Hello everyone,
I'll start by telling you a bit about my last few weeks...
My wife and I bought our first house this past June and have been anxious to have some fires in the open interior masonry fireplace. The house was built in 1964, it's a ranch with walkout basement-wash the basement and first floor have en fireplaces and I'm in west central Ohio. The previous (first/only) owners had never used the upstairs fireplace situated in the living room-evident because of virgin orange 12x12 flue tile and clean firebrick in fireplace. We have had maybe two dozen fires in the past few months and all seemed to be well....
The evening of Black Friday, we had fire, let it die down and went to bed around 9:30. A few hours later at 1:45am, I awoke to smoke! I got my wife and two young boys up, got them out of the house and I was looking for my cell to call 911 when (as I began to wake up) I realized that the damper was open, there was a cold bed of coals under the grate and nothing jumped out of the Fireplace to start a fire. There was only smoke and then I realized it was coming from the bathroom which is behind the masonry chimney. Long story short, the 1964 builder had properly left a 3" air space between the concrete block chimney and the wood studs that made up the bathroom wall, the insulated it with fiberglass batts but they didn't block off the top to keep the blown in cellulose insulation in the attic from falling down in that 3" gap.
So the 20 or so fires we had slowly dried out the insulation to a point where it just "combusted". Fire investigators said they've seen it with wood being against chimneys but never insulation and not 50 years later. The main thing is all 4 of us got out safely, and the fire fighters didn't unleash their 2" hoses on our house. It did do about $15k worth of damage though.
While we rebuild the bathroom, we are starting to look at inserts. We have 3 stove shops within an hours drive and we have only visited one so far but their Vermont Castings "Montpelier" model we really like. It had a sticker price of $2400 plus trim. It put out good heat and looked nice, but it only had a 1.5cf firebox. I'm going to put a 6" ss liner in the chimney to attach to our new insert but can't seem to find 'exactly' what I'm looking for on here. I want something with a blower, decent size firebox, and has big glass so we can enjoy the flames while sitting on the couch.
It has to be an insert and I can't spend more than $3k. We don't like the enamel finish and prefer black. What brands/models do you guys recommend looking at?
Thanks in advance for your help!
I'll start by telling you a bit about my last few weeks...
My wife and I bought our first house this past June and have been anxious to have some fires in the open interior masonry fireplace. The house was built in 1964, it's a ranch with walkout basement-wash the basement and first floor have en fireplaces and I'm in west central Ohio. The previous (first/only) owners had never used the upstairs fireplace situated in the living room-evident because of virgin orange 12x12 flue tile and clean firebrick in fireplace. We have had maybe two dozen fires in the past few months and all seemed to be well....
The evening of Black Friday, we had fire, let it die down and went to bed around 9:30. A few hours later at 1:45am, I awoke to smoke! I got my wife and two young boys up, got them out of the house and I was looking for my cell to call 911 when (as I began to wake up) I realized that the damper was open, there was a cold bed of coals under the grate and nothing jumped out of the Fireplace to start a fire. There was only smoke and then I realized it was coming from the bathroom which is behind the masonry chimney. Long story short, the 1964 builder had properly left a 3" air space between the concrete block chimney and the wood studs that made up the bathroom wall, the insulated it with fiberglass batts but they didn't block off the top to keep the blown in cellulose insulation in the attic from falling down in that 3" gap.
So the 20 or so fires we had slowly dried out the insulation to a point where it just "combusted". Fire investigators said they've seen it with wood being against chimneys but never insulation and not 50 years later. The main thing is all 4 of us got out safely, and the fire fighters didn't unleash their 2" hoses on our house. It did do about $15k worth of damage though.
While we rebuild the bathroom, we are starting to look at inserts. We have 3 stove shops within an hours drive and we have only visited one so far but their Vermont Castings "Montpelier" model we really like. It had a sticker price of $2400 plus trim. It put out good heat and looked nice, but it only had a 1.5cf firebox. I'm going to put a 6" ss liner in the chimney to attach to our new insert but can't seem to find 'exactly' what I'm looking for on here. I want something with a blower, decent size firebox, and has big glass so we can enjoy the flames while sitting on the couch.
It has to be an insert and I can't spend more than $3k. We don't like the enamel finish and prefer black. What brands/models do you guys recommend looking at?
Thanks in advance for your help!
