Large(-ish) fireplace, small living space - Regency i1500 vs i2500?

[AstroBoy]

Hi - I'm looking at inserts to convert an existing masonry fireplace (49"w 26.5"h x 24"d) for our 1920s stone colonial. The main-floor living space is about 500 sq. ft and relatively open, with about the same space on the second floor and a ~300 sq. ft bedroom over the garage. My goal is to enjoy the fire and get some main-floor heat during the cold months, but not necessarily to replace a big chunk of our heating. I assume the over-the-garage bedroom won't get that much heat, and even the 2nd floor may be a little marginal - we have hot-water heat (radiators) and so not much ductwork (although there are a few small ducts for a retrofit central A/C system). The second floor should get some heat up the open central stairwell, though, and we have a couple of ceiling fans on the main floor that could move some of the heat.

There's a local Regency dealer, so I've been looking at the Regency Cascades i1500 (1.3 cu ft) and i2500 (2.3 cu ft). I'm inclined toward the i2500, to have a bigger view of the fire, and to have more of the fireplace filled with the insert vs. just covered with backing. My main question is, will the heat from a unit that size overwhelm the main-floor living space? I don't have a lot of experience with stoves and inserts, but have tried to do my homework. It seems like we would want to build a decent-sized fire to get up to a temp where we aren't burning too cool and dirty. But once the fire is going and the unit is up to temp, I don't have a very clear sense of how much we can then control the heat flow through the room.

Thanks for any thoughts!

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I think you’d be better served with the larger insert, but I do have a couple of quick questions.

1) How high are your ceilings? If taller (or shorter) than the standard eight feet, that needs to be taken into account.

2).Are you able to draw a quick sketch of the floorplan, marking the location of the fireplace and the width of doorways and stairway?

3) How is your wood supply?

 

[AstroBoy]

Thanks for the reply! Some answers:

1. Ceilings are 8 ft.
2. Floor plan is attached - left over from when we did some renovations a few years ago (so ignore the wiring annotations - just trying to show the dimensions). It also shows the locations of the ceiling fans.
3. Wood supply is modest right now (as I've only been burning in an outdoor fire pit). But I can either get wood delivered or salvage from downed trees / limbs nearby. Either way I have some space for stacking wood and letting it dry/season for a year or two. Is the thinking behind your question that using the larger insert would mean going through more wood?

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Thanks for those answers.

I just wanted to confirm that your cubic footage wasn’t more than would be expected from your square footage.

That floor plan looks wonderful for wood heat. Stoves are fundamentally space heaters so the area nearest the stove will be the warmest, but the nice wide openings between rooms will let some of the heat move to other parts of the house. I agree with the assessment that the bedroom over the garage will get less heat naturally, but if you wanted to move heat there, it could be done with a small floor fan placed in the bedroom on the floor blowing cold air out the doorway. Heat will move on its own up the stairwell, and blowing cold air out of the room will cause the hot air from the landing to move in to replace it.

The two possible inserts you mention would both serve your expressed desire for enjoying a fire and getting some heat in the main living area. The larger one will fit the fireplace better aesthetically and is really not considered a large insert. The 2.3 cubic foot firebox is more of a medium size, and you would not need to have it packed full to achieve a clean burn. You do need enough wood to get a hot fire, but that can be achieved with less wood. We burn a 2.5 cubic foot insert in our home in Texas (which is, however, a very large home with tall ceilings), and we really like the roomy firebox. It’s not unusual for us to burn small fires during the day, though, if we’re expecting warmer temperatures or lots of sun, but those small fires still have good secondary combustion and no smoke. The small insert is so small that you might find yourself frustrated during times that you want more heat or a longer burn. With the larger one, you just choose wisely how full to load it or whether to reload at all.

Modern stoves and inserts need good dry wood to run well (less than 20% moisture content). It’s great that you have space to stack and season it. You might want to purchase or start processing wood now. Softwoods like pine (which is fine to burn if it’s dry) could be ready by next winter. Hardwoods tend to take longer, but there are ways to speed up the process.

 

[AstroBoy]

Thanks for this! That’s a good insight about the fan upstairs, in particular the direction. I had thought about something similar, but had been thinking of pulling air into the room with the fan. But you’re right, the air on the floor will be cooler, and the warm air coming up the stairs will be higher up, so it makes a lot of sense to use the fan to pull air out of the bedroom and back down the stairs.

I just picked up a moisture meter, so I’m ready to test my stock of wood. And I just learned of a neighbor who enjoys splitting wood for exercise so much that he gives it away so he can split more! Definitely someone worth getting to know… 🙂

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Great small investment in a moisture meter. It’s really helpful for a new burner to learn how really seasoned wood feels and sounds. We’ve burned for years but still like to use ours when we’re out splitting just to verify our instincts. (It’s also really fun to split wood and find out that it’s already ready to burn. That was a rarity for us in Virginia, and we’ve only lived in Texas a few years, so we’re still surprised by it.)

It does sound like you’ll need to make the acquaintance of the neighbor. He might end up being a good scrounging and splitting partner. We used to have a friend who burned wood where we lived in Virginia, and we worked with him a couple of times on some large projects. It makes it more fun and adds an added safety if there’s a buddy around.

One warning I’ll give you, if you haven’t already figured it out from being on this site, is that wood heat can be addictive. When we lived in Virginia, we were in a raised ranch house with a big finished family room in the basement, and my husband had his office down there. We had gas heat, but the basement was always too cool for comfort if we kept the upstairs at 68. We had a masonry fireplace down there, so we put in a medium-sized insert (2.2 cubic feet). We had no intention of heating the house with it. The insert ended up proving so capable, and we loved the heat so much, that our goals changed, and we tried to heat as much as possible with it. It was a little undersized for the job (our house was 2,500 square feet, so it was a lot of to ask, though it was well insulated and not in an extreme climate), so we ended up pushing it on cold days and nights and keeping the basement too warm in order to move heat upstairs, though we didn’t mind running our gas furnace to help out. We were actually planning to change out for a larger insert with thermostatic control, but we ended up moving before we did so. That experience is in part why I recommend that you should go for the larger of your two choices and just control the overheating by how much wood you load.

 

[Dix]

Welcome to the forums !!

Go with the bigger fire box, you won't regret it. You can build a smaller fire in a bigger box, but not vice versa.

Fans help a ton You might be surprised with your heating from the insert.

My daughter put a Regency 2500 in her 2000 SF 2 story in CT, and is thrilled with it.