Need help on wood insert for New Home

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Newbie22

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Feb 13, 2011
8
Virginia
We are building a new home and want to start out with an efficient source of heat. We have trees on our acreage and like the feel of wood heat, so have decided on a wood burning insert. After many days researching, my head is spinning and I need some direction.

Our home will have the insert placed on an exterior wall in the family room. The family room is in the back of the house and is open to the kitchen and breakfast area. The entire area measures roughly 900-1,000 square feet. The overall plan is not really open - it is a colonial style with a two story foyer. The living and dining rooms are in the front on each side of the foyer and the family room and kitchen/eating area in the back. All upstairs bedroom doors open to the foyer. The total house size is approx 4,000 square feet. There will be an HVAC unit for each floor located in the attic and crawlspace, both centrally located. Here are my questions:

1. From what I've gathered, a block chimney with special grout is fine and doesn't need to be lined with fire bricks as long as I use an insulated zero clearance liner. A pre-insulated stainless steel liner is a must for code and to acheive proper drafting. Is this correct?

2. Since the family room will most likely get very warm, I could use the HVAC fan to move air around the house. Since this is a new build, I can have the HVAC installer place intakes where I want. Would having the intake in the family room be the best location? Lower wall or Ceiling placement? I'm confused on this since some of the insert installation manuals I read online state that intakes should not be near the unit.

3. I was told by wood insert dealers that a large unit like the Quadra-Fire Voyageur would bake us out of the family room area. They said we should go smaller. Is this correct or could we just build smaller fires? I've read two groups of thoughts on this - one says it's not good to under utilize an insert as the pipes will not be as clean, others say it's fine.

4. Costs online are all over the place. From the quotes I've gotten, the builder says it would run $6,000 to build the masonry fireplace. The cost of inserts appear to be around $2 - $2,500 for the units we were looking at and the insulated flexible liner was quoted at $1,000. This brings my cost to roughly $10,000. Is this about right, or am I looking at higher costs?

5. We have looked at the Quadra-Fires, Pacific Energy and have just heard about Jules. We have friends with QuadraFires and liked the performance, but are not sure if they are the best for our situation or in general. Since the home is colonial, looks are important and we like the looks of the Jules and QuadraFire Voyageur. Do you have suggestions on which brands have the best reputation to help narrow our search - the choices are a bit overwhelming.

I hope I gave you enough information. Thank you in advance for your help.
 
Thats a big home to heat with an insert. Have you considered a free standing stove? No need for a masonry chimney would save a bundle of $$$. Also maybe install a wood boiler since its new construction. If you're set on an insert, I think you mean Jotul, not Jules, the C550 is what I have and I love it. They have an EXCELLENT rep and folks on here just love them. I would recommend a larger stove since the home is so big. The blowers move air around pretty well. As far as the vent for HVAC, I don't have them so I can't help with that. But I would think higher in the room is better as heat rises. Good luck and hopefully you'll get some more informative responses.
 
We put a heatilator fireplace in when we built our home. In hindsight, I wish we had done something different.
I would consider a wood stove on an attractive hearth, or perhaps alcove. Skip the insert.
The right stove will provide heat whether you have electric or not. The insert's heat is more trapped in the cavity and doesn't move as well without electric. You might think why worry about not having electric, but it happens. Storms, hurricanes, tornados, who knows what? Car plows through a utility pole and it's 0 outside. You just never know. Since you have the luxury of building from scratch, make allowances for the "what ifs" in life.
IF you never need to have heat without electric, at least you have some piece of mind. In the meantime, your electric bill will be lower! Just some thoughts!
 
Thanks for the responses so far. I did mean Jotul and see that many people on here are happy with them.

We did consider a free standing, but the size and layout of the room isn't conducive to a free standing. I didn't necessarily want to heat the whole house, but I did want something that would keep us warm most of the time when we are downstairs and especially if we lost power. I got concerned with the dealers telling us we would be driven out of the room from too much heat. We plan to spend most of our time in the back of the house.
 
Have to ask why build a new fireplace to install an insert when you can have a high efficiency, closed fireplace that will heat most of the place easily? Some can be ducted so that it doesn't overheat the room, yet provide a great fire view.

Here are some examples to think about:
http://www.fireplacex.com/product_guide/detail.aspx?id=97
http://www.kozyheat.com/products/woodburning/z42/index.html
http://www.regency-fire.com/Products/Wood/Wood-Fireplaces/R90.aspx
http://www.icc-rsf.com/en/rsf/the-opel-3-fireplace
http://www.quadrafire.com/en/Products/7100-Wood-Fireplace.aspx
 
Seeing this is a new build and for 10,000 for heat source i would go for
a masonry heater. :coolgrin:
 
BeGreen: I've looked at your links and don't understand how these differ from an insert. Sorry to be obtuse, but the descriptions on the web sites aren't really saying anything different than the wood insert descriptions. Since this is a new build, we are open to new things, but could you please explain the difference? Thanks.

Budman: I'll look into masonry heaters. From what I have found so far, they stick out more in a room and I need something flush.
 
An insert needs a masonry fireplace or a pre-fab in which it is installed. The units I provided the links to, are complete Zero-Clearance fireplaces, but with a better design than cheaper builder's specials. They are sealed units that are designed more like an insert, but with the nice big doors and a large fireview. Some of these units can be installed with a remote fan and ducting to distribute the heat. Some of them have complete secondary burn systems, meaning they burn many times cleaner and more efficiently than a basic fireplace, often matching the performance of an insert.

Here's a couple articles that explain the differences:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/intro_fireplaces
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/insert_intro
 
Newbie22:

Since you are at the home design stage and not the build stage, you still have the opportunity to create a design that can take advantage of heating with wood. This might be an European style masonry stove or a woodstove, or a fireplace, etc. A 4000 square foot home is a rather substantial investment, so heating this home is an important consideration - both from an initial and continuing cost consideration.

There are engineers who specialize in heating designs (HVAC engineers) that can advise you what type of wood heating appliance to select and where to best install it. I suggest that you track one down who has some wood heating experience. Also, you might take a look at http://mha-net.org/. They specialize in masonry heaters and perhaps they could consult with you, or suggest a HVAC design engineer.

Over the life of a 4000 square foot structure, it's worth the money to pay a bit more upfront in design costs so that you can achieve what you want to do for 10, 20, 30 years.

Good luck with your project.
 
Another consideration, though probably too late in the game but just a heads up if you are thinking along the lines of an efficient heat/ac source:

Research HVAC in an unconditioned space -- ie your attic - no matter what you do, how much you spend etc it is a major source of energy loss and ineffeciency, noise. As well as a potential for disasters ie water pan leaks etc. And pains in the butt for maintenance. Been there and learned a lesson.

Next and all future homes will hopefully have a wood stove - not an insert- centrally located with radiant floor heat and HVAC Not in an attic.
 
Thank you everyone for your input. I'm still looking at options. The design of the house does not lend itself to a masonry heater, although I liked them (especially the little ovens that can be built with them). They are also outside my budget in building costs and architectural redesign costs. Thus I'm back to fireplace inserts, fireplace or RSF. I really like the heat output on my friends inserts though and the shops I have gone to say the RSF aren't as efficient and don't heat as well as the inserts or freestanding units. Can't have a freestanding, so back to looking at inserts. Trying to decide between QuadraFire and Jotul....
 
An insert isn't really the best bet for a new home, you have nothing to insert it into. One of the units that Be Green suggested is going to be much more cost effiecent. They require no masonry fireplace, they are built right into the wall with their own chimney system.
 
Thanks - I am looking into the RSF's that BeGreen mentioned. I really like the looks of them - the vendors near me are telling me their customers haven't been happy with them. Haven't discounted them yet - still researching this site for customer satisfaction. Love this site!
 
Search on RSF Opel or RSF Onyx here for several posts. Most of the issues reported here seems to be with getting them setup correctly. Member LLigetfa has been a big help responding to these questions.
 
I'll throw my two cents worth in here. I have a Kozy Heat Z-42, zero clearance unit. I will say it took me almost 5 years to learn how to run it right, with the help of the good folks here. A zero clearance does what your looking for. You don't need a structure to put it in, you can build whatever you want right around it. Mine is built like a beast, I think it weight's in at 525lbs. I have a blower but almost never use it. It can bake us out of the room if it's not that cold outside but a couple windows cracked open and the ceiling fan in reverse along with a fan I put in between the floors to draw heat upstairs we're just fine. My house is 2200 sq. ft. and this thing heats the whole thing. One nice thing with it you could do is use the two heat ducts on top of the unit and run the ducts to other parts of the house for more heat. I would think this would also pull some of the excessive heat from the unit so your not baking in front of it. I didn't have the luxgery of planning as you do. To do it over, this is definitely what I would have done. Anyway, the zero clearance fireplace is exactly what your looking for. Don't even look at anything else if you can't put in a stove or a masonry fireplace. I'll have to say the Kozy is a great unit but I've also heard good things about Quadrafire and Pacific Energy too, all the others I have no idea. If you have any further questions feel free to contact me cause I went through a lot of what your going through right now and as you get deeper into it there will be more questions to address such as mantle clearances, how you want to place the unit in your house, what will you surround it with, how will the duct work run so you won't see it, ect...
Good Luck
 
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