Need some advice on insert and basement FP.

[pyper]

My wife and I have just made an offer on a house, and it's fairly likely we will end up with it.

So here is the current situation. It's an older ranch style house. Brick. One floor plus a daylight basement. There is a large brick chimney on the back side of the house, about in the middle. There is a large FP upstairs (currently with gas logs) and a medium FP in the basement. Half the basement is finished, and we intend to use at least one of the basement rooms regularly. The finished portion is fairly open to the unfinished portion, where the FP is. The laundry is in the same area. It's all nice and dry.

So here are the questions:

1) The upstairs room with the FP isn't very large. Probably 13 x 18. It's open to the kitchen, which is open to the dining room, which is open to the living room. So heat should move fairly well. The room does not seem large enough to accommodate a freestanding stove, so I am thinking an insert would be the most reasonable solution. How should I shop for an insert? What are the features that will make one insert work better than another?

2) If we put a freestanding stove in the basement, how much will it help keep the upstairs warm? The ceiling is open to the floor of the rooms mentioned above. It seems like heating the space would heat the floor and make it more comfortable upstairs. We could probably keep the basement door open. How much heat could reasonably be expect to rise up the stairs? They are around the corner from where the stove would be, but the area is fairly open from one to the other.

Some information that might help in giving useful advice:

We are in South Carolina, so it doesn't get that cold or stay very cold for too long.
We have a wood stove in our current house (Dutchwest) and it is in it's second season. We probably burn a cord of less of wood per year.

 

[Rudyjr]

We have an all brick ranch with an upstairs and basement fireplace. The basement fireplace is in a finished recroom/family room with a drwalled ceiling that takes up the front half of the basement. The back half is an unfinished utility/laundry/ furnace/ storage area seperated by a door. The fireplace is on the end wall of the room with an open staircase to the kitchen at the opposite end. We can pretty much heat our house comfortably with our insert but we really only burn on weekends 24/7. The first thing you need to do is make an accurate dimensional drawing of your fireplace and find out the condition, height, and construction of the chimney. The size of the firebox can sometimes limit your choices of stoves. The construction and condition of your chimney will determine your liner requirements. There are many choices of styles sizes and types of inserts, and everbody has different taste when it comes to appearances. I have a Jotul Kennebec c450 that we love both the look and performance of, there is a link in my signature showing the installation. We have friends who have inserts that I helped install, one has a Lopi Declaration and one has two Pacific Energy's , one Vista and one Summit. In all of these cases the wives had input on selection due to looks and you will see all of these stoves look far differently from each other, but they are great heaters.

 

[pyper]

Thanks Rudy. Your insert looks nice. Assuming our offer is accepted, by the time we close the heating season will be pretty much over here, so I will have plenty of time to do things right.