Ventless LP Needle in a Hay Stack

Granny needs, wants anyway, a new heater. This will be her first Winter without a continuous fire burning in the wood stove. She has a large forced air LP heater in the main part of the house that has supplemented the wood stove for years but is capable of taking over the wood stoves duties, the chore of hauling wood vs. cost of gas finally tipped to the gas stoves favor. She's 84 she doesn't need to be hauling in wood anyway.

Additionally in the back utility/bathroom she has a wall mounted ventless IR/radiant LP stove. This stove is about 25 years old, and still in working order, but since she's going full on gas this Winter she is compelled to replace and hopefully upgrade to a newer more efficient unit.

The catch is she wants a manual stove, NOT thermostatically controlled. A 5 element, low, medium, high, 30K-ish BTU stove is what she has and what she wants as a replacement. Due to the confines of where the stove will be mounted a thermostat will cause the stove to shut off before it can heat the hallway and utility room.

We went shopping today; Lowe's, Home Depot, Ace, McCoy's, Tractor Supply, Wal Mart, the local gas company (they were closed) and 2 different local places. No luck, all places that had stoves were equipped with thermostats. We thought we were on to something at Tractor Supply until I got home and did some research, thermostat.

I've since checked Northern Tool, Grainger, and Amazon online. I still want to talk to the gas company when they're open, and there's a larger local Farm & Home store we didn't get to today.

So far this is as close to what she wants that I can come up with. Kozy World KWP322 25,000-BTU

If anyone has any suggestions of where else to look, brick & mortar, or online I'm all ears. The thought of removing the thermostat from a stove crossed my mind but she wasn't too keen when I mentioned it too her, I don't even know if that's a reasonable idea or not.

Anyway, I need some help finding Granny a new stove. Thanks!

• Lee

Northern Tool used to carry one. I used one for years when all we had was a wood stove.

Looking at the web site it looks like they have all gone to thermostat control.

I will bet the thermo was required by a lawsuit.
and/or
I bet the "newer and more efficient" version gains a lot of the efficiency rating from the thermo that shuts it off.

I don't have much experience with heaters here in Florida, but cant you bypass the thermostat? On some AC units you can chose ON, OFF or AUTO.

In reply to JohnRW1621:

Well from what I've seen the ones with a thermostat fire up all of the heating elements when they drop below the set temperature. I don't know if that's really that much more efficient or not.

If removing, disabling, or switching off the thermostat is an option I'd entertain it, but I haven't seen any models actively advertising it as an optional feature.

• Lee

In reply to Slippery:

I was trying to find a picture, with no success, but all of the ones we looked at today had the same simple knob, settings were; off, pilot, 1-5. No options for auto.

• Lee

Spent some time on the phone this afternoon after striking out a another store.

Talked to 3 of the different gas companies in the area, only 1 of which had close to what we're looking for, but the highest they had was 25K BTU, acceptable, but I decided to do some more looking.

There's a stove store South of LR that says they have 2 30K BTU units in stock, hopefully we'll get one Tuesday.

I guess no one wants a stove without a thermostat? Leave it to us to be "those" people.

Wish us luck.

• Lee

Success!!!

Had to drive to a specialty store South of Little Rock to get what we wanted. Paid a little more than we were planning, and had to go out of our way to get it, but Granny is happy, and that's all that matters.

First light, kind of smelly first time those elements warm up.

Yes it's manual, "set it and forget it."

So they do exist, just not that common anymore. This is a 5 element, 30K BTU, LP, Ventless, Kozy World. Of course I forgot to write the model number now, but Granny saved all of the info, I'll try to remember and ninja edit this for any future Googlers.

• Lee

I dont understand why she didnt want any type of thermostat. Just turn the tstat higher to keep it on longer.

We heat our cabin with one, and we need to keep a sky light cracked up stairs to keep the O2 sensor from kicking it off. Make sure she has a window cracked or that she lives in a drafty house.