Advice for a Stove/Insert in a massive fireplace.

[Flying Pigeon]

Hi-

I'm sitting here in front of the huge fireplace in my 108 year old home. It pops. It crackles. It looks great. However I can't help but thinking I could be getting more heat out to the cords and cords of wood I've been shoveling in over the past few years.

I've looked at both inserts and stoves….and even pre-made metal fireplaces. By most standards the fireplace is big: 41 X 32 X 24. So a lot of things could fit in the firebox. So that brings up a few issues on it's own.

Here are the ups and downs of the options.

Inserts:

1. The inserts that are big enough to fit the space, are probably too big for the room. The room is about 300sq/ft.
a. One possible solution to the overheating issue would be a hydronic insert tied into the hot water heating system in the house. However these are both expensive and rare.

2. Large inserts often don't have surrounds that are big enough to cover the fireplace mouth, which means an universal cover would be needed, and for aesthetic reasons, I can see this being shot down.

Woodburing Stoves:

1. Almost any stove can fit directly into the fireplace without even coming out onto the hearth. Aesthetically, that would be OK. Maybe not great but, OK.
2. However , I realize, I'd be heating up a bunch of brick and stone this way. Maybe not the best $ per BTU spend.

Pre-Fab Fireplace:

1. There are some zero clearance fireplaces which would fit inside the firebox and made a good aesthetic fit, with some creative masonry. Probably better than most inserts.
2. Downside, is nobody seems to know anything about how to approach this.One staffer at the local stove store told me he would have to demo the whole chimney…which seems ridiculous. (It's 40ft high and made of field stone)

And now the million dollar (or more likely $5000 question):

1. Anyone else have a similar experience?
2. What did you do?
3. Go pictures?
4. Any other recommendations?

Thanks.

-The Pigeon Flys High.

 

[begreen]

Welcome. There are lots of threads on this topic over the past years. You will get good heat with a freestanding stove if you put in a block-off plate at the damper level or lower and have a stove with a blower. Is this room isolated from the rest of the house or does it have large openings into the other areas? If you just want to heat the 300 sq ft then a 1 cu ft stove would do the job. Plan on a full stainless steel liner for the stove too.

Personally if I was going to this expense I would consider options to get heat to more of the house and go larger. If you want an insert, there are oversized surrounds and if necessary an extension is usually easy to fabricate and add on.

 

[mellow]

Free standing woodstove for sure. Check the gallery for some ideas: https://www.hearth.com/gall/main.php

 

[Flying Pigeon]

Thanks for the fast replies.

Personally if I was going to this expense I would consider options to get heat to more of the house and go larger.

Well yes. That is the dilemma. Or one of them anyway. The house is primarily fieldstone all the way around, so there is really no possibility of routing venting in the walls. A hydronic system is possible, but as I said previously, these seem rare, and are very expensive. There is only one, albeit large, entry into the room, near the end opposite the fireplace.

 

[begreen]

Can you post a sketch or describe the floor plan? Maybe post a picture of two of the room showing the door way(s)? Is there a basement below?

 

[Dix]

What BG said. Like Johnny 5, need more input !

Location in the US would help, too !

Welcome to the forums !

 

[weatherguy]

My fireplace is a tad bit smaller and I put a Woodstock progress hybrid, the room the stove is in gets warm but soapstone is a nice soft heat and you might want to use fans to move the heat to other areas of the house as I do.

 

[CT Burner]

I have a hybrid fyre large insert in essentially the same size opening. Works great and puts out a ton of heat. Can heat most of 3,000 ft so may be overkill for you but if you can move the air out of the room into the rest of the house you'll be pleased.

 

[Flying Pigeon]

Can you post a sketch or describe the floor plan? Maybe post a picture of two of the room showing the door way(s)? Is there a basement below?

Of course. Here is the original blue print of the room. The entrance to the room is on the top left. The door marked on the bottom left goes to the outside.


Here is the cut-away of the fireplace:



1. Location: Outside of NYC
2. There is a crawlspace below the room. I had toyed with the idea of somehow hooking an insert into a venting system which would make use of the old under floor coal heat registers, but forcing hot air down seems silly.Again, a hydronic system would be better suited, but almost nobody seems to execute these.
3. There is nothing above the room. There are high velocity air AC ducts, but using an air handler to run in reverse and somehow pump the hot air into other rooms, while sealing off the outside air also seems more trouble than it is worth.
4. Right now the only heat distribution method we have are two ceiling fans in the room.

 

[begreen]

There does seem like an opportunity to heat more than just the room. The large opening into the ?? area (upper left) will help. To do this you would put a return duct outside of the room in an area needing heat. The return would be connected to a well insulated duct, with a quiet,inline blower, to a supply register near the insert. This will start a good convection loop pushing the cooler air toward the stove. That air will be replaced with warmer air from the stove room. This doesn't require a big blower, Panasonic makes quiet bath fans designed for inline remote use that are quiet and work well.

The benefit would be more even heat throughout the house and a larger insert which will afford a nicer fire view and longer burn times. So far I am thinking the Hearthstone Clydesdale.

 

[Flying Pigeon]

So you are suggesting to blow cold air into the room from under the floor through registers?