Advice on Fireplace upgrade

[Fetz]

Hi all, I wanted to get some opinions on my situation before we have to deal with any salespeople or spend any money.

We bought this house a year ago. It has a Harman Accentra pellet insert that was installed in the living room in 2006. We used it a little bit this winter just for entertainment purposes. While it was certainly convenient to just dump some pellets in and turn a dial, it was quite noisy and lacked a certain charm. From an emergency preparedness standpoint I am also not crazy about needing electricity to run AND a fuel source that must be bought from a store. It's also 18 years old so I'm not sure how much life expectancy it has left.

Should I replace this with a wood burning insert? Between our few acres of timber and occasional "free wood" facebook posts, I think I could effectively supply enough firewood for our needs. We would NOT be using this as a primary heat source, but I would probably use it as often as our wood supply would allow. I enjoy working outdoors and I enjoy building fires, though I've never had a wood burning stove before.

From a design standpoint, is there any reason to suspect compatibility issues with putting a wood burning insert in here? We did have a guy come out to clean/inspect the flue but the insert is mortared into the stone and he'd never seen a pellet insert so he would not clean it. He did say the flue looked very narrow but didn't have a lot of build-up. Will the carpet be an issue?

Anything else I need to consider? and any recommendations on a good insert? Ideally one we could claim the 30% credit on.

Thanks in advance for the guidance! Looking forward to learning more from this forum.

 

[begreen]

Pellet stove venting requirements and woodstove venting are very different in the insulation requirements, sizing, and clearances.

It's going to take some discovery as to what is the pellet stove venting into. A guess would be some sort of Zero Clearance fireplace. If so, putting a wood stove in may be prohibited, especially if it was a gas unit.

 

[EbS-P]

Run the pellet stove until it dies. It will be cheaper than a new insert. Can you store 1 ton of pellets inside? There is $400 for a year or two. An other option is to install a new chimney and stove in a different location.

 

[stoveliker]

A zero clearance fireplace might be possible - but you'd still need a fully new flue.

A flush unit would also possibly avoid having to add floor protection in front of the hearth.