Fireplace for new house

[John McDonald]

What will be the best ,build a masonary and put a insert in it or buy one of those zero clearance fireplaces. It will be on an interior wall and would like to heat the whole house. We like the fireplaces better than the stoves.Just don't no what would be the best way.

 

[Corey]

Surprised no one has jumped on this. I will take a stab and surely others will follow.

Seems you have a couple things going if this is still in the design stage - and you have certainly come to the right place. As far as resale, I suspect a masonry fireplace with a wood stove would win out. You have the value of the fireplace in the house, but could take a wood stove with you if you move. Though if you plan to stay a while and resale isn't a huge issue, a built in unit may be able to heat the whole house better.

If you like the look, you may browse Fireplace Xtraordinair line of products. (maybe others as well, I am not a salesman) - these units are built in to look like a fireplace, but heat much more like a stove. If the design is still open, I believe they also offer the option to be ducted to a central air handler which would help spread even heat throughout the whole house.

These are just a few of the options, so keep an eye out for other input!

 

[ScotO]

We kicked around doing a real masonry fireplace, but we wanted REAL heat out of it. Well it doesn't take real long to look at how inefficient masonry fireplaces are, not to mention very expensive to build in most cases. The big expense with the masonry route is after you spend 10 to 15K on the masonry fireplace installation, you then are going to have another 4 to 5K installing an insert to get any real heat out of it. So the choice was simple for us.....we went the ZC route.

We looked all around and when it came time to buy, we fell in love with the Napoleon NZ3000. We got the optional wrought iron decorative kit for it, and after a lenghty install (click on the link in my signature below) it looks fantastic. That link has a LOT of posts in it, but take the time to browse through it to see just how nice a ZC fireplace can be if you put the time and thought into it. My masonry was relatively inexpensive as I harvested all of the stone off of the local mountains here around our house, and I did all the masonry myself, so the biggest expense was the stove and the pipe. And WOW does that stove ever put out the heat. I'm very satisfied with it, albeit there are some things that I'm not crazy about. The glass gets black (as do quite a few of these fireplaces), but I am sure of that being fixable (leaky gasket where the two doors come together when closed) that should be an easy fix. There are lots of options out there, and quite a few members on this forum have modern ZC fireplaces, so do some browsing here and elsewhere. Do go with a modern unit, not the cheesy pre-fab units that were popular in the 70's and 80's.

 

[FyreBug]

Some ZC will give you the option to vent out 'gravity air kit' which you pipe directly above the ZC or the room above. As the name implies it allow the warm air to feed by gravity but only up.

Some ZC can also do a forced air kit sometimes called a 'heat dump'. Some will go further by allowing a thermostatically controlled forced air kit to push warm air when the room when the ZC is gets too warm (heat dump mode) or if the thermostat is in the other room will turn the blower on & off as the heat demand for that room requires it. Basically it turns it into a small furnace.

Most of the US will allow you to dump this warm air into your furnace plenum. But you would have to check with your local building code to ensure this is ok in your area.

There are many good brands out there. Do your research carefully since this is a permanent installation. If I may suggest our brand the Valcourt FP10 Lafayette. It does all the above and is EPA rated. I work for the company and obviously biased.

 

[John McDonald]

I like the Quadra Fire 7100 and the Vermont Casting Sequoia, ya'll know anything about these.

 

[begreen]

I would go for a quality ZC fireplace. There are a number of good brands, like RSF, BIS, Kozy, etc.. FyreBug offered good guidance on some primary features. The house layout will determine how well one or the other will heat. You'll have to give us more info about the house floor plan, size, ceiling height, heat load, etc. to help narrow down the selection.

 

[John McDonald]

The house is going to be around 2000 sf living area,with a open floor plan single story. The ceilings will be 10 feet in living room where the fireplace will be, 9 feet everywhere eles. It will be sealed with foam and topped off with celulose insulation with r-18 in the walls and r-38 in the ceiling. These winters are not that bad here in South Louisiana rarely gets below 30 but every few years it will get down in the low 20's and teens.I do not know what the heat load will be.

 

[rideau]

I looked into the RSF line and was impressed. I'd certainly include them in consideration. Some of them have whole home duct heating.

 

[Blue2ndaries]

I like the Quadra Fire 7100 and the Vermont Casting Sequoia, ya'll know anything about these.

Hi John and welcome to the forum! I have the Quad 7100FP and it is the primary source of heat for our 2964sqft 1-story house. This is our 4th winter using it and it does a really nice job of heating the house; we are pleased with its performance and aesthetics. In OR where I live the winters are really not that harsh, and aside from the 2-3wks during the winter where it is in the teens at night/20s during the day, most of our 4-5 heating months are one big shoulder season. If we lived in a really cold climate, I would have installed a free-standing woodstove. I have been able to get consistent 7-8hr burns w/enough coals to get a fire going again in the am. The key to this is well-seasoned wood. Try to get ahead now w/your wood supply, even before you have the stove if possible.

Good luck and please post pics of your install!