Help with new stove or insert

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ledge

New Member
Sep 12, 2006
2
I am looking at purchasing a stove or insert to be place in our living room, with masonry chimney/hearth. House is approx 2,000 sq ft but only need to heat half of downstairs...and hopefully it will get to some of upstairs. Fairly open design. Our preference is freestanding stove. The dillifculty is that the mantel trim is 42" from the ground. I have done some research and am having trouble finding a med-large stove that will fit clearances, even with mantel shield. Not sure I am reading them correctly though, or factoring in all potential options, like short legs. I have looked at VC Encore, Lopi Endeavor, Jotul Oslo and Hearthstone. Can anyone provide recommendations for working within clearances (rather not re-do the matnel) and getting the maximum amount of heat output? Fireplace is 33x48" and mantel trim is 42x60". THanks!!
 
You certainly don't want a mantel shield. They are UGLY!!! They're a black piece of sheet metal with a bend in them, and about a 1" ceramic spacer. They hang below your mantel and stand out like a soar thumb. Let me guess, you had trouble finding a picture of one? Now you know the reason, no one would buy the things if they saw what they were.

Anyway, after we ordered a mantel shield and saw what it looked like, there was NO WAY we were having that thing hanging down from our current mantel and that was the push we needed to decide, we need to replace our mantel. Bluestone is cheap around here, and we were going to try to replace our current mantel with one of those then decided in the end, it would be less work to raise our current one. We removed the mantel, put a couple small pieces of cement board stacked on top of each other, fastened it down, and then fastened our old mantel on top of it. We then tiled underneath with I think it was bathroom trim tile so as not to be combustible within the clearances and to cover the cement board. Worked like a charm.

I think you'll need to go through the effort of raising or redoing the mantel. Particularly if you see what mantel shields look like. I don't know of anything that will work with that space.
 
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