Wood Stove

[Yankee]

I know there are probably many threads about this already, but I am completely ignorant on the subject. I need someone to explain it to me like I'm an idiot

My sister wants one and doesn't know where to start. Can one be made to fit in a fireplace? What's the best one? Can you cook in them? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks

[Dixie Bee Acres]

What you ate talking about is called a fireplace insert. Readily available at home depot, menards, etc. I have one in my house and use it for our primary heat.
The inserts increase the efficiency of a fireplace, but, at least mine, still isn't good enough.
I am going to try to build a better one this year that will actually stick out into the room by several inches.

[MichaelK!]

Costs vary greatly depending on the installation and the type of stove you actually want. Be prepared to understand that the actual chimney exhaust will cost more than any stove or insert you are likely to buy. And that's with a DIY installation. Go with an insurance-approved contractor, with all the required inspections, and your installation could easily run into the thousands.

Read through these installation instructions first.

http://www.northlineexpress.com/help...-planning.html

You can pick up a good used woodstove on Craigslist cheaply. I got my heating stove like-new for 300$. I got an antique wood cookstove for 500$. In both cases, the chimney's for them cost about 850$ each. Work with your insurance company first before you start buying anything. If they don't like any aspect of this project at all, your insurance gets voided!

[MichaelZ]

Go with the fireplace insert. Make sure your chimney is safe for use. You don't want some old chimney flue with cracks that can allow creosote to build up and then cause a chimney fire - you may possibly need to line it. Do a visual check and then maybe call in a professional or experienced person to inspect and clean. This option might be your most economical. Also, you should not get any hassle from your insurance company since you already have a working fireplace in use.

I don't think you can do any cooking with the fireplace insert. For light cooking and warming, a freestanding fireplace will work. For more heavy duty cooking, you would want a wood cook stove. See https://www.lehmans.com/c-122-wood-b...ookstoves.aspx This would require that you either use your existing fireplace chimney (which I think you could do) or add another chimney. Also, these stoves take up some space.

[mooman]

Give us some details about the set up. How big is the house? How many floors? Budget?

Posts are correct about chimney prep being most of the cost. A used insert will run 2-400$. A stainless steel chimney liner (required now for all new instalations) will run 6-800$ (more if you need to go up 2 stories).

If you can afford it I would get a new EPA stove. Not because of the pollution reduction but becase they are about 20% more efficient (more heat for your hard earned wood)

Most inserts I've seen do not have cook tops as they are designed to fill the firebox and have a low profile outside of it. In an emergency situation I could certainly get a good bed of coals and actually cook INSIDE the firebox.

I heat a 1000sq ft house with an old buck stove insert. Its a ranch so I have a small fan on the floor in the hallway pushing cold air into the living room and thus creating a convection cell that moves hot air along the ceiling into the back of the house. You still end up with about a 5 degree difference between living room and back bedroom.

[Nimrod]

Good advice so far. We have some questions. Where are you? How cold does it get and for how long? Will this be the primary source of heat? Do you want it to heat the house overnight? How big is the area you want to heat?

I have no experience with fireplace inserts so I'll let others tell you about them.

There is a huge variety of wood stoves out there. If you buy new, you will find a few, like the Voltzgang boxwood stove, that are exempt from the EPA regs. but most are EPA certified. The certified stoves met the certification criteria in one of two ways. Some inject heated air into a secondary burn chamber to burn the smoke and gas before it goes up the chimney. Others have a catalytic element that burns the smoke and gas as it is forced through it. Both get more heat out of the wood because they burn the smoke and gas. I don't like the catalytic ones as well because the catalytic element requires replacement every few years. This costs a fair amount and the elements won't be available in a TEOTWAWKI situation. Stoves are constructed with sheet steel or cast iron and some utilize soapstone. The cast iron stoves are cast iron pieces screwed together. Some people report that the caulking material between the pieces crumbles after a while. The sheet steel stoves are welded together. If the sheet steel or cast iron is thick enough, these stoves will hold the heat and radiate it for a while after the fire goes down. Soapstone stoves will hold the heat longer but are pricey. I like a stove with the biggest firebox you can get. The bigger the firebox, the more wood you can load in, the longer the fire will last. Mine is 3.5 cubic feet. The fire lasts all night, even at -40 outside. I can shovel the ashes out of one side while keeping a fire going on the other side. The fire in my stove has not gone out since late September.

Used stoves are generally cheaper. There are airtight ones, like the old Fisher ones, where you can regulate the air intake to control the fire. You can even shut it all the way down and put out the fire. You can't shut the new EPA certified stoves all the way down because if you shut off the air but don't wait for the stove to cool down, you could get a flashback if you open the door. Nanny has to protect you don'tchaknow. You have little control of the ones that are not airtight. My old Ben Franklin stove would burn up a full load of wood all at once if I tried to load it up to burn all night. It would get dangerously hot. The only way to slow it down was to open the front door and throw burning pieces of wood out into the snowdrifts. LOL

I'm sure you will hear from others with different opinions but these are mine.

[Yankee]

Originally Posted by mooman

Give us some details about the set up. How big is the house? How many floors? Budget?

Posts are correct about chimney prep being most of the cost. A used insert will run 2-400$. A stainless steel chimney liner (required now for all new instalations) will run 6-800$ (more if you need to go up 2 stories).

If you can afford it I would get a new EPA stove. Not because of the pollution reduction but becase they are about 20% more efficient (more heat for your hard earned wood)

Most inserts I've seen do not have cook tops as they are designed to fill the firebox and have a low profile outside of it. In an emergency situation I could certainly get a good bed of coals and actually cook INSIDE the firebox.

I heat a 1000sq ft house with an old buck stove insert. Its a ranch so I have a small fan on the floor in the hallway pushing cold air into the living room and thus creating a convection cell that moves hot air along the ceiling into the back of the house. You still end up with about a 5 degree difference between living room and back bedroom.

It's a split level home that around 3000 sq feet.

[haypoint]

There are wood stoves that you can cook on, Pioneer Princess, stoves that insert into a fireplace, stoves that heat water that is pumped to cast iron or aluminum fin baseboard heaters. Wood stoves come in all sizes.
When two people ask nine questions and you answer two, it slows down the help.
If you want the stove far from the fireplace, you'll need a separate chimney. Often a triple wall stove pipe can run vertically from the stove, through the roof.
Quality wood stoves are both very heavy and air tight.

[huisjen]

If you want to put a wood stove in a fireplace, chances are good that you'll have to demolish the flue damper and smoke shelf to get a stove pipe to run up it. This is no great loss as fireplaces suck. Literally.

In my case, I had to spend some quality time with an angle grinder to remove the smoke shelf, then I ran a flexible 6" stainless liner up the 12" square flue. My stove is designed for a 6" pipe, and won't work right with anything more than three times that cross sectional area. A 12" flue is five times the area, so in went the liner, which cost me $550, mail order.

I cut two license plates to fit around it at the top, then mortared it in so there's no air flow around the liner out the top of the chimney. I've seen installations where plenty of air rushes up the chimney around the stovepipe. That's bad.

Here's a video of my stove in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npreiqlo3uU You can see the liner attachment briefly when I pull the surround back for a moment.

A barrel stove, or other primitive type, will give you 50% to 55% efficient burn. The modern high efficiency stoves give more like 65% to 75%, depending on what you burn and how (and whose numbers you believe).

Ignore claims that "this one will burn all night". A pound of wood is a pound of wood, and gives about 6400 BTUs, whether it's oak or balsa. Multiply that by your efficiency and you know about how much heat you get. Your goal is to stay comfortably warm, not to have a fire smolder all night. If the stove doesn't keep you warm while burning at its optimal rate, it's because it's just not big enough for the job. The best thing to do then is make the job smaller by making sure your house is well insulated and properly air sealed. That's another topic, but one you should look into anyway.

As you get the house properly air sealed, it's essential to have proper combustion air for the stove. Some stoves are built so that you can add a combustion air duct, that feeds outdoor fresh air directly to the stove without having it leak into the living space first. That duct can also be closed when the fire isn't lit, making one less air leak into your house.

All firewood dealers lie. Given a choice, buy green wood and insist on a discount because it's green, then put it somewhere under cover with good ventilation for a year or two. Dealers like to tell you it's dry because it was cut down a year ago, but it's been sitting in the rain at log length since then, usually. It's dry enough to burn, but not to give best heat.

Haypoint is right though: You're asking a few questions but you aren't giving much detail on what you want, where you are, and what you have. Tell me this: How warm do you keep your house, what's the nearest airport with weather data, what fuel do you heat with now, and how much of it have you burned in the last 12 months? From that, I can tell roughly how efficient the house is and maybe give better advice. Also, is the current chimney external or does it go up through the attic?

[Wayne02]

Originally Posted by huisjen

If you want to put a wood stove in a fireplace, chances are good that you'll have to demolish the flue damper and smoke shelf to get a stove pipe to run up it. This is no great loss as fireplaces suck. Literally.

In my case, I had to spend some quality time with an angle grinder to remove the smoke shelf, then I ran a flexible 6" stainless liner up the 12" square flue. My stove is designed for a 6" pipe, and won't work right with anything more than three times that cross sectional area. A 12" flue is five times the area, so in went the liner, which cost me $550, mail order.

This is what I had to do as well when I decided to put a liner in for our woodstove insert, which we had been using for the previous 15 years with no problems. The liner dramatically improved the performance, efficiency, and likely the safety of the insert but it was a bit of work to put it in for sure. Nothing like laying on your back inside the fireplace working above your head demolishing and removing all that stuff. Safety glasses, a dust mask, and good lighting were required.

You will find a good deal of great information on this subject from the folks on this forum. A couple things that sometimes get over looked.

Determine your supply for the firewood before purchasing your stove. If you are going to cut your own firewood don't underestimate the amount of labor and required equipment to do so. I've been making our firewood for the last 15 years or so and while I do enjoy the process most of the time, the bottom line is it's a lot of work, particularly if you are getting up there in age.

If you are going to purchase your firewood, try and determine if there are reputable suppliers in your area as this can be harder than it sounds. And then be honest with yourself and pencil out the costs for purchasing the wood on a yearly basis as well as the cost of the insert, installation, and maybe an uptick in insurance rate.

Figure out what the most common length of firewood that's sold/used in your area and have this information when you go stove shopping. Be very mindful of the stove opening size, the brochure will have the advertised spec but take a tape measure with you and check it yourself. Check not only the door opening width of the stove but also the interior width of the stove as just because you might be able to get the stick through the door opening doesn't mean it will be easy getting it placed in the fire box. Few things more frustrating than having to jockey around each piece of firewood trying to get it placed just exactly correct all the while the fire is blazing hot while you are doing this. This of course applies to stoves that use the firewood in the side-to-side orientation.

Our free standing wood stove uses the side-to-side orientation and our insert uses the front-to-back orientation. I much prefer the front-to-back orientation, particularly with the deep firebox that the insert has. Having said that, even if the stove you are looking at uses the front-to-back make sure the firebox is deep enough to take the firewood you plan on using. I know it sounds like a simple thing but I've seen some of the new inserts with very shallow fire boxes.

We are able to cook on our insert as it sticks out on the hearth far enough to put a medium size dutch oven on the top.

Both our wood stoves have glass doors and if I purchase any more stoves in the future they will also have glass doors. The glass doors make it easy to check the status of the fire even from across the room, as well as providing the nice glow of the fire.

[michael ark]

Get a EPA stove I have been converted. They are that good at sipping wood. If it {the end of the world as we know it} run that thing without it's converter. ---- REALLY ! At that point survival takes presidents over efficiency.