Woodstock Soapstone Blog

Our Geared 2U Design Team along with all the many imaginative Ideal Steel Hybrid owners are creating stoves that are far more than just steel boxes of heat. We are “fired-up” with excitement at Woodstock Soapstone these days because things are really starting to roll with our new custom stove design..

Check out the EPA’s new 2015 woodstove regulations and see how Woodstock Soapstone Co. “measures-up”.  It’s great news!New 2015 Changes in EPA Standards for WoodstovesOn February 3, 2015 the US EPA issued new regulations covering the emissions standards for wood burning stoves. In brief, the new rul..

We are finally building beta stoves for our next (as yet un-named) steel hybrid. This will be our third hybrid:  first the Progress, then the Ideal Steel, and now a high performance woodstove with record-low emissions.  The combustion system in this version has some significant innovations to lower ..

Below is a sampling of the stoves that were completed and shipped from our factory today. The State of Maine and Log Cabin Side Design were custom requests from our customers. To see the designs in our online design book, click here. (More designs are added every week!) ..

The Ideal Steel Hybrid has the highest efficiency of over 700 stoves tested to EPA standards, and a low 1.0 gm/hr emissions.  But the news just gets better.  When you burn cordwood in the Ideal Steel Hybrid, the efficiency is just as high, but the emissions are even lower. All non-catalytic sto..

We are busy making and shipping Ideal Steel Hybrids every day!  In fact, we've been so busy that we haven't had a chance to post all of the new designs we've been working on in collaboration with our customers. As we can, we will post the new design sets within our GEARED 2U Design Book.  Below..

We’ve been spending a lot of time the last few weeks testing our Franklin inspired steel hybrid in the lab. We hope to begin beta-testing this next new model in the early fall.  So far the results are good. The Ideal Steel, which goes into production in June, had the lowest high burn emissions on re..

The proposed new EPA regulations have prompted some attacks on catalytic stoves and hybrid wood stoves.  And even more eye opening, there have been some unfounded and unjustifiable comments about the owners of these stoves. Woodstock Soapstone Company values its owners.  For 36 years we have ..

Greetings Folks,  My wife and I bought a Progress Hybrid from Woodstock last fall and as we close in on the end of our first full season using this stove, I wanted to contact you with some feedback. First, I cannot express in words how impressed we are with this stove.  ..

The IDEAL STEEL Hybrid is 30% more efficient than the average noncatalytic stove.** This means that 30% more heat stays in your house, rather than going up the stack.  Another way of looking at it is that with an IDEAL STEEL Hybrid (82% Efficiency) 18% of the heat produced goes up the stack, bu..

4/7/14 "Loaded the stove 75% full as we were headed out the door for the hospital.  Sydney was born that morning.  We came home 3 days later and still had enough coals in the IS to start a fire, easily.  56 hours later!!!" Doug K.  Newbury, VT..

Firebox with Franklin front wings and ash lip. Available as box stove or Franklin. Left or right door. When designing a new stove, we typically start out with just a box (i.e. the “firebox”), and see if we are in the ballpark with emissions and efficiency.  This time we decided to cut the skir..

 Our petition in support of cleaner stoves and cleaner air has reached 500 signatures in just five days.  Please click here to sign if you haven’t already signed. The most frequent comments that we have received by far have been “I want to do my part to help keep the air we breathe clean.“  ..

The comments just keep coming... they are mostly from our owners.  WHAT A GREAT GROUP OF OWNERS!  Comments are running about 80 to one in favor of our petition, and we will answer some of the negative comments/objections (there aren’t many!) on Monday.  In the meantime, thanks to everyone who has..

Lots of people have commented on why our petition in support of cleaner stoves and air is important to them.  It's only been two days and we're getting a lot of great comments, below is a sampling of just a few. Please join us by signing our petition today! Why is the petition to Gina McCarthy i..

To sign our petition supporting cleaner wood stoves and cleaner air, click here. We have listened to both sides (state air regulators and the woodstove industry) in the debate over the new EPA regulations. We have concluded that the new regulations are (1) the “right thing to do” because the pub..

Here are a few other improvements we have made recently to the Ideal Steel Hybrid: We cut a damper adjustment scale in the ash lip.  Lots of people operate their stoves in a narrow range for long periods of time, and this makes it easier to remember your best operating settings. The andirons have..

Basic version The next Gearhead Hybrid Stove is under construction right now (prototype only).  We are building a slightly smaller firebox (about 2.6 cubic feet), and version 3.0 of our hybrid combustion design. The Ideal Steel Hybrid (going into production soon) had the lowest high burn ..

We’ve made a number of improvements to the IDEAL STEEL Hybrid over the winter, and many were based on comments/suggestions from our beta testers.  We’ll try to cover some of the changes on this blog over the next few weeks. We eliminated hinges from the top.  The top lid stands up in a slot, and..

We’ve added a port for a catalytic temperature probe just above the center of the loading door.  The probes are simple bimetallic coils attached to a stainless rod.  We have been testing the bimetallic probe against a thermocouple:  it’s certainly “in the ballpark” and gives a good idea of catal..