A Rumford is just a fireplace that roughly adheres to the proportions recommended by Count Rumford who was interested in the radiant heating qualities of a tall shallow firebox rather than the appearance. They are usually as tall as wide and sometimes they are so shallow that wood must be stacked vertically against the back wall instead of horizontally. I have seen examples where the shallowness caused excessive smoking and wood embers to roll onto the hearth. A 48" firebox opening with a height taller than 36" should not cause smoking; smoke is controlled with a properly formed smoke shelf and the correct dimension from the damper throat to the face of the firebox. It's an esoteric an art. Here is a link that might be useful: rumford fireplace info

We have the Jotul F400 and love it. I did not look at the soapstones because we wanted a traditional cast iron stove with an old-fashioned look - and picked Jotul because was the best looking one IMO. I prefer the radiant heating over the convection, mainly because I like being able to stand right next to the thing and thaw after being outside in the freezing cold. I also like that the Jotul doesn't have a catalytic converter - it burns well and is easy to use and maintain. Our house is 3000 sq ft, and when we get it cooking, the F400 heats the entire house -- we have a very open floorplan that allows the heat to travel (we had planned to use it to heat only the family room and kitchen, which is why we went with such a small stove - we weren't aware of how dramatically the heat would travel around the house), plus our winters aren't usually super-cold (we're in PA - usually in the 20s-30s during the day and teens at night). Today is colder than normal and very windy and I'm a little chillier than I prefer, but still no need to turn the furnace on. I will say that we tend to burn the stove pretty wide-open and maybe that's why we can heat so much more space than Jotul says the F400 is good for. Unlike the older cast iron stove I had in college, it seems impossible to overheat this stove, even when you stuff it to the gills and leave the damper wide open. And I guess because our house plan is so open, it seems that we really have to burn hot to feel warm in the room where the stove is - the heat dissipates through the house so quickly. So we burn usually at about 550 degrees (Jotul recommends 400-600) - we get great heating but we do blow through the wood - if I'm home, I'm usually reloading it every 2-3 hours to keep the house toasty. I would think that for your house, you could probably damp it back like it should be and get much longer burn times. We load it up for the last time at night around 11:30 and damp it way back and at 7am, there are still enough coals to relight quickly, although the house has gotten pretty cold by then. Depending on how whiney the kids are, I'll turn the furnace on to take the chill off in the morning but the stove has pretty much taken over by 8:30 or so and the furnace doesn't run for the rest of the day. We have it installed inside our masonry fireplace (it's freestanding but inside the firebox) and since the masonry heats up, we get a bit of the soapstone's extended heating in that the masonry continues to radiate heat after the stove has cooled down. Good luck!

Juniork--OP said 1000cfm, not 100. I'm trying to find the right hood for a Capital Culinarian 36" rangetop. I have thought about a VAH, but have second thoughts with many bad reports of their noisiness and difficulty of cleaning. Some of the noise issues may be because of ducting issues, but I'm not sure I want to take that chance. Kobe has a solid reputation over on the Appliance Forum. Have you done any research over there? Warning, you may become even more confused if you read too much about venting like noise, internal blowers, online blowers, make-up air, etc. Speaking of make-up air, have you checked your local codes to see if you'll need it? My local code requires it for any hood with 400 cfms or more. I would recommend the Kobe for the baffle filter, quietness, and higher cfms. With higher cfms, you won't have to turn the hood on as high to get the venting you need most of the time. Lower speed equals less noise.

As an electrician for more than 25 years, hanging thousands of chandeliers, I can tell you that those formulas rarely work. Like most formulas made up by the design industry, they only work for a limited range of room and table sizes... based on what someone decided was the perfect size of table in the perfect size room in a McMansion... where you have a high ceiling and 5' between the table and wall. I can literally walk around any house and make up formulas about anything that appears to be just right for that house. ...A door height should be 84% of the height of a wall... There should be 14 steps between floors. (13 steps used to be such a universal rule of thumb that it became an unlucky number - think about the number of steps up to a 1 story gallows.) BUT, neither of those formulas would hold true for a house with 10' ceings. In other words, they are not true mathematic formulas in the scientific sense. They are just quite literally coincidences of what people found for a particularly large dining room. One thing I find through years of experience is that the chandelier should not be so close to the edge of the table or so low that someone feels like they may hit their head on it when leaning in while standing up to move the chair. A larger chandelier usually ends up higher, and that means higher ceilings. A smaller one can be lower. (The decorator's rule of thumb is 30" above the table, but I have raised nearly every one that I have installed that low to suit the taste of the homeowner - a few skinny pendants) I have found that most people prefer the chandelier low enough to catch their eye, but not low enough to obstruct their vision horizontally. (An orb, being fairly "airy" can often go a little lower than a chandelier with lots of Bling) With round tables, this usually means that most people feel comfortable with the chandelier about 11" from the edge of the table. With long tables, it is common for people to feel the need to fill up the space more, so the fixture tends to crowd the narrow sides of the table more.