Made a big decision. The wood stove has got to go...

[SnapCracklePop]

...upstairs!

Made ya look, didn't I?

After much soul searching, I've decided my project for this year is to move the Pleasant Hearth upstairs to the dining/kitchen area. Those rooms have no electric baseboard heat, since the previous owner did some remodeling and never got around to that part. The far end of the dining area is just about perfect. It's in the middle of the main floor; there's a window nearby that I can open to dump firewood inside; and I'll be screening in the back porch nearby (when the weather turns cold, firewood will go in there). Hey, a 12 by 16 "woodshed" just steps away. How can ya improve on that?

I'll still have a 20,000BTU LP heater in the basement for occasional use.

------------------------

The Pleasant Hearth is becoming one of the family. She talks to me. I pamper her. We're both getting cabin fever in the basement.

Next winter will be happy time.

Nancy

 

[BrotherBart]

Excellent move.

 

[pen]

wish I had the room to do it.

Good move.

pen

 

[mcollect]

wow, great idea, I have a screened in porch on the same floor as the insert. What a great place to store my wood. Thanks!!

 

[PapaDave]

Nancy, Nancy, Nancy.
I HAD to check this out to see who would make such a decision.
'Ya got me. Sounds like a good plan.

 

[Dix]

Ah, vindicated

Go Nanc

 

[VCBurner]

You had us going there!

I moved mine upstairs this November and have noticed a great decrease in wood consumption and better temps on the main floor. I'm very happy about the transplant! I'm sure you will be too. Good luck.

 

[wkpoor]

you must not have a walkout basement. I wouldn't dream of moving mine upstairs. Might add one though.

 

[Todd]

Sounds like a good plan. Why not have another wood burner in the basement to play with?

 

[Dix]

Sounds like a good plan. Why not have another wood burner in the basement to play with?

Enabler :lol:

 

[RedGuy]

I know I would eventually like to add a stove to the basement. My stove now does a good job at heating the upper 3 floors, but since the furnace never runs that leaves my basement quite chilly, in the 50 deg range.

BTW How are you liking your Pleasent Hearth? I've been pretty happy with mine, heats my 1,800sqft house well, even installed in my masonary fireplace. It's not hard on wood as I'm going through about 1 cord a month. The one thing I haven't figured out yet is how to get a good long burn out of it. After about 3 hours I'm down to nothing but coals, and while I can go to bed and still wake up with coals 8-9 hours later, to me they don't seem to produce much useful heat. While I'm home during the day it's no big deal as I can feed it all day, usually throughing a split in ever hour or so to maintain a pretty constant 5-600deg in the center of the stove top. At night or if I'm not home though it'd be nice to get a longer burn. So I consider it to really have a 3 hour burn.

I've also noticed my blower is starting to produce an intermittant dull rattle, not sure if it's just loose or going bad as I can access my blower with the stove installed the way I have it. Wouldn't suprise me if it is going bad though as it probably gets hotter than intended with the stove confined in a small area as I have it.

 

[snowleopard]

...
Made ya look, didn't I?

Yes! :coolmad:

Leaving a stove in the basement all by itself is like putting a speckled puppy on a chain in the backyard next to a freeway in a cold rain with disco music and soggy dog food.

 

[raybonz]

The upside is a much warmer main home the downside is a very cold cellar.. My cellar gets so cold you can see your breath down there lol.. Be careful not to overload your deck with firewood as it can collapse with too much weight (found this out on my old deck which is the floor of my wood shelter now)...

Ray

 

[Battenkiller]

you must not have a walkout basement. I wouldn't dream of moving mine upstairs. Might add one though.

Yeah, the walkout basement makes it all so much easier. I wheel the stuff in with a hand cart, take aim, and snap the cart full upright into the end of the pile. If all goes right, it practically stacks itself. I can't imagine feeding the stiff through a window or carrying it downstairs. Not 5 cord a year. I can't imagine not having at least one stove in the basement, either. I think a lot of folks could get by with a small stove upstairs as long as they had a big heater in the basement. But, just like Nancy, the stove and I are starting to get cabin fever down there and we're both only halfway through the winter.

 

[Jags]

Nancy - ya wanna take a bet? I will bet that your move will produce a living area that is more comfortable than you have ever been. Good move in my opinion.

But don't scare me like that anymore...I banged my mouse so hard trying to click the thread that the batteries fell out.

 

[Todd]

Sounds like a good plan. Why not have another wood burner in the basement to play with?

Enabler :lol:

I've been called worse. :lol:

 

[Shari]

I banged my mouse so hard trying to click the thread that the batteries fell out.

I can see the headlines now, "Man charged with battery towards mouse!"

Good move, Nancy, beware though the enablers here will probably talk you into a second stove.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Good decision Nancy. I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised at the difference and you will be much more comfortable. Also, you won't have to go up and down those stairs to tend the stove.

 

[VCBurner]

you must not have a walkout basement. I wouldn't dream of moving mine upstairs. Might add one though.

I do have a walk out basement. It also has a garage that takes up a quarter of it where I store some of the wood (usually anough for a week at a time.) It was convenient to just load the stove from the garage, but it is even more convenient to have the stove in the room where I spend the most time. I can re-load and watch the fire without having to go downstairs. The heat level has gone up on the main floor and the wood consumption has gone down. I bring up two plastic totes at a time and stack the wood 17" from the stove. It usually takes me 24 hours to burn that amount. I only have to go downstairs to get the totes full, but I usually send the kids down there to get the wood. So, sometimes I don't even go down there for a couple days. One thing I miss is the radiant heat that used to come up through the floor in my bedroom. The stove was directly below. I am looking for another stove to put down there! We are having another baby boy in May, so 'm going to refinish the downstairs into a playroom/bedroom for my other boys. I'd like a soapstone that stores the heat for long periods of time so we can let it go for the day and start fires in the afternoon and re-load for an overnight!

If you add one upstairs you'll love it and may use the downstairs stove less than you'd think. At least that was my experience! Good luck.

 

[SnapCracklePop]

Lemme answer a couple of questions/suggestions:

I might give some more thought to keeping the stove in the basement and getting another, except that I have an LP heater in the basement that does a fine job taking the chill off if I want to shoot pool or do laundry... I got the heater last year, and it's just sitting there...

No danger of a collapsing deck, as the screened porch is a concrete slab and the deck nearby sits on more concrete slab. There's no place to fall...

While I do have to go up and down stairs to tend the stove, I chuck firewood into the basement via a window, a chute and the big cardboard box that my DuraFlex liner came in.

I, too, get only about three hours of solid heat from this Pleasant Hearth, but since I'm sorta retired (I operate a small dog boarding kennel out back) I'm home 99% of the time. I really like the Pleasant Hearth, especially since it cost only $629 on sale. I've come to understand its wants and needs, its quirks, the clunk-dingdingding-ping song it sings, etc. I know exactly how much wood I can cram in there without going thermonuclear...

I'm not totally ruling out a second stove; a lot will depend on how business goes this summer.

I've studied my future hearth site, and it will work fine. The roof trusses are just about where they should be, and I won't have to be too much of a contortionist to crawl thru the trusses to get to the worksite...

Ciao.

 

[SnapCracklePop]

I've also noticed my blower is starting to produce an intermittant dull rattle, not sure if it's just loose or going bad as I can access my blower with the stove installed the way I have it. Wouldn't suprise me if it is going bad though as it probably gets hotter than intended with the stove confined in a small area as I have it.

I rarely use the blower on mine, but sometimes it makes a noise that sounds to me like a plastic gear grinding just a bit... Maybe they all do that?

 

[SnapCracklePop]

...
Made ya look, didn't I?

Yes! :coolmad:

Leaving a stove in the basement all by itself is like putting a speckled puppy on a chain in the backyard next to a freeway in a cold rain with disco music and soggy dog food.

As we speak, I have Scout, a female Black Lab, one year old this month, sleeping in front of the fire. She belonged to an irresponsible family who thought tying her to a tree with a 5-foot rope was OK. She had only a 2-foot section of corrugated pipe to sleep in. She didn't have the freeway or the disco music, but she had the rest of your scenario. I adopted her last August, and she's in heaven -- access via doggie door to about 3/4 acre of fenced yard. Also, she has my two other dogs to torment. They're also rescues... a Beagle mix and a deaf Dalmatian.

Scout does a fantastic job keeping an eye on the squirrels and chippies raiding the birdfeeders. Yesterday, all three dogs protected me from a possum that explored the birdfeeders and one of my woodpiles before meandering into the woods back of the house. It was almost 40* here, and I guess the thing was hungry.

 

[SnapCracklePop]

Crikey! A new stove just fell from the sky.

Well, $$$ for one, anyway. I just learned that I have $951.02 coming from the "involuntary distribution" of a retirement annuity from a former job. I'm vested because I'm over age 65. I should get the check in about 3 weeks.

Hmmm. A second stove upstairs looks promising. Besides, when the guys deliver it, they can set it down right where I want it. I don't have to break a sweat.

I can move the LP heater to my dog kennel, I think... Gotta check with the gas guys...

Whee.

 

[RedGuy]

I've also noticed my blower is starting to produce an intermittant dull rattle, not sure if it's just loose or going bad as I can access my blower with the stove installed the way I have it. Wouldn't suprise me if it is going bad though as it probably gets hotter than intended with the stove confined in a small area as I have it.

I rarely use the blower on mine, but sometimes it makes a noise that sounds to me like a plastic gear grinding just a bit... Maybe they all do that?

Mine actually ran very smooth for the first couple months. I don't think I'd call it plastic gears grinding, but kinda like it's shaking the sheet metal it's screwed to alittle. Mine runs basically 24/7 since I want to keep air moving over it with it set back in my fireplace. Guess as long as it keeps going it's ok til spring when I can pull the stove and see what's really going on back there.

BTW I see you have a 5 ton electric log splitter, I was looking at one of those at Tractor Supply, how's it working for you?

 

[wkpoor]

you must not have a walkout basement. I wouldn't dream of moving mine upstairs. Might add one though.

I do have a walk out basement. It also has a garage that takes up a quarter of it where I store some of the wood (usually anough for a week at a time.) It was convenient to just load the stove from the garage, but it is even more convenient to have the stove in the room where I spend the most time. I can re-load and watch the fire without having to go downstairs. The heat level has gone up on the main floor and the wood consumption has gone down. I bring up two plastic totes at a time and stack the wood 17" from the stove. It usually takes me 24 hours to burn that amount. I only have to go downstairs to get the totes full, but I usually send the kids down there to get the wood. So, sometimes I don't even go down there for a couple days. One thing I miss is the radiant heat that used to come up through the floor in my bedroom. The stove was directly below. I am looking for another stove to put down there! We are having another baby boy in May, so 'm going to refinish the downstairs into a playroom/bedroom for my other boys. I'd like a soapstone that stores the heat for long periods of time so we can let it go for the day and start fires in the afternoon and re-load for an overnight!

If you add one upstairs you'll love it and may use the downstairs stove less than you'd think. At least that was my experience! Good luck.

The main entry to our house is the walkout basement and that is were we set up camp both winter and summer. Couches and big screen are down there so we really consider it our 1st floor or main living area. I guess as long as we can maintain anything close 68 degrees on the next 2 floors it will be a hard sell to ad a stove upstairs. In reality there are only a few days a year when the weather is really bad out that I would like a stove upstairs. Don't know if that justifies the expense.