Help me design my stove install!

[dh1989]

Hi everyone,

I've been browsing posts on this forum for a while. Great site you have here with tons of information. I'm looking for a little help in selecting a wood stove and locating it. Heres my scenario:

I live in coastal Rhode Island and have a 1350 sqft raised ranch built in the 1960s. There are no fireplaces, the only chimney is for the oil boiler (forced hot water oil heat). The house is designed with a rec. room and a bathroom downstairs, as well as an unheated boiler room and garage. The downstairs has a concrete foundation in the back and is walk-out in the front. There is 1" thick foam board insulation up against the concrete and the front I believe has fiberglass. As far as I can tell there is no vapor barrier under the tile floor. The ceiling is uninsulated.

Upstairs I have 3 bedrooms and a bath on one end and a mostly open floor plan on the other. Attic has fiberglass batt insulation that was recently put in by the prior owner. I'm not sure on the R value but it is thick stuff from what I remember last I was up there. Outside walls are insulated with fiberglass and all new double pane windows and steel outside doors.

I have this great 6' wide x 6' 9" deep cubby in the downstairs rec. room that I think would be great for a stove. It is close to a doorway leading to an open stairwell and landing going to the upstairs. My thinking is that the stove would make the rec. room very warm/hot and the heat would rise upstairs, making the open parlor/kitchen areas comfortable and the bedrooms at the far end cooler for sleeping. Right now I heat with oil and keep the house at 65F. My comfort zone is about 65-75F.

My concern with the downstairs install is that I have a 6" thick concrete foundation that would have to be drilled/cut to get a stove pipe through. I have a drop ceiling down there and only have about 9" between the upstairs subfloor and the top of the concrete foundation, so I don't have room to run the pipe over the foundation wall. My bathroom and baseboard are above it so I can't cut into the living space upstairs to run the pipe.

I have an alternate location upstairs which would allow a pipe run straight through the ceiling and out the roof. My only concern is I won't get enough heat downstairs and upstairs will be too hot with the stove right there.

I've attached links to my floor plans and proposed stove locations. Any thoughts or suggestions as far as selecting a stove and the location? I'm hoping to burn wood full time in the winter and cut the oil to a minimum. I've been reading the great reviews on the Blaze King but not sure if that would be overkill for my sqft. Project budget is about $4000.

Much thanks.


Downstairs floor plan: (broken link removed)

Upstairs floor plan: (broken link removed)

Downstairs corner: (broken link removed)

Outside of above picture (I made a mark in the mulch for the center of the corner where the pipe would exit): (broken link removed)

 

[Poindexter]

If you put a upstairs sized stove upstairs how low can you set the downstairs thermostats on the oil burning furnace?

 

[begreen]

Sounds possible. Drilling through a poured 6" wall is doable. Is there any possibility of taking the chimney up through the house and boxing it in? If not, figure about $12-1500 for the chimney and connector. There are lots of nice stoves in the $2500 range. Look at 2.5 to 3 cu ft models. Also, consider opening up the doorway or wall for freer heat convection up the staircase.

 

[dh1989]

Not sure if I understand the question, but I have programmable thermostats downstairs which I can set as low as 45.

Going through the house won't work. I have a bathroom above with a baseboard on that wall, and the pipe would wind up somewhere between my toilet and tub.

 

[begreen]

Thinking is cheap before walls start getting drilled. I like to process think and explore all options first. Are there other possible locations for the stove?

 

[dh1989]

I'm looking at other options to use the chimney downstairs in that corner. If you look at the floor plan, I have dead wall space around the oil boiler chimney. Well, there are closets on the first floor above that, but I could potentially box in the pipe in a closet. Do you think running the pipe into the next room (boiler room) and then up through the floors would be possible? My only issue then is going to be a short horizontal (or 45 deg.) run from that basement cubby into the boiler room to meet the pipe going straight up. How close can I go to the boiler chimney?

Here's how that would look:
(broken link removed)


I'm not sure if it matters in terms of draft, but if I do go the outside route I'm looking at maybe 15' outdoor chimney height tops. I'm fortunate to have a hip roof instead of gable which keeps the slope and peak lower.

 

[Poindexter]

How much of the wall can you take out between the hallway and rec room on the lower level? If you put the stove near the foot of the stairs and then chase in the chimney in the parlor area you will have done about all you can do.

Putting the stove in the middle of the floor is good. Running the chimney straight up is good - though who knows how your framing will line up since you would pierce two ceilings and the roof

 

[dh1989]

That wall has 5' of baseboard on it and electrical outlets. I'm also not sure if it's load-bearing. Because of the way everything lines up with upstairs, I'd have to run the pipe in the corner of the office wall and move the end of the baseboard up there. I can't run the pipe into the parlor/stair landing area because the ceiling is low there and the pipe would be sticking out into the stairwell.

 

[begreen]

The main concern with the flue will be clearances to combustibles not proximity to the furnace chimney. Double wall connector has a clearance of 6" to walls and 9" to ceiling. Single wall is 18". Where is the basement stairway? I am trying to visualize how the heat will get upstairs. How far would the stove be from the stairway in that location? A sketch of the basement layout would help us see what you are working with.

 

[dh1989]

The main concern with the flue will be clearances to combustibles not proximity to the furnace chimney. Double wall connector has a clearance of 6" to walls and 9" to ceiling. Single wall is 18". Where is the basement stairway? I am trying to visualize how the heat will get upstairs. How far would the stove be from the stairway in that location? A sketch of the basement layout would help us see what you are working with.

I've got links to the sketches in my first post. If I measured straight from the stove location (in that cubby) to the stairwell I'm looking at about 15'. Here's some more pictures to try to help visualize what I'm looking at:

From the cubby in the basement looking out: (broken link removed)
The wall between the rec. room and hallway: (broken link removed)
The stairwell looking down from upstairs (from the parlor): (broken link removed)

 

[begreen]

Excellent, thanks, pictures help a lot. It looks like the gating factor for getting heat upstairs is the doorway to the hallway. Anything that can open up that wall will make a nice difference. This could be two large windows alongside of the door. Or changing out the single door for a double french door.

Or maybe put the stove in the first location below the LR and chase it. In that case maybe consider built in cabinets alongside the chase to make it look more intentional?

 

[Poindexter]

Begreen has probably forgotten more about stove installs than I have learned yet. I have never disagreed with him, and I don't now.

Added pics do help a lot. I agree the door way between hall and rec room is "gating factor" limiting how much heat you can move upstairs.

I think most likely the "wall" between the hall and rec room is not load bearing - but the end of the wall towards the center of the house probably does support the center beam of the house that has a bunch of upper level floor joists resting on it. So to take that wall completely out you would _probably_ need a steel column on the lower level supporting the center beam of the upper level. Big $ job to do it right. Probably. Likely you could put some pretty big window opening or etc in that wall without too much drama.

The cost of running pipe from the downstairs through the roof is going to be high, without good heat trasfer to the upstairs your payback time on your chimney investment is going to be really long.

If you spend most of your time upstairs anyway the quickest payback would probably be to put the stove in the location already marked upstairs, heat the upstairs more or less entirely with wood while telling your home owners insurance policy your primary is oil/ hot water with wood back up heat. Thus my earlier question, how low can you go with the downstairs thermostats.

FWIW in my own situation my oil burning hot water system requires electricity to run and I don't own a generator (generator on short list to buy). I keep my downstairs at +55dF with oil, almost free to me since the same boiler is making hot water for the household too. The +55dF maintained gives me about 36 hours after the electricity goes off at -42dF before I have to worry about down stairs pipes freezing. Once I get own a generator I might cut the downstairs thermostats to +50dF...

One _alternative_ to consider would be putting a properly sized cordwood stove upstairs for keeping the entire upstairs up to temperature all the time - and then putting in a pretty small pellet stove to just heat the rec room when you are using it. Would it be possible to put essentially an oversized dryer vent on probably the front wall of the house, the same wall that has the overhead door to the garage? Pellets are more expensive than cordwood, generally, and small pellet stoves generally aren't as efficient as the big boys - but if you aren't spending a lot of time down there anyway it might be the more economical choice. Depending on your prevailing winds you might be back to drilling a 4" hole in 6" concrete...

At the end of the day I think heating both levels of your floor plan with one stove from the lower level is going to be expensive and frustrating. Its not your fault, the architect was not planning on you trying to do it.

 

[weatherguy]

Some of these raised ranches are hard to find a good stove location, where do you and your family spend the most time?

 

[dh1989]

I pulled up the drop ceiling along the wall here (broken link removed) and the wall does not seem to be attached directly to the floor joists in a way to make me think it is load bearing. I can slide my hand under the joist into the ceiling on the other side and there is no large beam in there. You can see the center beam on the right of that picture with the painted steel jack post. The beam spans the house. So, it may ultimately be possible to do away with that wall and put the stove near the stairwell piped through the corner of the office wall. I will have to get an expert opinion before I move forward on that. More work than I was expecting but I'm only doing this once.

 

[begreen]

Yes. Looks like the lally column is doing the support.

 

[dh1989]

I was thinking the pipe run up through the office and removing the wall would work, but I forgot the upstairs floor has an overhang in the front over the basement. If I ran the pipe as close as possible to the front wall in the basement, I'm at about 2-2.5' into the middle of the office wall above. That's the side used for a desk - not good.

If I went with my original idea of using the basement cubby AND removing the wall, do you think I could get sufficient heat rise upstairs? I'm not opposed to using fans to move the air around (even level to level fans with fire dampers) if need be.