fitting a powerful woodstove into a tight space

Put the stove in front of the fireplace, rather than in it.

c_dinsmore said:

My chimney guy wants me to put it back into the fireplace for two reasons. 1) so the straight up exhaust will make cleaning in future years easier and quicker and cheaper. 2) because bringing it out (any sized stove) will make me have to tear up the floor and extend concrete out for the stove to sit on.

Click to expand...

Not the expert here, but many people have the set up where the stove is in front of the fireplace without too many complications. Perhaps some of these people can chime in... I think (1) will not be much of an issue and that you can build a hearth pad on top of your floor (with proper insulating values) for (2)... I think that you would regret putting in a stove that is too small for the application you want.

Hope someone chimes in on this one...

Welcome! I agree with Dakota, bring the stove out a bit. Putting a tee behind the stove makes cleaning very easy. Extending the hearth does not have to mean tearing up the floor. What you will need for hearth protection depends on the stove.

Having the stove set fully back into the fireplace opening means more of the heat will be absorbed by the mass of the hearth/chimney, and less will be immediately available to heat the rest of the house. Mine is about two-thirds out. That allows for a lot of unimpeded radiation from the stove, and leaves a good air space behind the stove, where I direct a floor fan to aid in circulating the warmth.

c_dinsmore said:

My chimney guy wants me to put it back into the fireplace for two reasons. 1) so the straight up exhaust will make cleaning in future years easier and quicker and cheaper. Use a T in the firebox, as far as the chimney knows, it's still straight up. 2) because bringing it out (any sized stove) will make me have to tear up the floor and extend concrete out for the stove to sit on. Some stoves, in fact a lot of stoves, need nothing more than ember protection, simply a fireproof portable pad that sits under the stove.

Click to expand...

After thinking about it, if your "chimney guy" really gave you those two answers as absolutes, get a new one.

any heat, radiant or convective from a stove located near a mass of masonry that goes thru the roof is gonna wrm the masonry & conduct nicely thru the roof= avoid heating the masonry& try to get the heat away from the masonry with blowers

sidenote: Please visit oldhouseweb.com and join their forum if you haven't already. As much as the people here are experts about everything hearth related, those people are experts about everything "old house" related.

As far as the stove goes, I'd get the biggest hearth mounted stove IN FRONT of the fireplace that I could get for trying to heat that much space. It'd have a blower on it, too.

It's pretty easy to spend someone else's money, though, so I don't know what I'd REALLY do if I were in your shoes.

A clean out t behind the stove makes cleaning the chimney a breeze. And there are a lot of options for floor protection that will require very little if any modifications to your floor, you probably could use a portable hearth pad of some sort. A good stove shop will likely have several options for you. I can't see you being happy with a stove that fits your chimney guys criteria, it will be too small for your house, I would get a stove for in front of your fireplace so you can get a properly sized unit that that will heat your home.

You're looking for 50-60 degrees now, but once you're hooked you'll be looking for 75-80 like the rest of us.

When have you ever seen a pretty work horse? I do not think the englander is ugly. It just looks tough. That stove is money well spent, good price point also. Spend the money, extend the hearth, save the money, buy the 30.

I can only WISH I had a 30. It looks about the same as my stove, but should blow it out of the water. Did anyone check the specs on that fireplace opening? Maybe it could fit?

Yes I have the 30. This will be my first full year with it. I am more than pleased with the stove. It does like well seasoned wood which really is the safest way to burn. It comes on a pedestal but with legs. I put the legs on mine and I did think it added a little class to it. I have heard it will flat out run with the higher priced stoves of the same cubic foot firebox. I did take the gold trim off of it. I think it would probably fall off sooner or later anyhow. There are quite a few Englander owners on this site and from what I have read they all seem to be pretty happy with the stove. If you have any other questions ask away and I'm sure they will answer. BTW I did get the blower and will never have another stove without one.

to the OP... the 118 is NOT the stove to stuff in the fireplace. If you are committed to a freestanding stove in that'll do it for ya, get a big convection stove, set out in front of fp, and punch in an insulated thimble into a ss liner above the smoke shelf into the actuall chimney stack (probably thru the wall insulated application + dw pipe since it'll be above the mantle). Get the biggest steel stove you can, GET THE BLOWER 4 IT, and wind her up! You'll have a lot of building scraps to burn when you use the tax credit to do what you should be doing: start rippin into walls and re-insulalting (which, btw, should be a #1 priority now... get that thing buttoned up, central heating taken care of to save the heat $ instead of trying to blow heat $ + time overload to beat it). with winter comin quick, now is hardly the time to bank on such a stopgap solution to solve a more pertinent need: heat retention. If you can afford to do both, great, but don't slack on the tightness of the house and assume trying to heat that leaky space from one room in mid january with a big stove is gonna make winter any easier than spending the long dollar would have....

Summit pretty much said what I was going to say . . . the 118 is way too small for what the home owner wants to accomplish . . . much better choices are out there.

c_dinsmore said:

another thing someone brought up for me to ask is this... is there also a possibility of getting too large of a stove? according to folk theory, at least around where i grew up, is that stoves should be used at, not max, but full capacity, and that it can even harm a stove in the end to be firing it under temperature. truth or fable?

Click to expand...

I don't see any real benefit to extreme oversizing when it comes to woodstoves. But you have a fairly large home that is pretty open, so I don't think any of the stoves mentioned in this thread are extremely oversized for you home. The problems that you can run into with too large of a stove usually result from packing to much wood into it and then damping it down to quickly, which makes the fire smolder and can lead to creosote deposits especially if your wood isn't well seasoned. The real cause of this is the mindset of always filling the stove and then trying to control the heat output with your air control. Which brings up the good advice that alot of people here will tell you, if you want less heat build a smaller fire. You can have a small hot fire that will burn efficiently, even in a larger stove. This is what most people here are probably doing at this time of year. And it's nice to have that extra capacity for when the temps dip. And one other thing, with the newer EPA stoves, I don't think you can really cut the air enough to smother a fire, I think that's why they are so efficient, they always let air in even with the control all the way down. So with these stoves you really have to learn to control you heat by the amount of wood you feed your stove.

And as for your folk theory, that probably comes from the days when it was common for people to cut and split their wood for the year in late summer/ early fall and then burn it that same winter. So you had very green wood going into an old smoke dragon. They had to burn hot fires just to make the wood burn and not lay massive deposits in their chimney.

Make sure the horizontal run of flue actually slopes downward toward the stove very slightly. Level is NOT good.

Also, you can get floor protectors (called "stove boards" if you're doing a Google search) at Lowe's or Home Depot with rated "R" values and they are not expensive, depending on the "R" value you need. I paid less than $100. If you want an attractive hearth pad with tile, wood surround, etc., you'll either have to build it yourself or pay $350+.

My local Ace Hardware also stocks this model shown on Lowe's website:
http://www.lowes.com/pd_41312-85334...rd&pl=1&currentURL;=/pl__0__s?Ntt=stove+board

I bought one of these and covered it with tile and built a wood surround. You have lots of choices, none of which need be "major home alterations". Good luck!

c_dinsmore said:

another thing someone brought up for me to ask is this... is there also a possibility of getting too large of a stove? according to folk theory, at least around where i grew up, is that stoves should be used at, not max, but full capacity, and that it can even harm a stove in the end to be firing it under temperature. truth or fable?

Click to expand...

Yes . . . getting too large of a stove will result in you loading the stove and being driven out of the home by too much heat . . . that and everyone will be stripping to their skivvies to try to stay cool (guess that could go in the plus column now that I think of it. . . .)

Also getting too large of a stove could result in folks always running small fires . . . which is not necessarily a bad thing . . . unless you're not able to burn cleanly and as efficiently . . . my own advice is to go with a stove one size larger than what your space needs require.

That said . . . as mentioned by others . . . 2,000 square feet of space and an old-two story home . . . this combination makes me think it will be a challenge to find a stove that will be too much for your situation.

I'd think that you really run the risk of having a couple of rooms that are unbearably warm and the rest of the house will be cold. I hate to be the guy that didn't read carefully, but did you mention how open the floorplan is?