Need advice on new stoves and installs

[area_man]

I have a fireplace upstairs and an insert downstairs as the pics show. The fireplace has a flue that's rusted open and the downstairs insert is installed slammer style. Not very good. I need to upgrade everything to make it all functional.

My wife would like a stove that can cook upstairs, that's where the fireplace with the glass doors is located. The downstairs has a bit more hearth and could easily accommodate a larger stove. I would be happy if the downstairs stove could cook as well, it just adds a little more functionality to the house.

It would be really nice to be able to add a thermostat to control the fans. Catalytics are supposed to be good, right? I get the idea how they work, I'm just not sure how they affect the run time, efficiency, and temp output. Don't all stoves engage in secondary smoke burning?

Some cookstoves have a water reservoir or could be connected to the house hot water heater. That sounds intriguing and I would like to learn more about it. Is that what a wood fired boiler is? Can you have one and use it sometimes and not use it other times? If there's a FAQ out there I would like to read it.

My existing basement wood stove is an Orley. Can an Orley be fitted with a catalytic? I've heard of people upgrading their equipment... just curious. If I could make it efficient I could possibly keep it.

Thanks for your help gents.

 

[begreen]

There is nothing that is going to give you the cooking surface of that old Orley, except maybe a free standing stove. Has the Orley been carrying most of the winter heating load or is it just used occasionally?

For insert options we need dimensions for each fireplace including h&w front and back and depth, top and bottom.

 

[area_man]

36" across the front, 32" high. In the back it's about 30" across and 28" high. Depth is 28". That's for the upstairs fireplace. In the basement I can only get width and height, there's something installed in back of the insert that blocks the front of the fireplace. Just a guess, but I bet the dimensions are the same. They look the same to me from the outside and they're both on the same chimney.

The Orley works like a champ downstairs, but downstairs is just basically my bedroom. A small ceramic heater actually does a better job of heating that room. My kids' bedrooms and the main living area are upstairs. I have placed a box fan on a folding chair in the hallway pointing down the stairs but that's no way to live long term. Between the narrow hallway, narrow staircase, and the folding chair I cannot get around.

It did the heavy lifting for heat during last winter. It's just such a pain to get the heat around the house that I need to do something else.

I figure the first thing to do is to get that fireplace upstairs figured out, and as long as we're in there I want to run a pipe to the basement and install the Orley right.

Here's the list of Oregon approved wood burning inserts, or at least the one I found.

(broken link removed)

 

[begreen]

You have lots of wiggle room in the upstairs fireplace. That gives you several options. The next thing to figure out is how well heat is going to circulate from the upstairs insert. How many sq ft in the house not including the basement? How open is the fireplace room to the rest of the first floor and where is the fireplace located (middle, end of the house)?

 

[area_man]

The upstairs LR, kitchn,DR are an open floor plan, and the ceiling fan circulates that area well. There are three bedrooms down the hall that dont circulate well. I have a workaround, a fan in the hallway helps a lot.

Much better would be if i could get the central air system to circulate the whole
house. Thats another project, though.Upstairs would be used dailyfor the majority of our heating. We homeschool, my wife works from home, Im back in school, etc.

 

[area_man]

1100 sf upstairs and down. Downstaors is a half daylight basement.

 

[begreen]

Sounds like you would do fine with a 2 cu ft stove upstairs. Look at stoves that stick out onto the hearth or consider putting in a freestanding stove with a hearth extension at floor level. Some inserts that have a cook top area are the Regency Hearth Heater H2100 (smaller) and the Lopi Revere.

 

[area_man]

OK, dumb question time. I see that some of the larger firebox wood stoves like the Buck 91 have extended runtimes that go out to 10-14 hours. That is very appealing to me. Others have water tanks built in that can store 7-20 gallons. If I wanted to heat up a mass to carry heat forward, water seems like a good way to go. Some stove manufacturers alluded to a pipe that could be run into the air ducts in a central heat setup that would radiate heat into the ducts, further heating the air that would be blown around the house. Some members have built thermostats that regulate the fans in their inserts to increase fan speed when the temp is high to throw heat off into the room.

At one point I wondered about plumbing a line to a beer keg to fill it with hot water as a hot mass that could carry heat forward through the day. I don't know, maybe it's a stupid idea. Would it really help keep the house comfortable? It would kind of make sense to put one in my bedroom to act as a radiator... but it would be at least three hours before it was full of hot water. I'd have to fire up the downstairs three hours before I went to bed. Then again, I'd only have to burn the downstairs stove for three hours to get that water hot. Of course, I could plumb the line from the upstairs stove to a beer keg in my bedroom and let it heat up all day and not burn the downstairs one at all. I'm sure there's a more elegant and attractive way to go.

If it made sense to plumb lines in the house, maybe I wouldn't need to do much of anything with the fireplace downstairs at all. I could just pipe the Orley properly and fire it up when the need arose.

I realize that's a lot of options to add to the equation, but I would like to do this once and do it right.

Part of the reason I want to go with wood heat is to add options for heating and hot water in case of a power outage or other interruption of services. We don't get a lot of that where I live now, but we're going to be here for another 30-40 years and who knows what can happen in that span of time.

I also need to think about air purifiers. My wife has allergies, and one of my babies has eczema, which indicates later asthma problems. Bottom line is I need to take some preventative action to see if I can hold the baby's asthma off as long as possible. If it was possible to add HEPA air filtration to my central air circulator that would be great. I'm going to have to dig into the manuals and see what this rig can pull off.

Do you guys bring in the HVAC cavalry to see how everything can work together?

 

[begreen]

If you are considering mass to store heat, use soapstone it is much safer. Maybe consider a Woodstock Progress Hybrid? They have an avid fan club here.