Produces a large amount of heat

This unit can hold a large amount of wood and even at 80% is very efficient with the burn leaving very little ash. You can load across if pieces are over 16" and perpendicular to door if 16". Five large 16" pieces of season hardwood will give you a 8 hour burn time. Five pieces of 16" softwood will last around 3 hours. Since a damper cannot be installed in the chimney due to the secondary burn venting at the top of the stove there is no way to slow the burn further with the air flow completely closed down. The standard blower kit is very noisy until the unit has reached a certain heat level then it seems to settle down. I do find the unit pops a bit as it expands when bringing the fire up.