Good morning. Like many others, I find myself here for the first time asking for some advice on burning wood. We bought a 1970s ranch home with a finished basement in northeast Tennessee last year. The living room has a large traditional fireplace (heatilator) in the living room with one wall dedicated to it (stone fasade) . Our chimney sweep cleaned, inspected and advised it was not safe to burn wood in directly due to cracking tiles in the chimney, and he advised we could have a stove or insert installed with a liner running through the chimney. We strongly prefer an insert with a surround to overlap the stonework around the fireplace opening. Our chimney sweep can do the install work, but does not sell stoves/inserts. Our local hearth company has not been much help unfortunately, simply pointing me at a few websites. So now we are doing our own research and learning as we are quite green.
The fireplace is on the farthest east wall of the house and the living room itself is 13' X 36'. The kitchen and dining rooms (combined are about the same size as the living room) are connected to the living room with 2 large door openings (no doors). As a typical ranch, a central hallway with bedrooms/bathroom is on the other end of the house. Currently we are using HVAC for the only source of heat and the primary use case for burning wood is to heavily offset the cost of running HVAC. Wife works from home most of the time and we are mostly at home most of the time when not working anyway. The basement will soon have a vent free propane stove installed that will be used occasionally for ambiance when downstairs. Wood is in great supply on the property. There is a vent/duct work with a blower fan that pulls air from the living room ceiling and to the far end of the hallway ceiling as well.
The information given by the chimney sweep for dimensions are:
Front opening width: 45"
Front opening height: 28"
Side walls, slanting back to rear wall: 26"
Rear wall width: 37"
Total height of unit with vertical outlet can be 25.5"
Recommend unit with 6" vent as it will minimize deconstruction of original firebox.
I appreciate any advice you all may have to offer on this. I am new to burning wood, but excited to get this going before next winter. We are currently collecting and splitting wood in anticipation. I don't want to get something that is too big and puts off so much heat that it can only be used on the coldest of days, nor do I want to be struggling to keep it going and not getting enough useful heat to make it worth it. I want to buy something good that will hopefully last 20-30 years, and not spend too much of a fortune on it since we only need it for a few months a year. Osburn has came up in conversations a few times, and we like the look of the Matrix 2700, but wasn't sure if it was too much stove. We are new and clueless to this world of stoves, inserts, splitting wood, reburn, and cats!
Thanks!
The fireplace is on the farthest east wall of the house and the living room itself is 13' X 36'. The kitchen and dining rooms (combined are about the same size as the living room) are connected to the living room with 2 large door openings (no doors). As a typical ranch, a central hallway with bedrooms/bathroom is on the other end of the house. Currently we are using HVAC for the only source of heat and the primary use case for burning wood is to heavily offset the cost of running HVAC. Wife works from home most of the time and we are mostly at home most of the time when not working anyway. The basement will soon have a vent free propane stove installed that will be used occasionally for ambiance when downstairs. Wood is in great supply on the property. There is a vent/duct work with a blower fan that pulls air from the living room ceiling and to the far end of the hallway ceiling as well.
The information given by the chimney sweep for dimensions are:
Front opening width: 45"
Front opening height: 28"
Side walls, slanting back to rear wall: 26"
Rear wall width: 37"
Total height of unit with vertical outlet can be 25.5"
Recommend unit with 6" vent as it will minimize deconstruction of original firebox.
I appreciate any advice you all may have to offer on this. I am new to burning wood, but excited to get this going before next winter. We are currently collecting and splitting wood in anticipation. I don't want to get something that is too big and puts off so much heat that it can only be used on the coldest of days, nor do I want to be struggling to keep it going and not getting enough useful heat to make it worth it. I want to buy something good that will hopefully last 20-30 years, and not spend too much of a fortune on it since we only need it for a few months a year. Osburn has came up in conversations a few times, and we like the look of the Matrix 2700, but wasn't sure if it was too much stove. We are new and clueless to this world of stoves, inserts, splitting wood, reburn, and cats!
Thanks!
