Hello,
First post. I'm new so please be kind and gentle. My wife and I recently purchased a Jotul F500 and we have a couple questions. It was made September 2007 and SN: 50033.
#1: manuals/documentation
Where can I find the exact owner's manual and documentation for the stove? Is it a v1? v2? What about clearances? The placard on the back of the stove says 18". Does that mean single-wall stovepipe? We have the rear heat shield. Where can I find documentation that says what the clearances are with double-wall stovepipe and with the rear heat shield?
#2: proper sizing
The F500 is slightly oversized for the house. The house is drafty, the insulation is not great, etc. so we figured that going a little over-sized wouldn't be terrible. We figured that we can run the HVAC system (forced hot air) on fan-only mode every 15 or 30 minutes throughout the house to circulate the heat. It'll be fine, we will figure it out, it'll be a learning process, etc. Is that a fair assumption to make? I'm not that concerned about efficiency (we have plenty of wood). But I also don't want to create a maintenance nightmare with cleaning, burning small fires in a big stove, etc.
#3: restore/paint
My wife found this thing on Marketplace. We rented a u-haul pickup truck and we paid $500 for it. I am a car guy so I have contacts with people who do media blasting. The prior owner said it had only started to rust when he took it out of his house and moved it to his garage. But there are leaves and small pine branches in the top cook-top plate crease --basically I'd bet that he had it sitting outside on his back porch for a few days/weeks and it got rained on a few times before he moved it to his garage. When I opened up the front and side doors the gaskets pulled off and stuck to the stove.
At what point do we make the decision to f'it, replace the gaskets and learn the stove as we burn next winter... Or do I just break it down, dissemble it, send it out for media blasting... And then what? I own paint sprayers. I could have it blasted at a shop 30 minutes from here. Just wait for a low-humidity weather window and have it blasted, then take it home and spray it? Then what? Assembly is opposite of disassembly?
Or do we just use it as-is and made educated decisions next year once we have a year under our belts? I just don't want to have a bad experience with the stove up-front and hate it. But I also don't want to nuke the thing and go crazy restoring it back to factory/brand new for no reason.
What is the difference in finish quality between using a wire brush and paintbrush (or spraying myself) vs. having the entire stove media blasted and spraying it?
#4: supporting floor under stove/hearth
We are really close (really really close) to the load/span tables for where we want to put this stove. It is 2x10 16"OC and a 13 foot span. The joists run left-to-right or right-to-left of the stove (NOT FRONT TO BACK). Without getting into it too much: This is my father in law's house. My wife is inheriting it. He did home hospice until the end. We are putting this wood stove exactly where his hospital bed was. And his hospital bed was heavy enough (his hospital bed was perpendicular to the floor joists) that by the head of his hospital bed there are depressions or the floor is buckling. You can see that the hardwood floors were pushed down from the baseboard moulding in the room (from the weight of my father in law + his hospital bed).
It is pretty much (not exactly 50% but more than 1/3 --maybe 3/8 or 5/8) in the middle of a 13-foot span of 2x10 16"OC floor (basement ceiling) joists.
What does someone do? Does it have to be a permanent house structure change? Do I need to cut a hole in the basement slab and build it up with a metal column like a deck (dig below frost line, anchor it in concrete, etc.) or can I use the slab directly as a structural base? Do I need to build/pour a square on top of the basement slab to support a column?
I asked "does it need to be permanent" because you can buy those "screw type" columns from HD/Lowes. But I can also weld so I don't care: I'll buy a column/metal tube and measure once/cut twice, weld it short and then curse myself that I should have hired it out and let someone else deal with it.
What do I need to do to support a hearth in the middle of a span? I don't really want an LVL across the bottom of those joists in the basement. But if that's all I can do then that is what I need to do.
Other stuff:
I grew up with a wood stove. My wife is 1,000% on board but I think she has no clue how much work the firewood part is going to be. When I was a kid my brother and I had boy's axes. When we got in trouble dad would hand us our axes and say "split that pile before your mother serves dinner or you don't get dinner". That was our typical punishments for being idiots. My wife has never had a stove and we decommissioned the fireplace in our house. We have the wood part sorted: Her dad's property is several acres and there is many, many oak and hickory trees that have fallen or are standing-dead for years and years. I did some tree work, summers during college years. It was a long time ago but I still own and use the Echo 30cc climbing/top-handle saw my dad gave me. We also have her dad's 42cc Poulan saw, and we just bought a new 372xp Husky saw. We have ordered about 8-cords of unprocessed log-length (green) wood from a local tree service, and I think I can harvest or pull 3-4 cords out of the property that has been dead and dry for years and years. So we have a start, and a future and a plan for firewood going forward. And we own PPE. I'll weld/build/DIY my own hydraulic splitter probably next summer when I get sick of using axes and mauls to split.
It just skipped my mind about the weight and the load/span tables and supporting the stove+hearth.
Couple other random questions:
Does 5/8 firecode drywall play any part in this? Or is firecode X drywall considered a combustible?
The stove will be backed up to an exterior load-bearing wall. We need to do a ton of work to my father in law's house. Is there any way to replace the combustible studs and exterior sheathing, etc. with cement or Hardie such that the entire wall surrounding the stove will be non-combustible? Metal studs and cement/fire board? Then tile over that to make it look pretty?
Is an LVL with a column my only choice? I think it would be cheapest but it would be disruptive and ugly and potentially interfere with space requirements around HVAC and the circuit breaker panel. Should I consider an LVL (or two) to sister the existing 2x10 floor joists?
Thanks for reading our questions and happy to answer questions to get more feedback from you all.
First post. I'm new so please be kind and gentle. My wife and I recently purchased a Jotul F500 and we have a couple questions. It was made September 2007 and SN: 50033.
#1: manuals/documentation
Where can I find the exact owner's manual and documentation for the stove? Is it a v1? v2? What about clearances? The placard on the back of the stove says 18". Does that mean single-wall stovepipe? We have the rear heat shield. Where can I find documentation that says what the clearances are with double-wall stovepipe and with the rear heat shield?
#2: proper sizing
The F500 is slightly oversized for the house. The house is drafty, the insulation is not great, etc. so we figured that going a little over-sized wouldn't be terrible. We figured that we can run the HVAC system (forced hot air) on fan-only mode every 15 or 30 minutes throughout the house to circulate the heat. It'll be fine, we will figure it out, it'll be a learning process, etc. Is that a fair assumption to make? I'm not that concerned about efficiency (we have plenty of wood). But I also don't want to create a maintenance nightmare with cleaning, burning small fires in a big stove, etc.
#3: restore/paint
My wife found this thing on Marketplace. We rented a u-haul pickup truck and we paid $500 for it. I am a car guy so I have contacts with people who do media blasting. The prior owner said it had only started to rust when he took it out of his house and moved it to his garage. But there are leaves and small pine branches in the top cook-top plate crease --basically I'd bet that he had it sitting outside on his back porch for a few days/weeks and it got rained on a few times before he moved it to his garage. When I opened up the front and side doors the gaskets pulled off and stuck to the stove.
At what point do we make the decision to f'it, replace the gaskets and learn the stove as we burn next winter... Or do I just break it down, dissemble it, send it out for media blasting... And then what? I own paint sprayers. I could have it blasted at a shop 30 minutes from here. Just wait for a low-humidity weather window and have it blasted, then take it home and spray it? Then what? Assembly is opposite of disassembly?
Or do we just use it as-is and made educated decisions next year once we have a year under our belts? I just don't want to have a bad experience with the stove up-front and hate it. But I also don't want to nuke the thing and go crazy restoring it back to factory/brand new for no reason.
What is the difference in finish quality between using a wire brush and paintbrush (or spraying myself) vs. having the entire stove media blasted and spraying it?
#4: supporting floor under stove/hearth
We are really close (really really close) to the load/span tables for where we want to put this stove. It is 2x10 16"OC and a 13 foot span. The joists run left-to-right or right-to-left of the stove (NOT FRONT TO BACK). Without getting into it too much: This is my father in law's house. My wife is inheriting it. He did home hospice until the end. We are putting this wood stove exactly where his hospital bed was. And his hospital bed was heavy enough (his hospital bed was perpendicular to the floor joists) that by the head of his hospital bed there are depressions or the floor is buckling. You can see that the hardwood floors were pushed down from the baseboard moulding in the room (from the weight of my father in law + his hospital bed).
It is pretty much (not exactly 50% but more than 1/3 --maybe 3/8 or 5/8) in the middle of a 13-foot span of 2x10 16"OC floor (basement ceiling) joists.
What does someone do? Does it have to be a permanent house structure change? Do I need to cut a hole in the basement slab and build it up with a metal column like a deck (dig below frost line, anchor it in concrete, etc.) or can I use the slab directly as a structural base? Do I need to build/pour a square on top of the basement slab to support a column?
I asked "does it need to be permanent" because you can buy those "screw type" columns from HD/Lowes. But I can also weld so I don't care: I'll buy a column/metal tube and measure once/cut twice, weld it short and then curse myself that I should have hired it out and let someone else deal with it.
What do I need to do to support a hearth in the middle of a span? I don't really want an LVL across the bottom of those joists in the basement. But if that's all I can do then that is what I need to do.
Other stuff:
I grew up with a wood stove. My wife is 1,000% on board but I think she has no clue how much work the firewood part is going to be. When I was a kid my brother and I had boy's axes. When we got in trouble dad would hand us our axes and say "split that pile before your mother serves dinner or you don't get dinner". That was our typical punishments for being idiots. My wife has never had a stove and we decommissioned the fireplace in our house. We have the wood part sorted: Her dad's property is several acres and there is many, many oak and hickory trees that have fallen or are standing-dead for years and years. I did some tree work, summers during college years. It was a long time ago but I still own and use the Echo 30cc climbing/top-handle saw my dad gave me. We also have her dad's 42cc Poulan saw, and we just bought a new 372xp Husky saw. We have ordered about 8-cords of unprocessed log-length (green) wood from a local tree service, and I think I can harvest or pull 3-4 cords out of the property that has been dead and dry for years and years. So we have a start, and a future and a plan for firewood going forward. And we own PPE. I'll weld/build/DIY my own hydraulic splitter probably next summer when I get sick of using axes and mauls to split.
It just skipped my mind about the weight and the load/span tables and supporting the stove+hearth.
Couple other random questions:
Does 5/8 firecode drywall play any part in this? Or is firecode X drywall considered a combustible?
The stove will be backed up to an exterior load-bearing wall. We need to do a ton of work to my father in law's house. Is there any way to replace the combustible studs and exterior sheathing, etc. with cement or Hardie such that the entire wall surrounding the stove will be non-combustible? Metal studs and cement/fire board? Then tile over that to make it look pretty?
Is an LVL with a column my only choice? I think it would be cheapest but it would be disruptive and ugly and potentially interfere with space requirements around HVAC and the circuit breaker panel. Should I consider an LVL (or two) to sister the existing 2x10 floor joists?
Thanks for reading our questions and happy to answer questions to get more feedback from you all.
