heatilator, ideas wanted?

[df0rster]

We are wanting an indoor fireplace w/ a chimney going all the way up the cathedral gable wall. I have talked with a fireplace store for a prefab unit, like a heatilator constitution or similar and it seems like they install everything after the framing is complete and frame up your chimney walls and put stone or veneer on that to simulate a full size masonry chimney similar to what we want. My wife also wants an outdoor fireplace sharing the same masonry chimney to look like a single large chimney that protrudes outside and all the way up.

I guess my questions is this, is it better to do pretty much two separate installations and then just connect the chimney framing together at the peak and put veneer on the chimney to make it look like a single large chimney structure? Most of these new fireplace dealers don't know much about this and there aren't a lot of good rock masons that are going to want to do heatilator type prefab units with lightweight stone, I've talked to a couple already and they want to build everything from scratch and use real stone which would be nice if we could afford all that. And another plus w/ the heatilator is that you can actually heat the entire house (so they claim up to 3000 sqft).

I have a separate question about tying the fireplace supply air into the central air handler. Is that recommended or not? Seems like it would be more efficient but you don't hear much talk about that.

thanks.

 

[Tony H]

I have a heatilator and I am not sure what model but it has outside air intake and the firebox surround with multispeed fan. All in all it's a pretty nice unit and we went with a tile surround as it's not a high ceiling.
I would check carefully about the claim of heating the house.... mine said it could heat up to 1500sf of something like that and I will be glad to tell you it is damn near worthless for heating the house. It warms up the family room and kitchen area where it's installed but not much more and the fan is loud as heck and has the power of an 80 year old blowing out candles on a birthday cake.. I considered taking it out and putting in an insert but went with a boiler instead. The fireplace is only good as a ambiance provider.
I have heard that some of the tile installers are the ones doing the faux stone stuff

 

[DAKSY]

I have a heatilator and I am not sure what model but it has outside air intake and the firebox surround with multispeed fan. All in all it's a pretty nice unit and we went with a tile surround as it's not a high ceiling.
I would check carefully about the claim of heating the house.... mine said it could heat up to 1500sf of something like that and I will be glad to tell you it is damn near worthless for heating the house. It warms up the family room and kitchen area where it's installed but not much more and the fan is loud as heck and has the power of an 80 year old blowing out candles on a birthday cake.. I considered taking it out and putting in an insert but went with a boiler instead. The fireplace is only good as a ambiance provider.
I have heard that some of the tile installers are the ones doing the faux stone stuff

The Constitution is an EPA rated woodstove, designed to look like a fireplace, zero clearance type & CAN heat a well insulated home.
What you have is a zero clearance fireplace that is NOT EPA rated. It is for ambiance only. It will NOT throw heat..
It may add WARMTH to the room it's in, but nowhere else in your home.
BIG difference between what the OP is talking about & what you have...

 

[df0rster]

Thanks for the info. I have talked to several fireplace stores, most don't really know that much about their own products. The buck stove store knew the most really. His opinion was that these zero clearance fireplaces were all toys compared with the Buck master. But of course... I like the look of the arched top Constitution and there are others like Quadra and Napoleon that make these zero clearance fireplaces that can heat the house. Are there any I am overlooking?

Bad thing about the Napoleon is that she said you have to frame up with metal studs and use hardi cement board, the others are insulated well enough that you can use wood frame.

Any opinoins about the dual fireplace setup yet?

 

[woodracerx]

look at the heatnglo northstar

 

[73blazer]

The north star is the same exact unit as the constitution and are similarly price. Different fascia. The Quad 7100 is almost the same unit, just slight larger firebox, and is certified for better vent pipe rather than the SL300 pipe the constitution/north star take. I bought a North Star last year and installed it myself.

I agree, most people selling these things don't know a darn thing about them. I posted about this several times last year when I was shopping, it was so frustrating. There's a couple guys here running stores that knew everything about them and thie rstores would go out and do estimates and see what you go going on, and perform the installation if you want. It's just too darn bad their stores weren't around me. I visited at least 10 stores in Michigan and Ohio, not one of them was what I would call knowledgeable about the quad7100/northstar/constitution. I even wrote Home & hearth technologies after one place tried to quote me some regular double wall insulated stove pipe for the North Star unit, which is ONLY certified for SL300 venting. None of them did installs, they just sold. Which I found really interesting, it was like, how the heck are these things even selling, who's installing them. a couple places gave me a list of contractors that would do the install, but most places just said, we will deliver the unit to your job site or you can save money by picking it up. End of story. You might find a decent store out there if you keep trying. Who knows. I got the impression that most of these places I visited sold gas fireplace units to builders and off the street customers weren't something they were used to dealing with.

There are alot of ZC fireplace units that are just open, ambiance wood fireplace, that is what I tore out to install the North Star Unit. My North star heats GREAT. I have a 2500sqft home with 28' ceilings and it will keep the house at 72-75 until the temp outside drops below 15 degrees or so. Even then it will maintain temp, I just have trouble to have it warm up the place in the morning from 65-72 if it's really cold out. The overnight burn will drop to 65 degrees in the home or so and if it's below 15 or so outside, it just won't be able to heat up the house, it will maintain, but heat up is tough. But my house is a leaky, tall SOB, so your results will differ. Of course a stove is more efficient at transferring the created heat to the home, but I would have no issues heating my place with a fireplace, it does just fine, that thing really throws the heat.

I too was looking at first for trying to use the furnace blower to blow the heat around. I think there was only 1 or 2 fireplace units that allowed that. Most specifically said not to. I'm not positive why you don't see/hear more about it, I found that odd too, but I tghink it has something to do with saftey..rah rah..insurance companys hear of your central blower hooked up to a fireplace and the adjusters get visions of hot coals flying out your heater vents or something. I don't really know, there was at least 1 unit that allowed it though, I don't remember the name of it off hand. The north star with it's blower, however, heats great. The blower is a tad noisy, not annoying or anything, it's constant at least so after a while your mind kind of tunes it out. What I find best is, my house thermostat has a option to run the blower in "refresh" mode, it cycles the blower only by itself on every 20 minutes of every hour. This distributes the heat fairly well throughout the home and keeps the upstairs from getting too hot.

I think you could easily use one chimney chase for both chimneys, you just have to make sure it's big enough to hold both vent pipes. I don't believe there are any issues with placing 2 vent pipes in the same chimney chase. So would be a rather large chase.