Was going to buy the 420 but opted for the 520 for the bigger firebox. Mistake on my part. Our house is too small at 1500 sqft for this stove. Looking to buy the 420 and sell this one. Boy moving it in was a real task. This stove is built really well and weighs a ton. I doubled up the floor joyces underneath just to be safe. Used my tractor fork lifts to get it to the back porch door and then two floor jacks with blocks to move it. This thing rocks and if you have a big airy old farmhouse to heat, this one is for you. We choose to get the porcelain and the polished steel tops as an option. The black porcelain for non heating season for looks and the steel for cooking on during the cold months. Great quality and this thing puts mucho heat out. Creosote was minimal in the the Class 1 chimney but heavier in the single wall black pipe getting to it. Probably cause we damped it down too much because it was oversized for our house. Overall I would say it is the Cadillac of cookstoves after having using them for twenty plus years.

Well we are starting our 4th or 5th year with our Heco 520. I replaced our Kitchen Queen we bought from Woody because I wanted a bigger cooking surface and oven and firebox glass doors. Our smaller kitchen Queen was excellent and the price was excellent.
I lived in rural Europe and became acquainted with a variety of wood and coal cookstoves, Scandanavian, English/Irish and German. They worked well but suffered from efficiency compared to their heatstove brethren. We have heated and cooked with wood in Wyoming for 46 years with both cookstoves and heating stoves. We currently have 2 heating stoves besides our Heco, both made by Pacific Energy. I have very high regard for that Canadian company and our small Spectrum model is without peer IMO. The Heco 520 puts out awesome amounts of BTUs and we have had to quiet it down a bit by installing extra firebrick to shrink the firebox and to keep the firebox side of the stove nearest a combustible surface much cooler. Our stove is surrounded by 800 lbs of rock and bricks which stores the heat very nicely. Not quite a masonry stove but good enough. There are two air supply channels. The primary comes from underneath in the back and has a bimetallic heat control dial to give ample air when starting and gradually closing as the stove gets hot to prevent over firing. This may take some adjustment to get it just right. When burning wood you may not need it open more than a crack after the stove hits its optimum temperature but plan on adjusting it initially. The other lever is a secondary air rod on the left of the firebox which provides air to the secondary SS tubes and the glass air wash. We normally leave it wide open, all the way out unless we are baking and need to cool down the oven. The glass stays amazingly clean if the stove is run hot enough but the door gaskets need to be perfectly tight for this to work well. The secondary air system is adequate but Our Pacific Energy stove is much better with an amazing swirl of flame and gasses but the Heco does pretty good. Our stove came designed for a 7" flue but that is an oddball size and we stuck with our existing 6" and put a reducer at the back of the stove after conferring with Woody and the crew. This would reduce the heat output a bit which we wanted to do anyway. It doesn't seem to smoke when opening the door. Remember our firebox is smaller so 6" is fine. Our only repairs to the stove have been the ceramic fireboard under the top which burned out. It was not covered under warranty and cost over $150 but was easy to pop in. I'll list the pros and cons now. Pros: It is a very Handsome stove in an Amish Buggy sort of way. The glass firebox is a joy as is our glass oven door. An interior light would have been nice and I may install one. The stove burns exceedingly clean. We inspect our flue annually and have never had to clean the flue after the first year. The chimney cap gets plugged however and needs annual cleaning. We had to lengthen our flue 4' to get better draft. . With these modern EPA stoves if you burn them hot the flues stay clean and I think chimney fires are a thing of the past if they are operated properly. The stove is easy to clean inside and out. We Easy Off the top porcelain occasionally. The back splash is nice and big and high and really contains grease splatters well. The 5/16" allen head machine screws attaching it to the top are difficult to access with insufficient clearances and I replaced them with hex head flanged SS machine screws. The oven cooks exceedingly well and we have added a variety of flat stone and tiles to moderate the expected hot spots adjacent to the smoke path and we easily bake 3 or 4 loaves at a time with excellent results especially if you rotate them once. I oven thermometer works very well and matches the other thermometers hanging from the shelves. It is easy to adjust the oven to get a useful 350-400 temperature and we can get it to 500 for Pizzas by adjusting the airflow. We preheat our domestic hot water with an array of copper pipes in the back near the flue. The water circulates by convection and we also have a pump which we use occasionally. The door and firebox gasket system is excellent unlike the poor design of one of our Pacific Enery stoves. Cons: The plane Jane Heco is not as pretty as some of the other cookstoves and this beast is HEAVY, 900 lbs plus and we had to install it with our large wheeled engine hoist.Pay attention to flue length. We have a lot of exterior exposed flue which gets very cold making it hard to start on subzero mornings so we sometimes have to preheat the interior flue with a heat gun. This wonderful stove will likely be a treasured heirloom. Finally, Woody and his family do a fine competent job and are a pleasure to deal with. Look no further.

I recently made a brief review of the Heco 520 and shortly after realized a more detailed review might be more useful. Simply put, the Heco stoves are the best designed cookstoves in existence. I have heated our farmhouse and shop for almost 50 years in one of the coldest places in the country, NW Wyoming. This entire week nighttime lows have been -24 to -31 for example. We have two other stoves and we heat an area of over 4000 ft not including an attached garage but we have two Pacific Energy heating stoves as well which are used on cold nights. The structure is mostly log which has low R-value. WE have always cooked on wood stoves except in the summers. We have had some wonderful antique woodstoves such as the legendary Copper Clad and several others. We purchased a Kitchen Queen from Woody and Annette which was head and shoulders better than the antiques, We purchased the Heco 520 to get a bigger stove with glass doors and I was intrigued by the design. It has performed almost flawlessly for 4 years. It goes on in the fall and we stop using it in June and it runs oftentimes 24/7. It bakes very well and we bake 4 loaves every week. IT is warmer in the back of the oven and on the side facing the firebox and rotating the bread halfway through is sometimes necessary to get an even crust. The stovetop temperatures with a modest charge of dry wood quickly yield temperatures of 650-700 on the left fading to 350 on the right. The unique feature of thermostatic damper in the back allows good control of oven temperatures. You can adjust it to get Pizza Oven(500-700)to bread baking temperatures. We normally use it as a bakery oven and have it set so we get a pretty steady 350 which is the most useful temperature. Cookies bake perfectly, better than on our big propane stove, never burned on top or on the bottom. The construction and fit an finish are Mercedes quality. Door design with gaskets are fabulous and we have never replaced them. Cleanout is a breeze with most done from the front, unlike the Kitchen Queen. And others which are done from the sides or rear. Setback distances must be respected as this beast can put out a lot of heat. We used a 6” flue with a reducer at the stove because 7” flue pipe is an oddball size. It does reduce the output and you can get a little puff of smoke opening the door sometimes. I actually had to reduce the firebox size by adding additional 2” thick firebrick to the sides and back because it put out TOO MUCH heat. Firebox temperatures seem to have increased and they are often times blue. If you burn it hot the glass door stays clean The glass oven door is a plus but an electric light would be nice. There are a few cons to the Heco 520. It is extremely heavy almost 1000 lbs and we moved it with an engine hoist on wheels. We preheat our electric water heater with an array of ¾” copper pipe behind the stove powered by a small pump and it never gets hot enough to pose an explosion hazard even with the pump off. We had recent failure of a ceramic board over the secondary air tubes where the oven diverter flapper dropped down on the top. Over years it cracked it. I have fixed it by limiting the travel of the flapper with a hose clamp . Ceramic boards have a life but the left board still is perfect. The green enamel top and back require easy off cleaning from time to time especially with frying. The Hecos are not beautiful and resemble an Amish buggy. I would imagine these stoves are heirlooms which might last several lifetimes and with the coming deindustrialization of the world they will be an essential tool to cook and to be warm.

I purchased the Heco 520 from Obadiah's In the fall of 2018. I have absolutely no regrets about purchasing this stove. With all the choices out there, I think we got the best stove for the money.

There are some things about the stove you should know. First and foremost it is an incredible heater. I was a little skeptical about the thermostatic damper control, but, I can tell you first hand that it is an amazing feature. The stove brings in air from the bottom rear. As the stove heats up this damper feature will slowly close. This is really nice if you are leaving the house after stoking your fire. There is nothing to worry about because the stove will not get hotter than what it is set for. That said you can always set the damper full open and burn it wide open (no real need to ever do this though).

I believe there have been design changes to the stove since Woody posted his videos. More specifically, the smoke path on my stove has a larger, more direct path to the chimney pipe (when not using the oven) than the one on Woody's video. This is a good thing. When the oven is engaged it works just as shown on the videos. I believe this change also has the effect of heating the surface of the stove more quickly. I will say that when I received my stove, this design difference confused me, and I wasn't sure if there had been a mistake made. But I can tell you it works and works well.

The stove itself is covered in sheet metal much like a modern oven. Some of the sheet metal is removable (like the side panels). This is what makes the stove much more attractive (my opinion) than other stoves like the Kitchen Queen. Make no mistake though, underneath the sheet metal is thick plate steel. If you buy this stove, you need to have a plan for moving it into its final location because it weighs a ton (well almost half a ton...)

Something else about the video...Woody likes to light his wood with a torch.

If you look closely at the video the smoke just pores out of the firebox when he does this (almost kept me from buying it). I light my stove with kindling stacked on top of those little fire starter bricks (cut in 1/4's) like you can find at Tractor Supply. The firebox is HUGE. With the rear damper open the fire catches like a forge receiving forced air and gets hot quickly. This is by far my favorite feature. To be honest, the stove will smoke some if you open the firebox door before the wood is caught, but what stove doesn't do that?

As far as cooking and baking goes, I am glad I purchased the porcelain top. It fits tight and there is no smoke. I also like the fact that when it comes to cleaning out the top of the stove I will have easy access. I know Heco is making some of these stoves with a solid polished steel surface that even have the round pull outs on the top if you want to use a wok. Again I think this was made possible by the design change. The oven thermometer on the door is useless. There is a 100-150 degree difference in what the thermometer reads and the actual temperature. Keep that in might before you bake that first batch of brownies. That said, I love the oven (slow cooked pot roast...yum).

I haven't had the stove long enough to worry about having to clean it, however, with the clean outs in the front and the removable top, it will be a cinch.

A couple of other things. We bought the glass firebox door. It stays relatively clean. We just keep the top air intake open all the time. The control for this is located on the left top side (if you are looking at the front).

My one criticism of the stove (you know there had to be at least one) is that it is designed with a shaker grate that allows ashes to sift into the ash pan, BUT, you can't use it if you are burning wood because you are required to put a plate in the bottom of the firebox otherwise the stove burns to hot (think voided warranty). So instead of using the shaker handle, you have to rake the ashes through a cut out in the bottom plate, or just shovel them out. Heco provided us an tool to rake the ashes through the slit in the plate, but I can't help wishing I could just shake them down using the shaker handle.

Like I said in the first paragraph, I love this stove and would without a doubt buy it again. I wanted to give a thorough review of it because, from what I could find, there wasn't much written about it from actually buyers.