Little Cabin In Northern Wisconsin

[Tom5151]

Good afternoon,

I hope I am asking this question in the right forum. Please forgive me if that is not the case.

My question is fairly simple. I think.

My wife and I purchased a little 700 square foot cabin the north-woods of Wisconsin a couple years ago. This cabin had been neglected for some time. It was essentially a seasonal cabin when we bought it. It was heated by one very old natural gas space heater and they had a very old wood-burning stove located basically right in the middle of the living room.

Well, slowly but surely we have been upgrading and renovating the entire cabin. We pulled out the old wood-burner and installed a forced air heating system. Now the cabin can be used year round. We are coming to the living room portion of the remodel. Mainly for aesthetic purposes and the occasional cozy warm fire in the dead of winter, we want to install a new wood-burner or fireplace. It has to be wood-burning either way. The wife wants nothing but wood and I have to admit, I agree. Rather than install it back in the center of the room, we have decided to reposition it on one of the walls where it makes most sense for the room arrangement.

The main problem/challenge is the lack of square footage. Putting a wood-burner on this particular wall will cause it to have to stick out fairly far into the living space in order to keep it far enough away from the wall behind it, effectively taking away a good portion of the limited space we have there already. The other option would be to bump out the wall and do some type of fireplace arrangement which would help in terms of freeing up space inside but would be fairly expensive. We don't want to spend huge money to install a full-blown fireplace with chimney etc. I have read about some of the pre-fab fireplace units and wondered if this might be a good fit for our situation. Again we won't use it a lot. It's more for ambiance and aestheticss and the occasional warmth during the dead of winter. What would be a cost effective but decent way to do what we want to do?

Please let me know if you I can provide more information.

Thanks in advance.

Tom

 

[dougand3]

Tom, welcome to the forum. Look at boat stoves...here's one place. http://www.marinestove.com/sproducthistory.htm. Tiny footprint and will provide heat. A prefab fireplace (like contractors put into $150k spec houses) is not really for heating - just ambiance. The do have zero clearnace FPs and inserts for true heat capability. Having a true heat source for winter power outages would be a big plus.

 

[Tom5151]

Tom, welcome to the forum. Look at boat stoves...here's one place. http://www.marinestove.com/sproducthistory.htm. Tiny footprint and will provide heat. A prefab fireplace (like contractors put into $150k spec houses) is not really for heating - just ambiance. The do have zero clearnace FPs and inserts for true heat capability. Having a true heat source for winter power outages would be a big plus.

Thank you very much......the boat stove idea is very interesting...never even heard of them.....So the zero clerance FPs are a type of FP? And they have inserts for true heating capability? I think we would want some nice heat from time to time, not just purely for looks.........i really appreictae your help.....

 

[daveswoodhauler]

Hi Tom - Anyway you could draw a pic of the floorplan....might get some good ideas' if we can see for the word impaired folks like me

 

[Tom5151]

Hi Tom - Anyway you could draw a pic of the floorplan....might get some good ideas' if we can see for the word impaired folks like me

I can certainly try to do that. I can probabaly get a picture a lot easier.....would that help? I can get a picture of the wall where it is going to go........I would say it's about a 15 foot long wall and i am going to have a floor to ceiling window on either side.......We have 8 foot ceilings.......I will do my best to get a picture or floorplan.....

Thank you.

 

[branchburner]

Look in to the small stoves by Jotul as well.

 

[Tom5151]

does a zero clearance FP still require a chimney? I have read a couple sites and one seems to be saying you don't need a chimney and the other one says you do......

 

[daveswoodhauler]

Look in to the small stoves by Jotul as well.

I'm thinking a Jotul F3cb would mighty fine in there....might be a good heater for the size of the cabin. (Plus, you can get the optional fireplace screen for the MRs's......can you tell I miss my old F3CB)

 

[Tom5151]

Look in to the small stoves by Jotul as well.

I'm thinking a Jotul F3cb would mighty fine in there....might be a good heater for the size of the cabin. (Plus, you can get the optional fireplace screen for the MRs's......can you tell I miss my old F3CB)

i just took a look at their site.....seems nice but no cost.......roughly what does a unti like that run in terms of price? I would imagine the distance you have to keep it away from the back wall would be dependent upon what material that back wall was made from, correct?

 

[daveswoodhauler]

With the rear heatshield (mine came with it) and doublewall pipe, I think the specs call for 10" from a combustible wall.
Cost I am not sure of....was perhaps $1200 or so when I got mine in 2002...guessing $1600 or so now?

 

[Tom5151]

With the rear heatshield (mine came with it) and doublewall pipe, I think the specs call for 10" from a combustible wall.
Cost I am not sure of....was perhaps $1200 or so when I got mine in 2002...guessing $1600 or so now?

got it........and I assume this is probabaly not a DIY project?........needs a professional installer?

 

[dougand3]

If you are handy with saw, drill, hammer, tape measure and your roof pitch doesn't scare you...it is a DIYer project. Download a manual for install instructions and read up. I got my chimney at Lowes - it's called Selkirk Supervent Class A chimney. http://www.selkirkcorp.com/supervent/ Other big box stores near you may have Class A chimney.

 

[daveswoodhauler]

Well, that depends on how handy you are.
Had a stove installed in my first home, and an insert in the second home.
Based on the info I have learned here, I would tackle a DIY know should I need another stove. (I wasn't comforable with it with my first stove)
I think that if you do enough research, and are comfortable getting on your roof for some carpentry, it might be something you could do on your own.
Have you built/fixed anything before?

 

[wendell]

I would also look at the small Morsos. I believe they all come with a built in heat shield and have low rear clearances.

 

[Hogwildz]

Pictures, pixtures & more pictures. Lets see this cabin.

 

[tutu_sue]

A couple of low footprint stoves to consider would be Napoleon 1100, Alderlea T4, Jotul F100 and Hearthstone Tribute. How wide is the room and how much clearance from the wall to where furniture or people will be?

 

[n3pro]

Good purchase. I am a part of an Amateur Radio club that is leasing a 100 year old ranger cabin so we are a little limited in what we do. We have a barrel stove and ceramic boards surrounding it in the corner. Fun project, nice get a way. http://www.lrts.org/cabin/pictures.asp

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Nice! Cozy. But they must have gotten tired of frequent breakins, thus all the bricked up windows and steel doors, etc.

I don't like your chances if a fire gets started in there. Be careful!

 

[DBoon]

Some assumptions I have made in reading the original posting are as follows:

1. It's very cold in the north woods of Wisconsin. It would be common to be well below 0 degrees in the wintertime.
2. The cabin will be used in the winter.
3. The cabin will not be occupied all the time in the winter, but might be re-heated from a very low temperature.
4. The cabin insulation is adequate, but not exceptional.

Most of the stoves that I have heard recommended and that I recognize so far are pretty small (Hearthstone Tribute, for instance). I also heard that he needs as small a clearance as possible.

Why not looking into the Lopi Answer or PE Vista? These are small stoves with a wraparound jacket that reduces clearance requirements and makes an ideal air cavity to use a blower with (they are designed to be self-convective through this air cavity, but the blower helps a lot). They are both ~1.6 cubic feet, would work well in the fall and spring with small loads, and could crank out some serious heat if you are trying to re-heat or stay warm on a really cold night.

 

[n3pro]

Nice! Cozy. But they must have gotten tired of frequent breakins, thus all the bricked up windows and steel doors, etc.

I don't like your chances if a fire gets started in there. Be careful!

Yea, unfortunately before we got it there was a lot of vandals it was a frequent Friday night group of people and a keg of beer type place. The forestry department was going to tear it down because of the lack of use and the problems.

One of the guys who used to live there in his preteens - now 78 actually came up a few weeks ago. He visits once a year with this brother; claims he has pictures of it "back in the day". We are trying to figure how six people lived there!. No electric at the time, no plumbing or running water (still not). The guy says they would take turns walking a mile and a half to the spring to get water. Glad we have convenience store five miles away now!

I love to see these place fixed up, hope to see more pictures as you progress.

 

[Ratman]

Good purchase. I am a part of an Amateur Radio club that is leasing a 100 year old ranger cabin so we are a little limited in what we do. We have a barrel stove and ceramic boards surrounding it in the corner. Fun project, nice get a way. http://www.lrts.org/cabin/pictures.asp

I love the cabin. Absolutely love it.
Was that a picture of a barrel stove on your link? Only the thumbnail was available so I couldn't tell.

Looks very very similar to our area up here in NH next to the Uncanoonuc Mountains in Goffstown.
The south mountain here next to my house has the largest collection of electronic transmission equipment in the Northeast.

Here's a link to my Uncanoonuc Mountains page: http://home.comcast.net/~drat/Uncanoonuc.htm

My friends are amateur radio guys too.
Here's my friend Dan's weather page: http://www.windgust.com/
He is one of the radio club officers. He has some real nice equipment and huge antennas at his house.

 

[mranum]

Sometime on your way up there stop at Stevens Point and make a 1/2 mile detour off of I-39 and talk with these guys. http://www.snowbeltfireplace.com/

Really good people there easy to talk to and lots of advice and the best prices anywhere around here. At least they were last year when we bought a small high efficiency fireplace from them.

 

[kenny chaos]

I love them stone buildings.
It's almost a miniature of my crib.