While reading up on these stoves (never had one) I noticed a product that can be "substituted for sand in the the trough of the sardine or cod." I didn't see that feature. Does the new owner of one of these stoves put sand in the stove?
I'm looking for a stove to heat a well insulated 121 square foot office I'm planning to build in my back yard. Which do you recommend? Would the little cod drive me out? Would the sardine give me enough heat?
How long have you been selling these stoves? Is there a used market?
The stove's manual (online as well) discusses putting sand in the trough before using a COD/SARDINE. If you happen to have come across the castable refractory option on the accessories page first, you might wonder what is what?
Here's the the deal in detail: user supplied sand is placed in the trough to protect the iron directly below the fire. This is the simple approach that allows easy access to inspect the trough if need be. On boats with an INFERIOR chimney system, water could flood the stove and fill the trough. If left to sit, the trough will rust (plain iron stove). If a person were to return to their boat say in the Spring after being away several months to find a waterlogged stove, they'd scoop out the wet sand, dry, refill and be back in business. If on the other hand a cast-in -place firebrick had been used, it would be waterlogged and would take a long time to dry. One would then want to remove the brick to dry but since its bigger than the door opening, it can't be removed. So then you'd be tempted to just run the stove with a wet brick & likely what will happen is that the brick will crack into several pieces. So without going too much deeper into this. Here's what we recommend; use a good quality pipe system on board or on land, cap a boat's deck iron when you will not be using the stove for an extended period, use castable refractory in place of sand only if you cannot get the hang of removing ash without depleting your sand bed. In practice if you scoop out ash through the coverplate holes rather than through the door you will find the process very simple. A scoop made from the bottom of a quart milk container is a handy tool.
I too am building a separate "Navigator Office" close to the workshop @ 8 x 16' and will use a SARDINE. In the shop @ 16 x 20' we use a COD which does a nice job.
We have been making stoves since '97 but I'd not think that the folks who have installed one are putting them up for sale quite yet. Lunenburg Foundry
had made stoves beginning in 1917.
