In Room Flue Pipe vs In Chimney Flue: A Matter of BTUs

[billfrommissouri2]

Hey that's no dinosaur! That's a three year old Morso. It's cute! It's not a flattering pic. It's supposed to suck cool air from at the bottom and around the back and out the front at the top, which it does though very slowly with what I feel is a poor heat exchange. The old dinosaur was from before the Morso. Once I figured out to run the fans at an extremely low speed the noise wasn't bad. It took me years to fiddle with the rheostats to where I discovered they had a governor screw that set the range that the knob controller worked within. I think our Morso convection stove would probably be OK if I could get a blower on it. It would have to be something that a steel fabricator would build and even then I wasn't really sure it wouldn't leak air and blow-up ashes into the room. :-( It sure would have been cheaper than a whole new stove - our second new stove in four years.

 

[billfrommissouri2]

Burning Chunk, not sure what you mean about the insulation. It's ceramic wool. I laid it over the stove to keep the heat in the stove so I could get all the heat possible out of the convection system and not loss any up my chimney. Granted, I should have put the insulation on the flue pipe, not on the stove. But I didn't understand that at the time. Now we're getting into embarrassing ancient history of bad actions that go way back -- knew I shouldn't have posted pics! But the idea was to keep the heat on the front side of the stove and not loose it out the back.

 

[vvvv]

Heating up the masonry will conduct heat outdoor if so exposed so a blower is ideal but you dont want a blower? Try lining the masonry surfaces around the insert with aluminum foil after removing the insulation, for fun.

 

[karri0n]

Really, the important thing you need to do is get whatever the heater is out of that cavity. A stove that can sit in front of that opening is going to be ideal. Your idea of installing a fake wall behind the stove is pretty interesting too, as long as you are maintaining clearance to combustibles.