i see most of the floor protection call for adding steel over the plywood, than metal, ETC. heres my question i have new carpet in my house and i am adding a woodstove to the room i want to build a "platform" to put the stove on that would meet the floor preotection requirements without removing my carpet. my idea is basically copying this floor pad( see attachment picture at bottom of post) i want to make a plywood base say 48x48, put 28 guage steel on it, then a chunk of protective board, then lay 12"x12" marble tile ontop of that. would this be "legal"???? i cant see why it wouldnt be as i would be doing the same thing as if it was on the bare plywood floor but now its just ontop of the carpet with all this stuff instead??
floor protection????
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To help with the tile installation you really should use Wonderboart ( cement) it is cheap comes 3x5 and is readiable available from Home Depot. Putting tile on plywood is a mistake and the wonderboard will act as an insulating board. Good luck.
Mike
Mike
MountainStoveGuy said:
no idea on R value.. just trying to meet requirements for the stove installation. the book says minimum floor protection of 26 guage non combustible material. heck i would think just bare tile ontop of of plywood would meet that requirement????
Is that 26 guage non combustable backed by a mineral board or strait 26 guage metal? what stove are you putting it up on? Most american stoves require much more then just a pice of sheet metal, and 26 guage is not very thick.
I was reading a manual last year. I was installing a stove (pellet stove) and it said that the hearth had to be a min of .26 thick and non-combustible. This particular hearth was plywood with tile on top. I called the tech dept of the manufacturer and explained the situation and since the tile was thicker than .26 and was non-combustible it met the requirements. I noticed one of their wood stoves had the same verbage concerning hearth protection.
Lopi answer stove. i find it funny myself how it reads cause 26 guage is only .018" thick..........
Coaster said:
But the photo on the right shows more then just sheet metal on floor, and the little blub that talkes about it says that non combustable is just for ember protection, that you need a insulated hearth for fire protection. At least that what i think it says, i will go back and read it. And, i said most american stoves require insulated floor protection, not all. I am not familar with all the brands. I will check gsrx's manual and see what it looks like to me.
Main thing with board on top of carpet is making it so it does not rock and crack.
The idea would be to have 4-8 "legs" which end up being the only place that contacts the carpet. The frame and assembly can then be self supporting.
I would think you can eliminate the metal - frame, 1/2" plywood or OSB, one layer cement board and tile should be more than enough.
The idea would be to have 4-8 "legs" which end up being the only place that contacts the carpet. The frame and assembly can then be self supporting.
I would think you can eliminate the metal - frame, 1/2" plywood or OSB, one layer cement board and tile should be more than enough.
so back to the original question, would plywood, steel, insulating board, then tile. all placed ontop of the carpet be acceptable floor protection???
He has a lopi answer, and the manual states that 26 guage metal is all he needs :bug: I looked it up. 
MountainStoveGuy said:He has a lopi answer, and the manual states that 26 guage metal is all he needs :bug: I looked it up.
seems pretty scary eh??? thus why i posted!! seems to me more would be needed but i guess my plan will work then
thanks for the help all!
I know I read this in either NFPA or the international mechanical codes, but there is language concerning placement on or over carpet. Todays carpet fibers have different burning characteristics than soild wood or plywood. He is concerned about his rug what do you
think a 300lb stove does to the pile of the carpet? My Intrepit II is sitting elevated 6" above the carpet with 22" in front of the loading door and I still have had burning embers pop out and find my rug. They left the evidence with burned pot marks. The rug has aged and is being removed I will be replacing it with solid hard wood flooring . should an enber cause a burn marlk I can sand paper it out and make it dissappear. So far the sand paper has not worked for my rug
think a 300lb stove does to the pile of the carpet? My Intrepit II is sitting elevated 6" above the carpet with 22" in front of the loading door and I still have had burning embers pop out and find my rug. They left the evidence with burned pot marks. The rug has aged and is being removed I will be replacing it with solid hard wood flooring . should an enber cause a burn marlk I can sand paper it out and make it dissappear. So far the sand paper has not worked for my rug
Back in the 70's I had a log roll out of my old Franklin. Luckily I caught it on the toes of my elephant hide western boots. But the six hundred dollar pair of boots was ruined and more to the point here, the embers from the log exploded all over the carpet and burned a dozen holes through to the floor. Which fortunately was a concrete slab.
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gsxr1216 said:MountainStoveGuy said:He has a lopi answer, and the manual states that 26 guage metal is all he needs :bug: I looked it up.
seems pretty scary eh??? thus why i posted!! seems to me more would be needed but i guess my plan will work then
thanks for the help all!
I wouldn't say it's scary. It's just engineered and tested to have min. hearth requirements. It's actually a godsend when it comes to replacing old wood stoves with inadequate hearths.
My Question would be Why not just remove the carpet? If the answer is to be able to remove the woodstove and deck and return to carpet its not going to work. The compression of the carpet from 500#s of weight sitting on it will be pretty permanant and the covered carpet will no longer match the exposed carpet due to wear and fading.
nshif said:
I agree with you (maybe) on the colors not matching since one part would have been shielded from sunlight (and therefore from fading) by the hearth while the other was exposed to sunlight, but not necessarily on the weight issue. IF the bottom of the hearth were more than 2x4's and instead had a plywood bottom to spread the weight evenly, the pressure from even 1,000 lb over such a wide area would be far far less than the pressure we exert on the carpet with our shoe.... Granted, we don't stay in one place for years but it might not depress the carpet too much unless an inordinate amount of the weight is borne by the edges of the hearth. The concern is not that it will have been subjected to high pressures, but rather, just the opposite: will long-term exposure by very low pressure distributions permanently deform the carpet padding so that the carpeting is unsightly because it's depressed as compared with surrounding carpeting?????
Depends on the type of carpet pad, some will permantaly compress. Ever seen what a waterbed pedistal will do to carpet? Even some heavy furniture will cause depressions that cant be removed especially with cheap pad.
nshif said:
Yes, but these are much higher pressures in the case of the waterbed.......a typical woodstove and hearth might weigh 500 lbs. A typical hearth might be 4 ft x 4 ft which is 48 in x 48 in which is about 2300 square inches. The pressure you generate is defined as weight divided by area and it's only about 0.2 pounds/sq inch
Pressure = 500 lb / 2300 sq in = 0.217 lb per sq inch
Now let's look at the pressure we exert while walking in a shoe:
180 lb/36 sq inches = 5 pounds/sq inch!
In fact, in this example, it would take an 11,500 pound stove, evenely distributed over this 4 ft x 4 ft hearth pad to equal the same pressure we exert with one of our shoes........the floor would of course collapse long before we obtained this loading but the pressure would only be 5 lb/sq inch !
As for the furniture.........the footprint (leg area) is small so the pressure is high. It's the pressure that deforms the pad, not the weight alone...... that's why you can take a small cross sectional device like a nail or a needle and with only a few pounds of force behind it, drive it part-way into a piece of wood because with that small of an area, you generate several thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch on the wood ......
To put it into units that are a little more familiar to me, its still about 31 pounds per square foot. Seems like enough to compress a carpet pad over a couple of years. I think a person standing in one place for a couple years would have the same effect.
Similar to leaving a suit of armor standing in the corner on the carpet? we've all done that.
Similar to leaving a suit of armor standing in the corner on the carpet? we've all done that.
Jeremy said:
Yes...but the suit of armor has an even higher pressure loading than the stove....by more than a factor of 2 or greater......that's my point....for most items that we're familar with that leave "dents" in the carpet and padding, these items exert FAR more pressure than does a 500 lb stove whose weight is evenly distributed on a 4 ft x 4 ft hearth! The big unknown is what long-term effects there are to very light loadings.
Examples:
- A gallon jug of water, placed on a 6 in x 6 in hard board and then placed on the carpet simulates 0.2 PSI
- An 180 lb man on one shoe exerts about 5 PSI
- A 30 lb stuffed chair exerts about 5 PSI with no one sitting in it....put that 180 lb man in it for hours at a time and it now exerts 35 PSI
- A queen sized waterbed might weigh 1,400 or more pounds. It's loading is about 39 PSI with no one in it...put two people in it and the loading is now 50 PSI
Bottom line: the 500 lb stove on the hearth pad is looking pretty good......
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