Hello,
Apologies if any of this sounds ignorant. I've never owned/used a wood stove before, but I love the idea as a supplemental heat source as well as backup in the event of prolonged power outage.
My wife and I purchased a house back in March with a 1986 Defiant Encore installed in the great room. It was moved there by the previous owners from a different room, and the company they hired placed it too close to the walls. Our home inspector told us that up front, and it was later confirmed by a chimney place when I had it swept. Therefore, we don't use it as burning down the house would be sub-optimal.
We'd like to save the installation if possible, and I've spoken to a couple of different places: the previously mentioned chimney place, who also sells Jotul and Quadra-Fire stoves, as well as a Vermont Castings dealer. The chimney place told me the only option with this stove is to brick line the wall (though that doesn't really help with the window sill right there).
I had hoped the Vermont Castings place would have some other ideas (Heat shield for the stove? Angled pipe to move it forward?), but after some odd-feeling talks, the guy basically told me they aren't interested in fixing someone else's install. Fair enough, I suppose, but I wish he would have just said that up front rather than having me send them all the info then ignoring it until I called them back.
As I was researching replacement stoves, I came across this forum, so I thought I'd post here and see if anyone else has an opinion on what the best course of action is or knows of any other options we might be missing.
I think if I do replace this stove, I'll move it out to the barn as part of another project to create a heated workshop, so maybe not a total loss.
Thanks,
Joe
View attachment 236210 View attachment 236211 View attachment 236212
Invoice to the previous owners for the install:
View attachment 236213
