New fireplace or wood stove

[jeffH]

This is a repeat of a posting I just placed on Gardenweb:

Hello. We want to install a wood stove or fireplace in our home. We do not have one now, and so would need to do some extensive remodeling to make room for one. What we essentially want to do is put the fireplace/stove in a bumped-out recess on an outside wall (which we'll have to create because the wall is flat now).

We want the stove for supplemental heat and for ambience (=visible flames). We want it to operate without electricity, using wood that we cut up (not using propane or other fuel).

I think that a fireplace would be an easier installation, in terms of wall clearance, but from what I can tell they're not very good at heating, at least without fans running.

So I would like opinions on three things:
-First, do you think that a fireplace can provide heat like a woodstove does?
-Secondly, what are some general clearances we need to have around a wood stove? We would be getting a smallish stove (under 40000BTU), and will be lining the wall and floor with at least cement board and ceramic tile (over wood framing).
-Thirdly, if you know of wood stove models that require less clearance on the sides and the back than other stoves require, or of ways to be able to decrease the space to the walls, please let me know.

Thanks for any guidance you can give.

 

[jqgs214]

Well, a stove is going to produce more heat. Others will chime in as to which have the lowest clearences but they will need more info to steer you in the right direction. IE room layout how much area your tring to heat, is it going to be a primary heat source. The more details you can give the better, these guys know their stuff and wont steer you wrong.

 

[begreen]

Welcome Jeff. There are several low clearance stoves on the market, but like wxman said, we need to know more info on the size of the room, open or closed floorplan, total size of the house and how well insulated. Some stove companies that make certain models with close clearances are Jotul, Pacific Energy, Napoleon, Englander. Clearances can also be reduced by using double wall pipe and having a non-combustible wall with an air space on the back and sides of the alcove.

You'll definitely get more heat in the room with a stove, especially if you don't want a blower running. It will be good for the stove to project into the room to a certain degree if you are trying to get the most efficient system.

 

[jtp10181]

(broken link removed to http://www.quadrafire.com/products/fireplaces/woodFireplaceDetail.asp?f=7100fp)

That is basically the design of a stove, but its a built in fireplace. Since you are putting it in a bumped out wall I think that might finish off nicer. It will throw out a lot of heat even with the blower off. If you want to do a stove, why not just put it in the room, then you dont have to build an addition on the house for it. Small room?

 

[titan]

I believe a good insert could come close to matching the heat output of a stove,but only while that blower is running....should you lose power,well forget it.As for close clearences, a double-walled convection stove is likely your best bet.Check out the Regency-Classic Hearth Heater for a stove that's designed to fit in a fireplace.

 

[wg_bent]

I believe a good insert could come close to matching the heat output of a stove,but only while that blower is running....should you lose power,well forget it.As for close clearences, a double-walled convection stove is likely your best bet.Check out the Regency-Classic Hearth Heater for a stove that's designed to fit in a fireplace.

For what you want this suggestion is totally out. You can not install an insert in your situation since there is nothing to insert it into. Inserts must have an original fireplace.

You can build an alcove and install a stove, but as stated you must abide by proper clearances. Look into some of the convection stoves such as a PE Summit or Osburn 2400. They're a bit boxy or my tastes, so I'll have to second the Quadrafire recommendation. Another company to look at is Fireplace extrordinair.

How big are you willing to build the alcove?

Look at this stove:

Morso

Also the other Morso stoves in that basic range.

Also:
(broken link removed to http://www.lopistoves.com/productuide/detail.aspx?id=209)

Any stoves you look at, be sure to look into clearance reducing heat shields.

PE makes a nice bunch of stoves available in different colors that may so very well due to the fact that they are convection stoves.
Same with Osburns

 

[colsmith]

Why do you want to build a lump onto your house to put the woodstove in? That part doesn't make sense to me. Sounds expensive/complicated. Just put the woodstove into some central location in your home. If you are thinking you want the chimney outside the wall or something, that is not recommended. It is better for the chimney to run up through the house. Fireplaces are notorious heat wasters, not heat generators. I suppose some designs aren't as bad as others, but I would definitely recommend you go with a wood stove with a nice viewing window. We stare at our fire for hours in our woodstove, you don't need a fireplace for good viewing.

We have a Hearthstone Phoenix, a soapstone stove, no blower or anything electric, it heats our approx. 2000 sq. foot home pretty well except when it is less than 20 degrees F for extended periods of time. Then we supplement with our furnace. We have a 2 story home with a fairly traditional layout, we chose our stove location well and that helped a lot. We have our woodstove on a raised hearth, just over 2 feet tall, that gets it out of toddler reach if that is something you are concerned about, and allows for using the space underneat for wood storage.

 

[Gooserider]

As mentioned, an insert is not an option since you don't have an existing fireplace. However you MIGHT be able to find an EPA grade pre-fab fireplace that would work and meet your other criteria.

One other thing to be aware of is that putting a stove in a bumped out alcove like you describe is not optimal for heating, especially without a blower. You should plan on heavy insulation in the alcove walls and ceiling to try to keep as much of the heat inside the house as possible. I'm guessing you are also thinking in terms of running the chimney up the exterior of the house as well? This can be done, but you will need to pay close attention to the design, and be aware that an outside chimney will probably give you less draft and require more frequent cleaning than an interior one. Putting the chimney inside a chase might help.

It would likely be far better from a heating / efficiency standpoint if you could figure out a way to put the stove someplace inside the house interior, and run the chimney up through the interior of the house - you can still bump the wall out, just use it for added living space instead...

Gooserider

 

[R&D Guy]

Jeff some Q's for you - How big is your home? What part of the country do you live in, and how cold does it get there in the winter?

Personally if I was going to put something in my home it would be a freestanding stove. I like the Alcove idea because it saves space, and I live in a 2 story home, and wouldn't want to 90° or 45° the pipe through the wall. I did that at my last house which was 1 story (vented into an masonry chimney) and I often got some smoke in the house while loading if I opened the door too quickly. That likely had more to do with a the chimney, and over-all system height, but if you have any 90's or 45's then you'll more than likely have to take the pipe apart every year to clean it.

I'm willing to bet that most EPA certified freestanding wood stoves have around the same clearances, at least not to where you'll see a big cost savings in materials for your dog-house. You will find that double or triple walled pipe will allow you much closer clearances. Most Mfg's allow you to download install manuals for their appliances so take advantage of it.

There are so many wood stoves to choose from I'd find a few you like aesthetically, and then narrow it down to price and clearances.

 

[jeffH]

Thanks so far for all your comments. The more I look into this, the more complicated it gets.

When I get home later today I'll write up more background information.

I think that the problem is we're trying to accomplish too many things with our woodstove (asthetics, practicality, where in the house it's located for best flame-viewing/heating.

We live in Vermont. It gets COLD here in the winter.

Thanks. I'll be back on line soon.

 

[jeffH]

More information:

We want a wood burning stove for several reasons:
1. Aesthetics
2. Supplemental heat for our living room and adjacent kitchen
3. Heat source that does not require anything but wood (no oil, gas or electricity).

The place where we are talking about putting the alcove is in the wall right next to the kitchen entrance (look at the attached diagram). Behind this wall is a covered porch that we are about to have remodeled. We were thinking that we could take over some of the porch to hold the alcove for our stove. Because of this, I do not think it is a very big job to do: the roof and floor are already in- we are just moving the back wall backwards by three or four feet.

Our kitchen was remodeled and enlarged last year, and now it is quite cold in the winter. We thought that if we located the stove where we are talking about putting it, we could put a vent in the right wall of the alcove, feeding directly into the kitchen (using a fan to blow warm air in).

We cannott think of any other place in the house where we could put a wood stove. It would be possible to put it right into the kitchen, but then we would have to hang out in the kitchen to watch the flames. The living room is much better suited for that. Upstairs is already too warm in the winter, and so a stove isn't a good idea up there.

In addition to the stove, we wanted to put in some kind of door into the back of the alcove, so we could feed wood in that is sitting in our porch during the winter.

I have looked at the published stove-wall clearances, and it seems like we really would need an alcove of at least 3 or 4 feet deep, by 6 or 7 feet wide, just to meet those requirements. That doesn’t leave much room in the left side of the alcove for stacking wood.

We are looking at stoves in the 30-40 kBTU range: Jotul, Dutch West, VT Castings, Hearthstone, Morso. They pretty much all have the same clearances, give or take.

I spoke to people at two fireplace stores today, and I got some rough numbers to have the stove bought and installed in an alcove that we will build. The stoves are in the $1500 range, the stove pipe (20 feet high) is around $1200, and installation is $500 or more. So we are looking at around $5000 to install a wood stove in our house, including the carpentry work to make the space for it. That seems like a lot of money to me, and I'm starting to rethink the whole project.

Do people have a different opinion or take on what we are trying to do? I feel like I am in a hurry to make a decision. Our contractor is coming back in a couple of days to work on our house and our porch, and it occurs to me that we should know how a wood stove would fit into one part of that space.

I have attached a diagram of our house floor plan, to see if anyone has any other ideas. The living room is 13x15 feet, the Kitchen is about 18x19 feet; (with a 16 foot; high cathedral ceiling).

Thanks so far for your help, and thanks in advance for any other words of wisdom you have for me.

 

[Gooserider]

Well looking at your layout, I tend to agree with your placement idea, despite my earlier comments about the idea of alcoves and outside chimneys in general, it looks like your best choice. I would probably not try to put a door to the outside in the alcove, however I would open up the wall between the kitchen and the alcove as much as possible, not just put in a vent (BTW, I'm not sure if a vent would be OK code wise...) I would then use the existing door into the kitchen to bring wood in from the porch and just haul it around the corner. Opening up one side of the alcove might also help with some of the clearance issues, as would making the alcove ceiling as high as possible.

I would bring the chimney out the roof of the alcove into a chase, preferably insulated, that would bring the top of the chimney up above the peak of the roof (per the 10-3-2 rule) You might need a couple of bends to get the chimney pipe where it needs to be, keep them gentle, 45* max is best...

In terms of the carpentry, I'd agree that bumping the walls out may not be a big problem, however you will need to look very closely at how you handle the insulation of both the existing ceiling and floor parts, and also how you will turn the existing porch floor into a sufficiently non-combustible hearth to meet the installation requirements....

Further examination of the stove options may also find stoves with lower clearance requirements, especially look for "convection" style stoves as opposed to "radiant" style. Convection stoves use multiple walls and an air jacket to circulate hot air (some with a blower) rather than simply radiating heat. I know you said earlier that you'd like to avoid blowers, but the big advantage of a convection stove is that they can sometimes offer GREATLY reduced clearances.

BTW, There has been some discussion and debate about clearances and stored wood. Code is quite clear about how far stored firewood should be from the stove, but there are some folks who argue that the number is unrealistically high - it appears the assumption is that the stored firewood is going to be left sitting for extended periods while the stove is burning, allowing some of the carbonization reactions that make wall clearances an issue to take place, lowering the ignition temperature into the danger zone... Some here (including myself) feel that as long as you are always "rotating the stock" so that nothing sits next to the stove for more than a day or so, it is possible to "crowd" the clearances a bit. I certainly would only consider this on temporarily stored things like the wood stack (in a non-combustible rack) and never advocate crowding a clearance on a permanent fixture like a wall, etc.

Another thing that some folks have done is to build various types of cabinets w/ heat shielding next to the stove to store firewood in, others have built very tall raised hearths with wood storage areas under them... Both might be doable in your application.

Gooserider

 

[begreen]

This is a somewhat sprawling layout, one I might consider two stoves for. If the stove is just to heat the kitchen area, then a local heater on the porch, without alcove should work. If an alcove to the living room, the way it is diagrammed with a vent to the kitchen, there will still need to be an active circulation device (aka electric fan) to share heat into the kitchen (assuming the alcove opens into the living room).

I am assuming that you are converting the open porch to an insulated and totally enclosed porch. Is this correct? If yes, perhaps consider not putting in an alcove but instead just a generous opening in the living room that connects to the kitchen via the porch. That will allow better heat circulation for a freestanding stove in the porch area and will let in light to the living room and will be less expensive to build.

 

[R&D Guy]

Well we asked for more info and you provided. The location looks great to me, and like Gooserider I think an alcove would be a nice way to add a freestanding stove without impacting the room.

It looks to me like you have a large enough opening between the LR and Kitchen that you won't need to add duct work to transfer the heat between the 2 rooms. IMO natural convection will do the job. Ideally your stair case would drop into your LR, but it's just in the next room with is still nice.

The only other thing I'd consider is that you'll be hauling wood from outside through the kitchen and into the LR. The wife will especially note any mud, saw dust, and over-all debris trailed into the house.

Either way it looks like a great central location.

 

[GVA]

What if you put a freestanding stove on the right side of the livingroom out of the way of the kitchen door, and have the pipe go out and up.
Just a suggestion..
Well one thing to keep in mind too, If I read the post right and the diagram you have a 16' ceiling in the kitchen and a big window seat... The heat you try to (or have going in there now) is only going to go one direction.........up.
This might be a weird question but do you have ceiling fans in the kitchen?