Harmon Oakwood vs Harmon TL300 clearance question!

[Shari]

Oh, shoot! I thought I had this all figured out what stove we wanted (the Oakwood), how it would fit as a hearth mount, etc. Now I find a glitch:

The online Oakwood manual (on page 11) states the Oakwood requires a 48" fireproof clearance from the front door. Yikes! Is this correct? Please, please tell me this is a typo in the manual.

The TL300 brochure states this model only requires an 18" front door clearance, with 51" overall clearance front to back.

Is the Oakwood manual incorrectly stating 48" front door clearance when it really SHOULD state 48" overall clearance front to back?

Shari

 

[begreen]

What page of the Oakwood manual is this on? If it is the reference on page 11, I think what's confusing you is the difference between hearth requirements (18" in front of the glass) and clearance to combustibles (like furniture) for which they want you to have 48" (60" in Canada) in front of the stove. This is because the stove is a powerful radiator and 48" allows a good margin of safety. So you need to keep chairs, tables, etc. at least 48" away from the front of the stove. Does that make sense?

From the front of the stove, clearance to combustible
materials such as furniture, curtains, fuel, etc., is: 48"(1220
mm) in the U.S. and 60"(1524 mm) in Canada.

 

[Shari]

BeGreen,

Thanks for responding! My confusion is this: We must extend our raised hearth for this stove. My assumption was that we had to have a non-conbustible surface (ceramic tile and/or other materials) 18" in front of the door. Where I get confused is when they say this 48". We have to cut into our hardwood floors to accomodate the 18".... but are they saying we have to have this ceramic tile and/or other material floor extending out 48"?????

I am probably reading this 48" wrong..... its been a loooonnnggg week here!

Shari

 

[begreen]

If you have 18" of hearth in front of the stove you are good to go. The 48" in front of the stove applies to furniture, stacks of wood, curtains etc.

 

[Shari]

We currently have a 16" hearth. The stove will be mounted roughly 1/2 in and 1/2 out of the existing fireplace firebox. The stove is 25" deep so we would lose roughly 13" of hearth surface which would mean we would have to add 15" of fire resistant flooring in front of our hearth at floor level. These dimensions might change because we have to make sure there is enough height clearance for the top loading door to open fully on the Oakwood. Does this fire resistance distance sound about right to you? (We have no mantel so there is no concern there.)

I was just freaking out because the way I was reading the owners manual it sounded like they would consider our hardwood floors combustible and therefore we would have to come out 48" or more from the existing hearth with a fire resistant flooring.

Shari

 

[begreen]

Sounds about right. I'd extend it a full 18". It won't cost a lot more, but gives you more design opportunities. There is no harm in having it a little larger and that will contain the mess of working with the stove and wood better. Then you can place the stove exactly where you want it to be for best operation.

 

[Shari]

While we are on this topic: Anyone have any idea what to use to clean the walls of the firebox from almost 50 yrs. of woodburning? I believe it is steel sides and the floor is brick. I am not relishing that job!

Shari