I am thinking about tearing out this fireplace and building some sort of alcove to house an ideal steel stove. All of the rock is real so I would not want to remove any of it. It will also have to be removed from the front as the back wall is a safe room. Would this be pretty difficult to remove? I have looked up videos but most of them were not helpful for my application as they were tearing out the surrounds as well. Give me some input!
How hard to tear out this ZC?
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jetsam
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Not enough info to go on there. (What is a 'safe room'? A room with a safe in it? A room with guns and ice cream? You can move a gun rack, but I guess a big safe or a soft serve machine might be harder.)
It generally is not hard to take one of them out the from just start taking everything apart from inside. It is all thin sheetmetal so you usually can pretty easily cut it apart and pull the pieces out the front. The hard part is that the chimney is usually supported by the fireplace which means it needs removed from the top first. That mean you need to pull the chase cover and get down in there to unhook it and have someone pull the parts up and out.
The real problem is then what are you going to do? You cant just slide a stove into that framed opening. You will not have anywhere near enough clearance to combustibles. And if you go with a high efficency zc unit the opening wont be big enough to fit the new one in. So regardless you will either need to go in from the back or pull down the stone surround.
Removing from the front would likely mean a serious demolition of the face of the fireplace. Is the saferoom metal lined on the fireplace backside? What would be involved with wall surgery from that side?
Like I said removal from the front is not that hard without disturbing the face but then you will have a hole that you really cant do anything with so it is kind of pointless.
The safe room is 10" of concrete reinforced with rebar so that is a no go as far as coming in from the back wall. If I were able to tear it out from the front could I not line the hole with an appropriate material to withstand the heat from a stove? I was thinking of only having the stove partially pushed back in the opening. The existing hearth is 24" deep. I would run an insulated liner through the existing chimney.
nope if that is a framed chase that the fireplace is in you need to honor the alcove clearance requirements there is no acceptable material to line that chase with to negate those requirements
The problem with that is there will be nothing supporting that chimney you would need to pull the old chimney out and replace it with an appropriate class a chimney
One option, if the flue collar height is under the the current door opening, might be to extend the hearth and rear vent the IS into an insulated liner in the current chimney. Might also be worth looking into the Progress Hybrid in this case due to the smaller front hearth requirement with side loading door.
I have been thinking of doing what you mentioned. The whole reason I am wanting to tear it out is due to the look of it if I were to put one on the hearth. I might just start tearing into it this spring and see what happens!
When I tore mine out, I didn't try to disassemble it, I just used a sawzall and started hacking pieces from it.
That works to. I prefer to do it with as little cutting as possible in customers houses though. And still once you get it out of there you wont have room to do anything with that opening unless you can access it from behind or you pull the face down.
That's a really nice looking fireplace. Is there another place in your home that you could install a free standing stove for real heat, and vent straight up through the roof, and save the other one for looks?
I have thought about putting a stove in our dining room that is on the other side of the house and venting it through the roof. The problem is we have a very open floor plan with high ceilings and the fireplace in the picture is in a central location. I think I would have a hard time moving heat from the dining room to the rest of the house due to the layout. The dining room does have a ventless gas fireplace that we never use that I might could remove. It has the same stone on it but does not have an extended hearth. It is flush from the fireplace all the way up the chimney.
If I tore everything out would I not be able to line the opening with durarock or whatever would be an appropriate fire rated material? I was thinking of framing the opening after I tear it out so that it would look nice and not be an eye sore.
It's good to plan an alcove installation carefully. The stove requirements will determine clearances. Even if the alcove is lined with cement board, the alcove clearance requirements are measured to the studs behind the cement board. Also pay attention to the ceiling height requirement for the stove. Many are 84".
If either needs to be a built to code masonry fireplace like is spelled out in this link to the code
http://www.rumford.com/code/clearances.html
Or you need to honor the alcove clearance requirements of the stove. That is just how it is Iam sorry just putting up some cement board does not do it.
I was planning on having the stove on the hearth and not pushing it back in the alcove. The main reason for tearing out the zc is for the look. I think it would be much cleaner if the fireplace was torn out and the opening was lined with stone or painted.
That could be done if you honor all required clearances. To the framing behind the noncombustibles
The manufacturer will give you all the clearance requirements. I've also seen installs where they have increase the R-value to a combustible by using 2 sheets of cement board that are screwed to the stud using iron pipe spacers 1 or 2' inches long to create an air gap. I don't have any details on exactly what is gained and it would obviously need to be calculated carefully. Hopefully someone can jump in here and clarify better than I've been able to do.
Sketch out your ideas. It doesn't cost anything to play around with it on paper. This is a good planning exercise. Pick out a stove. Do a front view and a top view indicating stove location, clearances and the hearth dimension.
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