Get the Blower!

[RidgeHiker]

I installed a Lopi Revere fireplace insert recently without a blower choosing to see if I needed one. After using the stove a few weeks I felt I was not getting all the heat out of it and that I was using more wood than I needed to.

I installed the blower a few days ago. It is great. I have no way of quantifying how much heat was lost in the back of the fireplace without it but there seems to make a substantial improvement in capturing it.

It definitely circulates the heat better in the room and to other parts of the house.

This is subjective but I am fairly confident that I am burning less wood.

The blower is variable speed which is quite nice.

 

[southland]

Good advice for any insert. A blower should not be optional.

And that "optional" blower should not be so expensive.

 

[drdoct]

The Revere is a completely different stove with the blower. Expensive as all get out. Especially since their stoves are at the top end of the market.

 

[Sherwood]

A year gone and I still don't have the blower for my Lopi Freedom. Can I ask you my usual questions?
How loud is it?
Do you feel the air blowing on you? One of the reasons I wanted an insert is for the radiant heat (I hate forced air heating).
If you were using it primarily to heat a single room, that had a ceiling fan for distribution, would you still think it makes sense?
The only other issue I have is the cord. In our situation it would be very prominent.

Thanks,
Sherwood.

 

[RidgeHiker]

A year gone and I still don't have the blower for my Lopi Freedom. Can I ask you my usual questions?
How loud is it?
Do you feel the air blowing on you? One of the reasons I wanted an insert is for the radiant heat (I hate forced air heating).
If you were using it primarily to heat a single room, that had a ceiling fan for distribution, would you still think it makes sense?
The only other issue I have is the cord. In our situation it would be very prominent.

Thanks,
Sherwood.

At the lowest setting it is a fairly quiet blowing sound and not particularly intrusive. At the highest it is fairly loud. You can set it anywhere in between. I usually only turn it up to the higher end when we are not in the room and I am cranking out the heat in the morning to warm the house.

At the higher settings you may notice a gentle breeze across the room and certainly feel it closer up. On low you would not notice much. If the air is cooler you will notice it more.

The blower serves 2 purposes. For me the most important was to capture heat from the blocked off area in the fireplace. I did not feel convection was adequate to move the heat forward. For this purpose you can run it on lower settings and a ceiling fan would not help. The other purpose is to move the heat out into the room and help it travel to other rooms. A ceiling fan may serve this purpose. Overall I think the blower would still be worth it.

The cord is black and somewhat thick. The control is a reasonably small but visible and is in-line on the cord. A lighter backround color would make it less visible. I would think you could also run it behind a wood box, stove tools, or whatever to at least partially disguise it.

Incidently the air does not come straight out on the Revere but angles some to both sides off the top. This works well for our configuration.

I would buy it again but the $282 I paid for it did seem expensive.

Richard

 

[drdoct]

I've pretty much had the same experience as Hiker. I run mine on high when the stove is going good and we're not in the room. It does blow and you can feel it. When I go to bed I turn it around the middle. The sound is there but much less than a box fan or other fans. You can turn it on low and pretty much not hear it at all. When I first got the blower I turned it on low and my wife didn't realize I had a blower for it until the next morning when my youngest asked what the blower was. She did notice how much warmer the rest of the house was though. I put in a ceiling fan about 4 feet out from my insert to move the air around. It didn't do the job I wanted so I put a oscillating fan pointing towards the firebox to get the air moving around the stove. I don't use the panels that seal up the fireplace to make it look like an insert and I still couldnt get the heat out. What I got was 2 noisy oscillating fans that flew chilly air around. The blower evened it out nicely. I think if you get the blower you will be much happier. You may even be surprised to find yourself running it on high a lot of the time when your stovetop is around 600*. I'm not a fan of forced air heating myself, but with this stove it's different.