Fireplace for Seasonal Cabin

[mjlambert]

I am building a small (1,000 sq. ft.) seasonal cabin in northeast Wisconsin and want to have a wood fireplace to help heat it when we are there over winter. We will have electrical baseboards for heat as well. The main living space is one open area that has the kitchen, dining, and living in one large room with some bedrooms and a bathroom off the back. I was looking at the Z42 but was wondering if that would be too big for what we need. What other brands or models should I look at for this type of space?

 

[bholler]

You should look at stoves of high efficency zero clearance units if you want any heat. A free standing stove with a class a chimney can be fairly cheap and will provide good heat while a standard zeroclearance fire place will really add little to no heat to the space

 

[Lake Girl]

Welcome to the forum and good luck with your building of the cabin. I think you will find the suggestions will be for a wood stove as they are more efficient than fireplaces... you'll hear other opinions soon

edit: bholler beat me to it ... didn't get the update until I was almost done with the post!

 

[mjlambert]

I appreciate your opinions, but I think the wife has already decided on a fireplace for the look, and I was hoping for something that would put out some heat to help with the electrical bill.

 

[bholler]

I appreciate your opinions, but I think the wife has already decided on a fireplace for the look, and I was hoping for something that would put out some heat to help with the electrical bill.

Then get a high efficiency zero clearance unit they look similar to the cheap fireplaces but actually make heat. A standard zero clearance unit will not help with the electric bill many times they hurt it

 

[mjlambert]

Is the Z42 considered high efficiency?

 

[bholler]

Yes sorry i just looked it up you are referring to the kozy heat z42 correct? I thought z42 was a cheapo heatilator zc box sorry.

 

[mjlambert]

Yeah I was thinking about the Kozy Heat Z42. Would it be overkill for my space or not? What other brands should I look at for something comparable to this?

 

[bholler]

do a little research many stove makers now have good zc units. I dont know anything about the z42 but looking at the specs it may be a little larger than you need but it should work fine.

 

[Grisu]

Unless you skip insulation and/or would use the cabin in the midst of winter, I suspect the Kozyheat will be overkill. A budget-friendly choice that's a bit smaller would be the Flame Monaco/Osburn Stratford. Other medium-size efficient fireplaces would be the RSF Topaz, Superior WCT6820, and Regency R90. All with fireboxes in the 2 to 2.5 cu ft range.

How do you plan on preparing your meals? Many stoves can also be used for cooking; especially helpful when the power is out. They will also heat better when there is no electricity.

While building the cabin you will also need to split and stack your firewood. All efficient EPA-approved fireplaces need wood with an internal moisture content of less than 20%. That's usually achieved by drying the split wood with lots of wind and sun exposure for 1 to 3 years.

 

[Oldman47]

Welcome to the forum. Any non-flush fireplace insert will give you more heat than a flush install. I can't argue with the suggestions you already have but I have a more general question. When you are not present to keep a fireplace insert stoked, how do you prevent freezing water pipes? It seems to me that the wood heat will be a small part of your total heat input needs. Most of it will happen when you are not there. To hold down heating costs I would make sure you have a tight and well insulated building and an efficient heat source like maybe a geothermal furnace.

 

[bholler]

Any non-flush fireplace insert will give you more heat than a flush install

It is not an insert oldman there is no fireplace existing

 

[mjlambert]

We plan to winterize the cabin for now so the fireplace and electric baseboards are only for when we are there. Thank you for all of your suggestions, I will start looking into each of them.

 

[xman23]

I appreciate your opinions, but I think the wife has already decided on a fireplace for the look, and I was hoping for something that would put out some heat to help with the electrical bill.

My wife said the same thing, got to have a fire place in the new cabin I understood where she was coming from. The thing was she didn't know how much better the fire view was from a glass front stove was. Get her to a stove store. My wife insisted it had to look good, so an enamel Oslo. Now 15 years later she loves the thing, fire view, heat, no smell plus much better burn time. All the things a fireplace does poorly. She always says how big of a mistake the fireplace would have been.

 

[Cynnergy]

What sort of use pattern will you have for it? It can take a long time to heat up a cabin (and the walls, and the floor, and the furniture, etc) in the winter. We have pretty mild winter temps here (around freezing at night most of the winter, but not much below), and ours takes a good 4 hours to get the living room with the woodstove to a comfortable temp. 24 hours to get all 900 sq ft warmed up.

Electric blankets are awesome. You might want to go big if you'll be coming and going a lot.

 

[mjlambert]

For now, we would only use it a few times during the winter. We expect the long heat up times for now and will look into other options down the road if we end up using it more.

We will go and check out some showrooms and keep the stove idea open for now. Maybe once we see some in person the wife will change her mind.

Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions!