Not particularly happy w/insert

I have a HI300 insert and it works fairly decent but if I had to do it all over again, it would be a free stander for sure. Don't get the heat I want and the stove temps cruise between 600-800 degrees.

Lousy that you're not getting what you want. I saw pics of your layout and it really is not a great situation to install a free standing stove. Is the room the insert is in hot? Looks like it would be blazing hot.

I see lots of guys with freestanders in their hearths and alot of them look fantastic that way. I love Joful's HUGE antique colonial hearths with the freestanders in them.......he gets efficient heat and you can still see the original hearth from the 1700's.

I am in a similar situation but I am pretty happy with my inserts output. Having said that I am modifing my set up!

I bought a 6" offset adapter from magnaflex that will allow me to set my insert 15" to 21" out onto my hearth, this should make a huge difference! I will have a ton of room in fireplace firebox to insulate with Roxul, line with a thin gauge metal, and then push the insert back in some. My hearth extension will be simple....I need to cut some carpet and put some 12" tile down onto concrete.the only combustibles I have are carpet near by. I was going to put the tile I anyway even though I already make the clearances. I will take pix of the process and post them here.

We are very happy with our Oslo sitting on our hearth.

We had to remove the old style fireplace glass doors from the stone front.

Our stone face is a mix of different types of lannon stone (cut face / feather edge face). Due to the irregular face, the stone had to be chiseled to fit the glass doors. When the doors were removed, the chisel marks were exposed.

At first I wanted to cover up the chisel marks with 'something' to show a cleaner install. These years later the marks were never covered up and I think it just adds character to our install.

If I had the room I would have went with a freestander over an insert, unfortunately I dont have the space. Id like to put a freestander in my see through though its kind of small and not sure I could pull it off.

For starters, do you have a block off plate installed?
Heating 2600sf with a Summit here. Might only get to 68-70 in the teens, but I can surely live with that.
I agree with BG, there has got to be more to this picture.

The room the stove is in never gets "super hot". The house is poorly insulated and I'm sure a ton of the heat gets eaten up by the walls etc... That and the staircase is at the other end of the room pulling all of the heat upstairs before it can get to the other side of the house.

I do not have a block off plate however I did stuff Roxul around the liner. The house is a mother to heat with the layout....I'm almost tossing around the idea of ripping down a wall to better circulate heat. It would also open my floor plan up substantially.

I think a beautiful freestanding woodstove is hard to beat but that's only my personal preferance. Seen a few sitting in fireplaces and they look great.

Sorry if you've posted all this before but how often are you burning? If it's a fire at a time or maybe two perhaps your just heating up the masonry and sending heat up the stairs like you said. Fire goes out things cool off again and start over.

I would not call my insert a great heater when compared to other configurations (flush mounted) but it gets a pretty big house comfortable especially when I can run it continuously over the weekend. The room it's in (30' x16') never gets that hot because I have very good layout for heat distribution so I get fairly even heating. A lot of heat goes up to the main level and then upstairs to the bedrooms.

If that is not the case something must be going on.

OR-.. if you can't knock a wall out, cut out an opening and re-frame it. I had a load bearing wall that pissed me off, so I cut out 3'vert.x 6'hor. and and made a "window" .
I have much better heat circulation through the "Front room", and a view of the hillside and creek from the dining room. Use your imagination.

Yes it is load bearing... I've got an estimate of $900.00 to have a beam installed as long as I do the demolition and rid of all debris... I have a company coming out Wednesday for the energy audit... Scheduled it in November!.

I know they are going to tell me I need insulation.....my response is not going to be good when I say "with what money"...lol

have you considered an energy audit from http://www.masssave.com ? The assessment is free and they subsidize any of the work you opt to have done. We just had our entire upstairs reinsulated for 500 dollars (75% subsidized). They'll air seal your house sill, change all your light bulbs out, and give you free programmable thermostats. This qualifies you for the Mass Save Heat Loan which can be up to 25k for 7 years and interest free. No obligation at all after the assessment. It's been great for us having bought a fixer upper home.

well, once again I should have read further before replying . Good that you're getting the assessment.

Thanks for the reply. They told me they will take $500 off of an insulation estimate. I'm going to try to get everything I can out of them.