What constitutes an alcove?

Sounds like an easy question doesn't it. Here is my situation. I have a nice spot all laid out on a new home build for a particular stove. It fits just fine with no alcove at all but I am tight in terms of space in front of it. If I just build that flat wall maybe 1 in 20 medium/small stoves will fit in just fine. If I extend the front hearth space I intrude into a travel path. I do have room to move the whole thing back maybe 8 or 9 inches which would make it very easy to choose almost any new stove in the future. I want to preserve that flexibility so that when my first stove eventually wears out I will have options. Unfortunately I will need to leave behind some short sections of wall on both sides that kind of look like space for a built in bookshelf area rather than an alcove to me. It will be a U shaped space about 4 feet across and 9 inches deep.
If I keep any new install so that the stove is completely outside those short side walls area do I still need to consider it an alcove?

Thanks for that DougA. What I have is a short wall that is on the back side of a stairway. There is plenty of vertical space for me to intrude into that stairway for well over a foot in order to gain space between the stove and the wall behind it. The problem I am facing is that the side walls of that stairway are already built and on one side the wall is a load bearing wall. That side has to stay right where it is. I could shave away at the other wall to create an L shaped space for the stove but I think it will look better with the wall on both sides about the same. At this point in time only the load bearing wall must stay exactly where it is. I can move things around a lot without losing the function of that stairway but I am not willing to give up a decent present look to get the future use of a different stove in the space. The chimney and OAK are already in place for my present stove so it will not be moving at all but the space around it is still somewhat flexible. That is why I am asking. If I decide on a different stove in my future I don't want to have painted myself into a corner.

I am installing a Napoleon 1100 pedestal version that fits completely outside the recess and was completely OK with all clearances before I started pushing the wall back to make my hearth deeper. The whole point to pulling the wall back was future flexibility. Things do become obsolescent, as was driven home to me recently with a tool I was using. I broke a belt on it and the original manufacturer lists at least half the parts on it as obsolete and unavailable, including that belt. Now it is nothing but a museum piece at a mere 55 years old. I looked at how fast stove technology is improving and I suspect that in 10 or 15 years the present stoves will be as dated as those fireplace tube type racks that were used in the late 70s to provide heat into the home from a closed fireplace. At the time Heatilator was the manufacturer and you could buy them with or without a fan to upgrade your fireplace. At the end of this year all smoke dragons will be outlawed. What is next? In the interest of getting a bit ahead of the game I decided that I wanted to be able to replace my Napoleon with more than just another very compact stove. What I did was go out and look at the requirements of things like the Woodstock IS and the BK Chinook 30. Both would have required an alcove wider than the 46 wide by 51 deep inch space that I have after moving my wall. Front to back would be no problem but side to side was too tight for an alcove. Based on earlier responses to this thread about how it was only a maybe, I removed one stub wall so that now it is at worst a corner install. I now have a clear 46 inch width with a 9 inch long wall at the right side and an extra 4 feet on the left side before you come to the next wall. That will allow me to move any new stove a bit to the left while still being properly on my ember pad. Either of those stoves would now fit and would include all required installation spaces although who knows if they will still be around in the future when my Napoleon becomes obsolete. I am not getting any younger so I try to plan ahead to minimize the need to tear down walls and move them.

Update:
I decided to treat my space as if it was not an alcove, which led me to use side wall and back clearances only. By adding about 9 inches to the depth here I was able to make the available stoves a much larger selection. After I moved the wall back about 9 1/2 inches this is the space I ended up with. It is lined with Durock and that is covered with a ceramic tile. You can see my OAK protruding through the floor and just held in place with a few 2x4 scraps until the space is ready for the stove. I still need to grout the tile and then it will be time to move the stove in. Note: my stove only requires ember protection and that chimney connection was placed before I recessed the back wall so it has plenty of room to combustibles. As you can tell, the stove space is way ahead of the rest of the house in terms of looking finished.

The "alcove" plan was to allow those stub walls on both sides of the stove area. It was never going to be very deep because the basement stairs go down behind that back wall so pushing back very far was never in the cards in terms of head room on the stairs. I did preserve plenty of head room on the stairs by limiting the push to the rear.

DougA said:

Oh. Now that I see it, I would not have called it an alcove if the 'stubs' were that short on both sides. It looks more like 5" deep rather than the 9" you originally had posted but a picture sure makes it look easier to understand.

Click to expand...

Actually it measures a full 9.5 inches but looks can be deceiving.