Alcove Installation and Custom Firewood Box Built In Ideas?

[Farm~Girl]

We took out our pellet stove when we did a remodel last winter (blech pellet stoves are not for us!), and just used our propane furnace for the last year and half when needed. We have been searching for a nice used stove and the journey has been long. Earlier this last week I was feeling defeated we had looked at a few and they were all just not the right fit for our home (too plain and boring looking, too expensive, too big, too small, too cheaply built, or wouldn't work with our ceiling joist spacing etc.) I was about to settle for a plainer more utilitarian look and resolved to the fact that I'd have to stare at this boring box and dust it year round and not love this feature of our home, but at least we'd have warmth in winter right?

Then "it" appeared on my computer screen yesterday morning! I was scrolling down the local Facebook Classifieds page for our area and I came across a beautiful Woodstock Fireview stove! I fell in love instantly and we paid $750 for the stove, some single wall pipe (that we can't use in this install), ash bucket and shovel, cast iron steamer pot, metal firewood bin, and about 3/4 of a cord of firewood! The stove does need a new catalytic combustor which I see are about $150 to replace so that is fine with us.

Anyway, now we are trying to decide how to orient it in the house, we have space to do an alcove installation and I think we would really like the look of a hearth and mantle to really feature the stove similar to a fireplace. How many of you have done this? Any tips?

Also, growing up we had a wood box that was about 3' by 4' and we filled it from a door outside our home and got wood out of it from inside our home. It was pretty cool. It had an exterior door that was about 30"x24" tall and it had a key lock on it and door knob like an exterior door (so no one could crawl into our home haha). I would like to do something similar, but I can't orient it exactly how my parents did so I am looking for ideas, I am sure some of you creative folks have done some similar things. I think it would help cut down on the mess and energy loss from having to haul wood in the open front door each time.

We are so excited about this stove and getting it installed for this fall! The funny part is we bought this stove on a day that it was over 100 degrees! Probably why we got such a good deal, not many people shopping for wood stoves right now I suppose. haha

 

[webby3650]

Something like this?

 

[Grisu]

Congrats! That is a great find especially on the west coast. Have you taken a look at the clearances for an alcove install? The Fireview is a more radiant stove and would need a pretty large and deep opening. In addition, it is a dedicated side-loader. Honestly, probably one of the less than ideal stoves to install into an alcove. I would leave it out in the open to enjoy the radiant heat it gives off.

Make sure you get more than a 3/4 cord of wood for that stove. It will also need to have less than 20% of internal moisture which requires stacking the split firewood in a sunny and windy location for one to three years depending on the species. Have you taken care of that yet?

 

[webby3650]

Congrats! That is a great find especially on the west coast. Have you taken a look at the clearances for an alcove install? The Fireview is a more radiant stove and would need a pretty large and deep opening. In addition, it is a dedicated side-loader. Honestly, probably one of the less than ideal stoves to install into an alcove. I would leave it out in the open to enjoy the radiant heat it gives off.

Make sure you get more than a 3/4 cord of wood for that stove. It will also need to have less than 20% of internal moisture which requires stacking the split firewood in a sunny and windy location for one to three years depending on the species. Have you taken care of that yet?

I agree completely. Alcoves look nice, but are not practical unless the ceiling of it is tall. Not a good idea with a side loading stove.

 

[begreen]

Congratulations. That sounds like a good deal. The first thing to do is download the manual. This is a side loading stove and not ideal for an alcove install unless the alcove is wide and tall enough to accommodate the stove clearances and provide easy side loading and access to the controls.

Get some doug fir or alder that was cut down last year and split then. With our hot drought dry summer it should be ok by fall. I stacked some greenish doug fir in March and it is already drying out quickly. I'm pretty sure it will be good to go by November. I have some bone dry alder to burn before that.

 

[Farm~Girl]

We have plenty of tamarack and red fir firewood from last year, and will cut more this summer. We live in Eastern Oregon where it is very dry and firewood doesn't take long to dry. The wood we got with the stove is just wood that we are just going to use in our shop stove and outdoor fire pit area. We have had woodstoves before, we had an Earth Stove with I think granite on the top of it and we LOVED that stove for our previous house. It was a good value and burned well for us. When we moved to this place it had a pellet stove, I don't care for listening to the pellets drop and the fan all the time, plus no heat if the power goes out, and after about the 3rd $200 repair we decided it had to go! We lived with just the propane furnace last winter which was expensive and still no heat if the power went out. We have been shopping for a used stove for about 2 years and we finally found this one that we liked so well!

I didn't even think about how much wider the alcove would need to be to accommodate the side loading! DUH! We've never had a side loader and we just got the stove last night so I didn't even think about that need to access the side. HAHA That is embarrassing. So now I am thinking we will just move the whole wall some to get it just right. Our home has a small dining area off the kitchen (that is the room we want to put it in) The home has a very open floorplan. The kitchen, this smaller dining room, and larger great room that we use as part living part dining is very open to one another...then the master bedroom is on one end of the house and the two kids' bedrooms are on the other end, the home is a great floor plan to heat with wood! The house is about 1350 sq ft.

The stove has the heat shield on the back so if I understand correctly it can be 18" from the wall? If you have a backer on the wall does that reduce the clearances at all?

So we are considering moving that wall between that small dining area and our master bedroom (the bedroom can spare about 16"-32" easily). That will turn that small dining room that we don't use for dining into our hearth room/entry area. We have never used it as a dining area because we are a family of 6 and our large table won't fit well in there. I envision it being a cozy room with a small bench, it is right off the entry so I figure we will use it much like a entry area for coat hooks and a window bench to sit and take shoes off, wood box, stove, maybe a pantry cabinet somewhere and a cozy old rocker in a corner or something. Moving the wall isn't a big deal, it isn't load bearing and like I said the bedroom can spare the space fine. We don't live in the bedrooms we just sleep there.

 

[ccmac]

The way we did our stove was to face the wall behind the stove with nice stone (same as you see on my fireplace) then we built a hearth to sit the stove onto. The hearth is 3ft wide and 3ft deep. It has limestone for the Hearthstone (again, same as you see on my fireplace pic) The hearth is 18in high so it provides easier loading of the stove. I will try and get a picture of it and upload it for you. This setup really sets it off and makes a beautiful centerpiece to the room.

 

[begreen]

Sounds like you will be fine in the wood department. Give Woodstock a call once you have a chance to thoroughly go through the stove. They will help you examine it for any other possible issues or updates and have great customer service. It sounds like the stove will work well for you.

Yes, you can reduce clearances to 12" if there is a ventilated NFPA 211 wall shield behind the stove. The manual and this article goes into detail on what is required.
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/stove_wall_clear

 

[Farm~Girl]

It might not be worth it to reduce clearances, because by the time you add all that depth to the wall with the spacer, the backer board, and tile or stone you come out a couple inches anyway...plus all that extra expense, but it sure would be prettier to have stone or something behind it to feature it. We will have to look into our options. I would love to see pics of how others have set up the Woodstock Fireview....is there a searchable gallery on here somewhere? I would just really like to have a mantle for some reason, but a raised hearth might also be a nice option!

We have a ceiling fan in that room so that should help move the heat to the other rooms in the house. Anything else we can do to circulate the heat quietly and efficiently? It is such a small home I doubt we will need much, plus we like the bedrooms cooler for sleeping anyway and those are the only things off the main rooms anyway.

 

[Farm~Girl]

Something like this?

Yes this is exactly what I was envisioning before I realized I couldn't do an alcove installation with a side loader. I LOVE this set up! Very nice.

 

[Farm~Girl]

Ok so Alcove Installation is out....but I still need ideas for the built in wood box options and ideas. It would be cool to have a heavy duty drawer or something that you could roll out to outside, load up with firewood at a comfortable level waist high or something, then roll it back into the house interior and lock the door/drawer. Then from the inside you lift a lid of a bench or box or something and access the wood from inside too.

 

[begreen]

Yes this is exactly what I was envisioning before I realized I couldn't do an alcove installation with a side loader. I LOVE this set up! Very nice.

It's possible if there is room. It just takes planning.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/hearth-pad-with-wood-storage.21907/

wood storage:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/finally-finished-my-wood-box.137747/
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/slidable-wood-box.5075/

or think outside the "box"
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/pic-of-a-cools-wood-box.80186/

Search in this forum on "wood storage" for more ideas like this
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/wood-storage-in-the-house.19271/

 

[webby3650]

Yes this is exactly what I was envisioning before I realized I couldn't do an alcove installation with a side loader. I LOVE this set up! Very nice.

That was one I installed a few months back, it even had the wood pass thru built into the wall. This was an all masonry fireplace, but it was huge. Actually set out in front of it, and the side door was still usable.

 

[Farm~Girl]

It's possible if there is room. It just takes planning.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/hearth-pad-with-wood-storage.21907/

wood storage:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/finally-finished-my-wood-box.137747/
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/slidable-wood-box.5075/

or think outside the "box"
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/pic-of-a-cools-wood-box.80186/

Search in this forum on "wood storage" for more ideas like this
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/wood-storage-in-the-house.19271/

I devoured those links! Thank you! I love the first one that is a really nice set up. We are going to get out the graph paper tonight after we work on the budget for July and see if we can come up with a few options. Maybe I will share them on here for some feedback. Trying to decide what type of stone or brick to do. The rest of the house is simple, rustic, and our kitchen has vintage cabinets that my Dad tore out of a school before it had to be torn down. The cabinets date back to when prison workers built them they are made of very solid birch woods and we have retrofitted them, stripped, stained etc and we are in the process of adding custom trims and a range hood etc. I'd like to keep the sort of rustic feel to the home so I think stone or slate tile would be an option.

You guys know of any discount places to get stone, faux stone, etc for a good value? This is a 10 year home. We are remodeling a manufactured home to meet our needs for the next 10 years while we save money to do a debt-free, owner-builder stick built home. My DH might be able to find some left over items off job sites at the storage yard that he could offer his boss something for, he is a construction superintendent on commercial projects (well all kinds of things but mostly commercial). If not, I'd like to have some options online to look at.

My 14 year old son thinks it is stupid to put in a woodbox door on the outside because the front door is 10 feet away.....but I guess it is one of those things....I like unique things like that about my childhood home and custom features to make life easier. We look at this like our "play" house, the house we can take risks on and have fun with, try brighter colors or different finishes, and get creative (we put an antique wash stand in the main bathroom as the vanity and put a vessel sink on it just because we thought it was unique). We don't have to worry about resale value and we are truly enjoying this house. We remodeled another home top to bottom inside and out for resale value (before we moved to this place) and every decision we had to make was about resale value, getting our $ back out of it etc....which was kinda boring and constrained IMO....this house we get to try out all kinds of quirky ideas that we might want to think about for our custom home down the line. In the mean time, we get to enjoy a very energy efficient home, with a great floor plan, that we can treat like a blank canvas.

 

[Farm~Girl]

Ok we were out admiring the stove and were noting how the top is scratched and I have heard that it is a soft stone. The stove has been oiled all over it because they had it on their front porch and they wanted to be sure it wouldn't rust while they had it for sale etc. So that being said, we were wondering just how easily the stove scratches so we tried it with a fingernail and it scratched it noticeably! Is that normal to be able to scratch it with just a fingernail? A few scratches really aren't going to bother me over time and I don't mind that it already has scratches from previous use because that just means we don't have to feel bad about the scratches I am sure we will put on it. lol

Calm my fears here, my husband was a little freaked out too that it scratches so easily...one always worries about being "taken" on these used "deals". I like that the oil darkened the stone it used to be light grey I think.

I expected that something metal on the top of the stove might scratch it but a fingernail?

 

[begreen]

That is the nature of soapstone. But that is also a plus. It's pretty easy to restore the surface. Go to Woodstock's website for directions. If you want to put something on top of the stove consider using a trivet.

 

[Farm~Girl]

So that is normal!? Whew. I tried looking for directions on Woodstocks website about restoring the surface when the time comes but I couldn't find anything. Maybe I just missed it somehow.

 

[begreen]

There used to be an article on how to keep up the look of their stoves but I am not finding it now. Here is a tip from their soapstone counter FAQ.
9. Doesn't soapstone scratch easily?

Soapstone is relatively soft and yes, it can be scratched if treated carelessly. But, any scratches the soapstone sustains can be easily removed by buffing with fine steel wool. One of the things that we really like about soapstone is that it is possible to repair almost any serious damage. A severe chip or gouge can be repaired with two-part epoxy mixed with soapstone dust and small pieces of stone. After this filler sets, it can be sanded down and blended with the surface so that it virtually disappears.
Give them a call if you have more questions on maintenance. Also, ask them about upgrades for your stove it they are not already done.
(broken link removed to http://www.woodstove.com/images/editorial_support/FireviewPDF-Instructions/important%20205%20upgrade%2012-05-28.pdf)