Flooring Issues Around Pellet Stove

are you saying you have the stove sitting directly upon the laminate flooring and are asking if you can place it directly on top of vinyl flooring instead? No. Stove should be sitting on a "non-combustible material"...laminate and vinyl, both "combustible". Put it on a piece of sheet metal, or glass, or stone, of concrete, or even some type of prefab hearth thingy. Get a sheet of dura-rock and mud some tile up on that sucker.

Go buy a pre-made hearthpad. There is probably a building code that requires some kind of non-combustible floor directly below the stove.

Underneath and around the stove you could let it sit on bare concrete, but it would look much better on ceramic tile (thinset them in place), and grout the joints.

if the wood floor is directly on the concrete, the moisture from the cement floor is what is causing the buckling in your wood floor. You need a vapor barrier between the concrete and wood floor.

I would agree about the vapor barrier on the concrete but the heat from the pellet stove does dry out our living room. The poplar tongue and groove on our floor shrinks in the winter and swells back to normal in the summer when humidity comes back up.

My laminate flooring is doing the same. Two floor planks in front of stove have separated. Stove sits on a hearth pad..

bdaoust said:

I do have a vapor barrier. Going to replace the laminate with vinyl wood planks.

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laminate is a plague Shaw Industries (Pergo) has released on the masses. It is awful anywhere it comes into contact with the slightest bit of moisture. I see people use it in kitchens and baths and just have to shake my head as they will be pulling it back up in a few years. I have manufactured the stuff for Shaw and Mohawk (compressed saw dust), laid it, and ripped up up and to me the only place I would use it is over a WELL VENTILATED crawl space.

As for the vinyl I would avoid that also, I am skeptical that it would stand up to the temperatures close to the stove ( even with the hearth). If it were me I would do a large hearth in tile and just run the vinyl in to that.

bdaoust said:

I'm already doing the vinyl. Bought it and it's almost installed. How much of a perimeter around the stove should I leave? Right now the stove is on concrete (was when I bought the house) Should the perimeter around the stove be a foot, two, three?

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According to the OM only 6" is required Front, back and sides. But you can extend it to whatever suits you