pix of stove and hearth

Jake says you love pictures, so here's my pictures.

I had originally planned the installation for the corner of the dining room (to the left of the stove in the third photo), and had a very-last-minute change of plans when the stove installers said it wasn't going to work going through ceilings and rafters. (I'd had it pre-inspected for installation, but that was not checked out--a learning experience).

I was *not* happy with this location at first--wanted to maintain the open spaces. After living with it for a winter, I'm very pleased that circumstances led to this. It's ideal in terms of loading--the wood comes through the sunroom--you can see the stack-it bracket set up in the corner of the sunroom--and goes in the side-loading door or around to the front. More importantly, the central open location creates a great place for sitting around the stove and chatting. My kids and I gravitate there on winter evenings, which would have been harder to pull off in the corner.

Included a photo of the sunroom because that stove kept those plants alive all winter. At the far end is a door with a deck over it, chopping block beyond that. The deck sheltered my wood supply, and provided a great staging area (although the infamous 3-day November ice storm made me scramble to get the deck tarped).

I've had questions about the hearth--it's not fancy, but it does the trick. I love the reflective surface of the granite when the fire bounces off of it, and the way it collects heat and provides a great place to warm toes, dry gloves, etc. I have a heat shield in, and double-wall pipe to the ceiling, which is what allows the installation so close to the wall.

Good morning, all, and thanks for the kind comments. It's especially appreciated to get the thumbs-up on the location--I'm glad to hear that it works visually--when you're too close to something, you tend to overthink it and lose objectivity. Interestingly, it wasn't until I posted this picture that I realized a big improvement on using this layout would have been radiusing the front corners. I don't think that would have been that tough to do--we have a well-equipped stone cutter in this town who's a real artist, loves the medium and is willing to help out with small-project cuts like this. Then it would have just been a matter of back-cutting the oak trim and putting some curve on it. Some challenges, but in terms of feeling like less space was sacrified, I think it would really make sense--and would look pretty spectacular as well. Not that it would be worth it to move the stove, dissemble the hearth, and re-do, but sharing that thought for the next person considering a mid-room install. One other thing that I think would be a great touch on a hearth is a rectangular inset of tempered-glass mirror right in front of the stove, maybe about 4-6" deep, the length of the window.

Woodywilson, very interesting to hear that you had the same experience! I think now about how inconvenient it would be to try to deal with the loading and the cleanup--and missing out on that gather-'round-the-fire feeling--if I'd gotten what I thought I wanted. That location resulted in an ideal install--straight shot, no offsets, a few feet off the ridge of the house on the south (lee) side, with which I've had no problems. Funny how life works out like that sometimes. Agree, those who are installing their first stove and thinking `corner' may benefit from looking at other options.

BeGreen, it's granite, emerald green I think. I got some sheets at HD that are sold for countertops. Bought four, cut one into thirds, lined them up with the small ones in the back and it came out to about a perfect fit for the clearances. I got a good price on them because they were banged up a little bit on an edge or corner--not okay on countertops, but I just turned the flaws so that they were under the stove--I don't mind knowing that they're there, and I can't see them. I think the whole thing ran me a little over $200--about the cost of the pre-fab ones at the stove store. I like the additional size and height I get with this--I think it helps visually balance the mass of the stove. I also like the stone-and-stone visual texture. Solid black would have been pretty spectacular, but that's just not me.

I went wider on the right side than I needed to for symmetry's sake. I haven't thought about bringing the tile into the dining room, because I usually load, and always clean, from the front. I put my ash pan (a retired turkey roaster) right in the door of the stove, and scoop away. This assures that all the airborne ash goes up the chimney. I'm not getting a problem with embers--and the wood mess I hope will be alleviated a lot when I go over to properly-stored and -seasoned wood. The laminate flooring is pretty forgiving--extending the tile would make sense if I had carpet, though, because it is a mess.

I'm pretty partial to my windows. Almost all of them are on the south, and were designed to work with the floor, which is high in thermal mass. I'm up in the hills, which helps me temperature-wise and also keeps me above the temperature inversion. One of the peculiarities of this area (and one of the things that led to the wood-stove-ban battle in town) is a tendency for air to settle in the valleys and just sit there for days or even weeks. Smoke, vehicle emissions, etc., accumulate and create a thick, greasy, gray fog that can look like another planet (Coventry)--twilight at high noon, everyone driving around with their headlights on. It's hard on people's outlook after about four days. I've been in town and seen people walking around with that 40-mile stare in the grocery store when there's a prolonged inversion, and gone home to a warm sunroom and green plants and blue sky and sunlight bouncing off the snow and a view of the mountains, and felt pretty fortunate.

DS played the drums for a couple of years, and then lost interest. I'm one of those peculiar people who enjoy listening to good drumming, so I haven't quite had the heart to pass them on--meanwhile, they make great plant stands! Actually, I had to do an emergency relocation of a couple of floor plants from sunroom when the boiler blew a few months back, and so far he hasn't commented.

Randy, tried to upload another snow picture, just for you, but was thwarted by the gremlins. What keeps you in FL if you love the snow so much? When will `someday' get here?

Thank you, Dennis! I like that--"the eyes of the house". Have you ever seen the book `A Pattern Language'? It was written by a team of architects about cities, neighborhoods, and homes built by cultures all over the world, and the elements that we respond to on a very deep level--the instinctive `this is right' parts of architecture. They had a lot to say about windows, fire--I think they have a website with some of these patterns described. You might enjoy checking this out.

heatwise said:

YES ! , drum's. how did i ever overlook them. oh yeah, the stoves kinda cool too. pete

Click to expand...

You drummers make me laugh. I looked a picture a proud mama was passing around and I said, "Wow, nice quilt." Oops. "And nice baby, too."

Here's a link to the website,
http://www.patternlanguage.com/
and here's a link to the part about the patterns.
http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/patterns.htm

Some of this might be irritatingly abstract, but his unifiying factor is about walking into a place and saying, "This just feels right." The underlying premise seems to me to be about how units work together as systems---the `concrete', static parts of the system and how they work together with dynamic, changing parts. In the example of what we are talking about within this site, that would be stoves, house layouts, windows, insulation as the concrete, and fire, air, humidity, sunshine, people, and how these systems interact to create warm, inviting, comfortable places to live.

This is something about which I have something of a passion--I get frustrated when I read about people who cannot get a stove to work for their house, especially if they simply say, "This stove is no good", not seeing that it's a combination of a lot of things working together--that's why I'm so obnoxious about asking them the `how high is your chimney' kind of questions. It's not that I know solutions for them--I'm just trying to understand what it is about some systems that work so well, and others that work so poorly. I know it's not ever just one element--it's a dance with elements moving together sequentially and harmoniously. And I think these are very important questions on a human scale--if we all can get these things right, we're going to massively lessen our dependence on foreign oil on a national level, and move towards greater security and more financial independence on a personal level, as well as just being happier, more comfortable. It's a complex interaction of a lot of details to make a simple, unified whole.

Alexander and his team are drawn to what he calls the authentic--systems that derived naturally out of the way people lived, especially over long periods of time.

An example (not his) of this that I liked was one that took place on a university campus under construction. The buildings were built, but not sidewalks linking them. The architect waited a year, and watched to see where people trod paths from one building to another, and then had those paths paved.

Here are two ideas from that book (patterns) that I think help understand how he (the primary author, Christopher Alexander) and his team think. He says that when you come to build on a piece of land, the natural inclination is to build on the best, healthiest part of that land. He recommends building on the part of it that is most in need of reclamation, of site restoration, and allowing the healthier parts, the things that drew us to that piece of land in the first place, to remain so.

Another concept that I think helps explain how he thinks is trim is an essential part of a building process, because it allows for on-site adjustments and individual solutions--that machine-extruded housing doesn't require that because it's about precision and replication; thus, trim isn't an afterthought--it's a `pattern', something we recognize for its `rightness', and its absence is something we feel on an intuitive level as a lack. Most of what he has to say isn't revolutionary, it's just the opposite--it's a common-sense kind of telling us what we already deep-down know.

Some folks find this stuff utter twaddle. I don't agree with everything he has to say, but I enjoy reading the ideas and thinking about their applications. YMMV.