Home remodeling - pre-fab to wood stove conversion thoughts

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wildfire

Member
Jan 5, 2010
9
Western PA
Sorry this is so long...but I’ve used this forum before and I found it very helpful so I turn to it again looking for folks thoughts on a few things regarding a project my wife and I are going to do to our colonial home in western PA. The home is 2000sqft above grade with another 800sqft below grade that is fully finished. The house was built in 1994 and it has vinyl siding, with two fireplaces, and with two vinyl siding chimney chases on each side of the house. Both fireplaces are pre-fab units and are simply horrible (I grew up in a log cabin and we heated our home with a VC cast iron wood stove). One fireplace is a Temco and it is in our basement – I converted it to vent-free nat gas stove a few years ago but the fireplace and chimney chase are still there – I’ll remove that someday. The other fireplace is a majestic model MRC42. The majestic has been cleaned a few times and I know that it is an stainless 8-inch double wall liner that is connected up to it with no offsets and it’s 22 feet long. We use that unit quite a bit in winter for space heating the room that it is in (I can get the room up to 85 degrees w/ the blower running but just that room). The room is about 190sqft with a large entryway into our kitchen area.


Now the project – we’re going to do an extensive addition into our existing attached garage and then extend the garage on the far side of the home. We are going to move the majestic fireplace and chimney chase with the addition and build a new chase. However, rather than reinstall that majestic I’m considering installing a wood stove. The units I’m looking at are the Englander 30-nch or 18-nch (from home depot). Both units have great reviews online and on here. I’m looking at double-wall black pipe from the top of the fireplace straight up all the way through the roof. I expect it to still be 21-22 feet tall. I want to use double wall the entire way so I have close proximity clearances to the rock wall that is going to be behind the wood stove. When we do the addition, the home will be about 2600sqft of living space above grade and the basement stays the same.


With all that said, I have a few questions, as I’m no expert. After the addition the room will be about 400sqft with the wood stove at the far end of it (furthest away from the kitchen and other living areas). It is reasonable to expect that wood stove to be able to heat most of the first floor out of that room? We have ceiling fans in and doorway corner fans in that room to move air now. We’re leaning towards the smaller unit as it is a smaller footprint; I’m going to build a small raised hearth for this thing to sit on and I want some extra space to store tools, cleaning bucket, and some extra wood. The bigger unit will take up a lot of that space and I don’t want my hearth to take up the entire room. My other big question is can I reuse that 8inch stainless liner once we transition through the first floor ceiling into the chimney chase that will be above it? We’d have to neckdown the 6” pipe when it comes through the floor adaptor but that would save me quite a bit of $$ of that’s possible.


We own several acres of heavily wooded property so getting wood isn’t an issue.


I have attached several pics for reference – existing house, proposed house, existing fireplace, proposed rendering of wood stove.

thanks in advance and i appreciate any feedback anyone is willing to offer! View attachment 219344 View attachment 219343 View attachment 219346 View attachment 219345
 
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