Brick or stainless chimney for wood-stove?

[Adk Patroller]

I have a small VC stove that the wife wants in the living room. We just spent the better part of a summer, stripping off all the old clapboards and shingles and installing new cedar shingles on our 150 yr old house. I hate to run a stainless chimney up the exterior at the front corner of the house. Any drawbacks from going with a conventional brick chimney with a clay flue liner?

 

[Dave_1]

This is what the pros say about an exterior chimney.

http://www.woodheat.org/chimneys/chimneys.htm

If I understand you correctly your set on having the heater in the corner?

That being so, I would build a brick / stone 4'x4' alcove to the ceiling,

use metalbestos pipe from the ceiling to the rain cap,

& enclose the pipe in a cedar shingled chase. ;-)

Good luck with it.

 

[woodconvert]

I hate to run a stainless chimney up the exterior at the front corner of the house. Any drawbacks from going with a conventional brick chimney with a clay flue liner?

Yep...some drawbacks.

Drawbacks as I see them: Less forgiving if you don't burn 24/7. Masonry chimneys need to be hot to work efficiently and kept hot.
It takes a lot of wood to get them hot in the middle of winter which means if you don't burn 24/7 you'll use more wood
and give more chance for creosote to build up on start ups.

Less forgiving with questionably seasoned wood. I have a friend who burns wetter wood than I would ever think of but he has
a stainless (tripple wall) chimney. He cleans it every two years and says he gets little creosote. I generally clean my masonry chimney once
in the fall and once before first snow/heavy burning. I don't get a lot of creosote but I run it hot all the time, burn good dry wood and I don't choke it all the way
down at night and thus the chimney doen't cool much.

Having said that...you CAN safely go with a masonry chimney but you need to be ahead of the learning curve as far as the quality of your wood and how much crosote buildup you get. Were it possible for me to do all over again, knowing what I know now, I would go with the stainless double/tripple wall stainless and either build a brick chimney around it or soffit it out and cultured stone it.

A) do what's safest and correct to code and stove manufacturer specs
B) choose what looks the best with your house

 

[Tfin]

I ran single wall pipe from my stove in the living room straight up to the celling where it connects to a celling support box that's secured to my roof trusses. From there its stainless insulated double wall class A pipe up and throught the roof. Except for the three feet that sticks up above the roof, the entire chimney is enclosed by the house. Great draft and little creosote with this setup.