I have Mt Vernon free standing pellet stove that does a good job of heating my 2200 sq ft house. How my house is laid out, the air movement does not get back to the rear hall/family rm/bathroom. In the family rm, we have a useless fireplace. From Oct -April I put 6 mil poly over the opening to stop the drafts from coming in. This spring/summer I was thinking of installing a small pellet insert in that fireplace. How do you measure the fireplace for an insert? Is this a bad idea? Will I have draft problems? What do the pro's think?
Looking at a 2nd pellet stove....?'s and suggestions
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I have a Quadra fire Castille that I use for a 2nd pellet stove. It works great,butyou have to clean the fire pot evey day.
I could not agree more with most fireplaces being useless. I think a good insert would of any type (wood, gas, pellet) will do what you want, stop the heat loss. A wood or gas insert will give you an alternate source of heat when you lose power. Maybe pellet would be the way to go since you are already familiar with pellet stoves. Here is a link for the AE insert manual. On page 10 it shows the minimum fireplace opening dimensions.
(broken link removed to http://www.quadrafire.com/downloads/installManuals/man_mtvernoninsertae.pdf)
There are some additional fireplace requirements aside from size to be able to install an insert. These should be noted in the insert manual. The ones I am thinking of apply to "factory built fireplaces", and the requirement to be UL 127 listed to be able to install an insert.
In our case, we had a factory built fireplace in the bottom level, family room, of our tri-level house. Our house is about 2150 sf. We have a direct vent Enviro gas stove on the middle level that is hassle free, and a great heating machine. We had the same problem as you, the cheap factory built fireplace was robbing heat from the house. We made the decision to install an insert, but the fireplace was too small so we ended up will limited choices on what insert we could use. About a month ago we decided to install a free standing pellet stove, one we liked, as opposed to being limited by the fireplace. We did a corner install on the pellet stove, and removed the fireplace. The opening where the fireplace was will have our TV and surround sound equipment. It is finished outside. Sheet rock and finish work inside and it will be done. About a week left to have it all done. This is not the easy way to go, it was a lot of work. If you can install an insert into your existing fireplace, I would recommend the route.
I had a part time business as a chimney sweep in the late 70's (before pellet stoves). I promoted myself to "retired Pro" for to answer your topic.
(broken link removed to http://www.quadrafire.com/downloads/installManuals/man_mtvernoninsertae.pdf)
There are some additional fireplace requirements aside from size to be able to install an insert. These should be noted in the insert manual. The ones I am thinking of apply to "factory built fireplaces", and the requirement to be UL 127 listed to be able to install an insert.
In our case, we had a factory built fireplace in the bottom level, family room, of our tri-level house. Our house is about 2150 sf. We have a direct vent Enviro gas stove on the middle level that is hassle free, and a great heating machine. We had the same problem as you, the cheap factory built fireplace was robbing heat from the house. We made the decision to install an insert, but the fireplace was too small so we ended up will limited choices on what insert we could use. About a month ago we decided to install a free standing pellet stove, one we liked, as opposed to being limited by the fireplace. We did a corner install on the pellet stove, and removed the fireplace. The opening where the fireplace was will have our TV and surround sound equipment. It is finished outside. Sheet rock and finish work inside and it will be done. About a week left to have it all done. This is not the easy way to go, it was a lot of work. If you can install an insert into your existing fireplace, I would recommend the route.
I had a part time business as a chimney sweep in the late 70's (before pellet stoves). I promoted myself to "retired Pro" for to answer your topic.
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