A good friend of mine is picking up his GT 500 off of Dave this weekend.Dave said it put out 500,000 btu during testing.I hope it works as good as it looks.
Oh they for sure work..
500k BTU is possible. When they are testing the stoves they know how many btu's they are putting into the stoves and get a good accurate measure then of what comes out. I think during the GT220 test it went well over 300K btu and peaked its efficiency at 91% and averaged around 85%.
Whenever you see a GT Series at a demo or show it always running under full load roaring out the heat. No question they are a quality unit.
On as second note. My NCB 175 has been running almost a week now. As far as the smoke goes, you RARELY ever see any. It's crazy. I have good seasoned wood which I feel is one of the main reasons I have no smoke but if the stove is sitting idling I'll have customers saying, "hey, i thought you had your stove running" there amazed when I show them it actually is. WHen the fan kicksin you can see the smoke whisping out but even then it is very little smoke.
I am burning seasoned oak, maple, beech, walnut, some pine, you name it.