recommends the use of their liquid detergents in hard water. Something tells me they have made it to be used in the hardest water found, which would explain the suds problem. Adding to the fact it is 2x concentrated now, makes it very difficult to cut the amount down enough to prevent oversudsing without diluting it into another bottle first. After my own test it looks like it is probably the detergent, but asolo already has ya covered in that regard as he has the same machine as you and soft water as well. Anyway, I hope this helps you for what it's worth and it looks like I may either be returning the Tide HE liquid, or diluting it in another bottle and using it for pre-treatments only. I never paid attention before, but I'm thinking maybe I should double check my Cheer HE liquid now too since they are both made by P&G.

MaryLu, I completely agree with your feelings about switching to the pellet stove vs continuing to burn the parlor stove. Here's why: I have both a Harman pellet stove (Accentra) and a Vermont Castings (Defiant Encore) wood stove. They are the ONLY sources of heat in our 160 yo, minimally uninsulated, farmhouse in northern NY. First: the pellet stove is much less work to fire and run. And it requires only a fraction of the cleaning necessary to keep your exhaust stack/chimney safe. Also produces almost insignificant amount of ashes over a whole winter. We burn 4 1/2 tons of pellets per year, and would hardly fill two large sheet rock mud buckets with ashes for the entire burning season. My woodstove produces enough ashes over the winter to fill a garbage can! Second: Although I am a very experienced wood burner with more than three decades of burning under my belt I worry a whole lot less about the pellet burner than I do the woodstove. Both stoves are correctly, and very safely installed (my DH and I are both former Vol. firefighters, so we are fire safety nuts). And even with a highly attended-to woodstove I have a low level of anxiety about it all the time. I never fuss about the pellet burner, though. Third: Fueling the pellet burner is a snap compared to a woodstove. My DH has back problems so I haul all the fuel (wood and pellet) into the house (4-5 tons of pellets, and 4 to 5 full cords of wood, every year) so I am very familiar with the physical effort required and the pellet burner wins, easily. Four: Your Harman stove will burn all day, or all night, with no need to add more fuel. You could go away for a very long Thanksgiving day visit and come back and find it's still putting out the same heat as when you left. The woodstove will have burnt down and need to be refired. Now, the only downside to a pellet burner vs a woodstove is that the pellet burner requires constant electricity to run. Ours is hooked up to a heavy duty uninterruptible power source (like for a large computer) so it will continue to operate for a short time in a power outage. Some people have big battery packs for extended use. And because it uses electricity, unlike a woodstove which heats by radiating, the pellet burner is effectively a "forced air" system so you have the downside of a continuous (or intermittent, depends on how you control it) stream of hot air, and the noise (though low) of the circulation fan and feed auger. Compared to the nearly silent operation of a woodstove, I find the pellet burner mildly more obtrusive. There is also the a small amount of fugitive dust from the pellets which is blown around by the circulation. The other thing about a pellet stove is that it is very convenient for the early and late season burning period when you need just a small amount, or a few hours of heat. We have been firing the pellet burner intermittently for about three weeks, but not kindled the woodstove, yet. The pellet burner is quick to heat, and simpler for small fires just to take the chill off. And one other note: the pellet burner has a much lower surface temperature compared to a woodstove, so I find it particularly comforting when I am chilled as I can safely snuggle right up to it, putting my hands on the top surface, for instance. It's kind of a rapid re-warmer, at least for me. And finally, although many people here seem to like the looks of the old parlor stove (I do, too), I find them messier and more problematic to burn than modern woodstoves or pellet stoves. If you, like I, get a substantial portion of your heat from the stove, it needs to be less of a decorative object and more a functional one because you have to fire it so often, with all the attendant smoke and mess that the old stoves create. Fortunately the Harman stove is also a handsome, though less late 19th century, style than the parlor stove. I think you will be happy (ier?) with the pellet stove. We have had the Accentra for two winters (starting on our third) and are much impressed by Harman's quality and unique technology. Ours, BTW, is installed with direct (from the outside) feed for the combustion air path so we are not pulling our heated air out of the building. I vote for the pellet burner! HTH, Molly