If there are 3 flues, looks like a stove per floor to me.

myzamboni - 04 November 2009 12:33 AM

Equinox in the living room downstairs with pipe running straight up out through the ‘house’

Times 2.

I might also recommend the PE later, after the various inmates here get theirs welded or replaced. 

If you have the $$ for an EQ, then by all means put it dead center in the lower level family room.  it’s BEGGING for an EQ.  And that’s probably all you need.  maybe add some floor registers to move air around more. 

You can’t put a stove in the upper level master BR, and the gas furnace, i’m guessing, occupies the right flue.  If you wanted, you could probably snake a pipe up from a smaller stove - like a shallow Jotul or Homestead - in the upper level dining room to the left flue, using a 45 and then a 90 to turn into a side-mounted crock.  You really shouldn’t need a ton of heat on the 2nd floor, given the kitchen - if you’re up there cooking - has its own heat-generating equipment.  we don’t heat our kitchen - the stove 2 rooms away heats it fine.  before we got the woodstove, i hadn’t had the steam radiator even hooked up for 6 or 7 years - kitchen was never uncomfortable.

But I honestly don’t know how much you’ll really need that.  A smaller stove in the dining room next door isn’t really going to give your master BR that much more heat than the EQ ripping directly below it, I think…

i went to the closest place to me that sold hearthstone stoves and the lady who helped me wasn’t really that helpful.(the owner was much more helpful but wasn’t able to say much as he had to go right away) she was seemingly very pushy about the jotul f600 which i’m sure is a wonderful stove but…. i opened it up and the handle came right off. she said it so the handle doesn’t get hot…. ok…. my potbelly stove has many affixed handles and i can grab and open them at anytime. so that turned me away from that stove as stupid as that sounds if i’m paying that kinda money personally i don’t want anything coming off of it but heat.

when i finally got to the hearthstones she said that the equinox was too big for my application (she may be right) and said the Mansfield would be more appropriate.

i have a couple of issues about that and let me know if my thinking is wrong…

1) i work in road construction and when i’m preping anything be it a road or a driveway. i always say the same thing to me you can never have too much base. if 6” of stone will work i want 8” thats just the way i am. just because it will work doesn’t mean that it will hold up as long or be able to handle future expansion of more traffic or heavier loads.
2) she said that i wouldn’t be able to use the equinox like i should be able to. and thus making it not very efficient. well i don’t know one way or another at this point i haven’t been in the home though a Wisconsin winter yet. (the school is in the country on a hill also)
3) i like it toasty in the winter… if i have to crack a window every now and then so be it
4)i like the lines of the equinox better than the Mansfield to me its just nicer to look at.

so am i looking at a stove( the equnox) that is just plain too big for my size home? should i be looking at something just a little smaller like the Mansfield? i am trying to make the wood stove my primary heat source and use the lp furnace as a backup….

A wood stove is an area heater, not a whole house heater. That is the issue with the Equinox. How will the heat get upstairs?

BeGreen - 04 November 2009 11:12 PM

A wood stove is an area heater, not a whole house heater. That is the issue with the Equinox. How will the heat get upstairs?

the spiral staircase opening

That appears to go to the loft on the 2nd fl.

What direction does all the glass face?  I went with a big catalytic stove because I have a wall of glass facing SSW.  Great solar gain until the sun drops below the ridge on the other side of the valley.  The catalytic burns low enough when the sun is out and then that big steel box kicks in and puts out when the heat is going the other direction through all that glass. 

To me, the downside of the big non-cat stoves is that you can’t just load the firebox and then dial in the amount of heat you want at any point of the burn cycle.  They don’t burn low enough.  This would have me planning burn cycles and sizes, watching the forecast, planning for solar gain etc.  I always load the firebox all the way up and go.  On the other hand, if you are willing to use your furnace this time of year until it really gets cold out, it probably doesn’t make a difference as the non-cat will burn low enough then anyway.

The way around all of this is to put a wood boiler with thermal storage tied to your furnace in the basement and use your thermostat all the time.  This could take care of your hot water needs as well.  Then you put whatever stove or fireplace your wife likes in the living space for ambiance and to warm up near when you come in out of the cold.

You really can’t make the pick until you fully evaluate the chimney.  Unless you’re planning to bypass it altogether and just build yourself a chase w/ class-A pipe running right out the roof at a different spot.  (which is something to think about…)

But if you do decide to stick w/ your existing chimney, i think that’s a great idea.  Lotsa masonry / thermal mass there.  And the Mansfield is a fine stove - you’d be fine with it on the lower floor, but then you would want a stove on the upper floor even more…  Mansfield uses a 6” dia pipe.  If you upsize to the EQ, then you need room for an 8” pipe.

savageactor7 - 28 October 2009 05:51 AM

Usually I wouldn’t recommend a wood stove to anyone that doesn’t have their own source of wood.

That’s an odd statement.

BBAR - i went back to look at SA7’s old line you quoted - he mentioned the deck for wood storage.

then i went and looked at the deck - there ain’t none!  just supports and railings!   but that’s a heckuva good place to store in the future.  i’d just build in some corrugated plastic sheets to gutter the water away from there, instead of just letting it rain down on the wood…