To buy, or not to buy. That is the question.

Hello all!

I am a new home owner who is looking to add a wood stove to my (work-in-progress) man cave. I grew up with fireplaces, but I have basically no experience with wood stoves. As such, I have questions galore! I want to have something that resembles a fireplace, or at least has the fire as visible as possible. I'm not looking for something to heat the house, but it should at least keep the room warm. To answer everyone's first question, yes I have checked local regulations to the best of my ability, and there are not any "special" regulations prohibiting certain types of heaters. I am budgeting this as tightly as I can since I am building out the rest of the room as well. It was a mostly unfinished room in the basement that was used as a workshop by the previous owner. The wall behind the heater will either be brick (at the base of the existing chimney) or fieldstone. The floor is concrete, and will remain so aside from maybe paint or an area rug.

On a side note, I also have a few questions about rehabbing and maintaining the existing fireplace/chimney in my new home. However, I will endeavor to direct those questions to the proper forum area.

My first question is, of course, can I even put a wood stove in this area? The man cave is/will be in a basement which is not completely below ground level. I could potentially feed the exhaust into the existing chimney, however, the chimney itself is not up to code and needs to be re-tucked and needs a rebuilt firebox. That is not currently in my repair budget, and I'm not sure if I want to feed into it anyway. I could potentially vent the exhaust through a steel plate in a window. I'm not particularly worried about light, it is a cave after all. Also, there is another window which would provide adequate lighting.

So, if I were to feed the stove pipe through the window, would I need it to fully extend all the way above the roof? Could I simply have it extend beyond the house and then vertically to a point? I'm only considering this because the amount of pipe required to extend above the roof by 2 feet would be considerable, in my amateur opinion.

I have located a few stoves that look decent. However, the one that I like is, shall we say, less than decent. Also, I'm not sure if it is actually an insert, rather than a wood stove. I have attached a couple of photos.



... Yes, less than decent.

Anyway, I kind of like that it is junky. I think that after I clean up a bit of the rust, it would look good in the room. I did go and have a look at it, and it seems to only have surface rust. It is difficult to see in the pictures, but there is a crack that runs front-to-back in the stone at about the middle of the unit. I don't know when it was made. The seller says the only identifying mark on the back says "Manufactured by Martin free standing fireplaces".

So, if I were to buy this, could I actually use it or would it only be good for taking up space?

Lastly, if this is not the unit for me, what would the community recommend as an affordable unit with a "fireplace feel"?

Thanks in advance. Your input is most appreciated.

Well, alrighty then. I guess that plan has been shot down pretty efficiently. Begreen asked for a few pictures , so here they are:



The first two were from the same position in the doorway. The other two were also taken from the same spot, but the opposite side of the room.

As I said earlier, this is a major work in progress. The countertop under the window is not built-in, and is coming out in the next couple days. The drywall of the window wall is just pretty much slapped up against the fieldstone. The same for the wall perpendicular to it. Both are coming down.

The last picture shows the wall that was put up in front of the base of the chimney. It is the section just to the right of the cabinet. The shadowed area is the doorway. The crap on the floor is the last of the ceiling that I had to pull down. The previous owner failed to mention the squirrel infestation, so I had to clear that out before I did anything else.

Since I will apparently need to break into the existing chimney for this, is there any way for the wood stove to vent up the chimney and still be able to utilise the fireplace on the first floor? I'm already planning on running a chimney liner, since re-tucking the chimney would be prohibitive. Would I need to run a secondary vent through it for the wood stove in the basement? That seems pretty redundant to me, but I understand that certain conditions must be met for proper draw and preventing excessive creosote.

The more I look into this, the more I am worried that I won't be able to do it.

As to some of the responses:

Yes, I am pretty set on wood as the fuel. I enjoy it quite a bit, and it is affordable here. I could do gas, but it is just not my preference.

I like that jotul oslo. That is pretty close to the look I am going for with this appliance. That price is beyond my reach, but maybe I will find something similar.

Now I'm off to tear more stuff out of that room.

That is not a chimney crock. The chimney is behind the wall to the right of the cabinet in the picture facing away from the window. it is between the cabinet and the doorway. It is a double layer brick chimney. The mortar on the outside of the chimney is perfectly fine. Inside the chimney, there needs to be some mortar work done if I were not going to run a liner. As it stands, I am going to run a large insulated pipe down the chimney and seal it to the firebox so that I can use the fireplace on the first floor.

I'm not sure if I can connect the vent from a basement wood stove to that insulated pipe though. Would I need to run two pipes through the entire chimney? Would they need to be side-by-side, or would run through the other? How might that affect the draw from the fireplace? I wouldn't think that one pipe would run through the other, but I'm not the expert here. If they run side-by-side, how much space would I need to have to be sure that I can install large enough pipes for both?

I know some of this should be directed to the fireplace forum, but the subjects are kind of blending together at the moment.

The Windows themselves are about 27 x 27. If I were to remove the metal sill as well, it would leave an opening of about 63 x 31.

The countertop/cabinets are all coming out. The cupboard that is built into the wall is staying.

Wow. Awesome.

Well, I finally came to the conclusion that the basement wood stove is not going to happen for a while. I am going to jam an insert into the living room fireplace though. I want there to be a way to vent a basement wood stove up the chimney along with the insert, but I just can't see how that could happen without some major remodeling. The chimney is pretty big, but probably not big enough.

Thanks for all of the input. I'll probably be posting elsewhere on the forum in the near future.