Moving flu location on mama bear

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d00bs

New Member
Sep 14, 2022
6
NJ
I have an older mama bear with the angle iron legs and tightly wound spring handle on the door. I would like to have a welder cut off the exhaust ring on the back of the stove and relocate to the top to allow for additional back clearance inside of a large fireplace.

Would there be any issues in doing this? I see that they were available with the flue mount either rear, side or top. I plan on also adding in a baffle plate
 
Make sure the flue collar is welded so it extends 3 inches down inside the stove the way it is installed now. An older stove that year will have a thin wall pipe, that was 6 inch OD. That made the inside dimension very tight to install stove pipe. Later stoves use 6 inch ID. If possible, the new collar outlet should measure 6 inches ID so it is much easier to connect using 6 inch pipe inside it. Grinding the weld off thin wall pipe without cutting through is nearly impossible. Thicker material for a new one is much easier to weld, and the older thin wall being old and rusty will probably burn through before welding properly to the thicker 5/15 plate top anyway. 1/4 inch wall pipe is excellent making it 6 1/2 OD.

Just make sure it is welded so it extends down into firebox. This way it is lower than the top edge of baffle. You want the exhaust path to have to drop to get out of the stove. More than 3 inches gets the outlet close to the baffle starting to block it off.

Capping the old outlet can be done with a 24 gauge minimum pipe cap with a few screws to secure.
 
Ok great! Thank you for the response. It was kind of what my thoughts were, but I wasn’t sure how far to go down into the stove itself.
 
Ok great! Thank you for the response. It was kind of what my thoughts were, but I wasn’t sure how far to go down into the stove itself.
You should also think about the fact that any heat radiated by the part of the stove in the fireplace will be lost to the masonry structure. If it's an internal fireplace that isn't all that bad. An exterior one that heat will just end up outside further reducing the efficiency of an already inefficient stove. This is why inserts are usually used in fireplaces
 
The fireplace is inbetween my kitchen and dining room. It’s a large fireplace about 5 ft wide and 40 inches deep, the entire stove will be in it. The hope is that it will heat up the masonry and radiate into the room behind it as the back of the fireplace is directly in that room. My bedroom is directly above the kitchen which should also receive the heat from the masonry. They don’t really make inserts for fireplaces this large that I have seen. I had a similar set up with a Glacier Bay stove in my previous house and it worked pretty good
 
The fireplace is inbetween my kitchen and dining room. It’s a large fireplace about 5 ft wide and 40 inches deep, the entire stove will be in it. The hope is that it will heat up the masonry and radiate into the room behind it as the back of the fireplace is directly in that room. My bedroom is directly above the kitchen which should also receive the heat from the masonry. They don’t really make inserts for fireplaces this large that I have seen. I had a similar set up with a Glacier Bay stove in my previous house and it worked pretty good
In that case yeah a freestanding stove absolutely makes sense. You are planning on a full insulated liner and block off plate right?
 
Yes that has already been done. There has been a smaller freestanding stove installed for quite a while.

A tree fell on the house about 10 years ago and smashed the top section of the chimney, part of the roof, etc. When the chimney was rebuilt a 6 inch stainless liner was installed, along with all the associated components per code as everything was inspected and the smaller stove reinstalled.

The mama bear has a rear flue and while it would work it will fit much better with the flue coming out the top. I figured it would be possible being it’s plate steel but wanted to double check with some that know better then I before I start modifying the stove.