New construction - want a wood burner (probably soapstone), advice on flue, chimney, stove, etc?

[farm mom]

I've been lurking around here for a few weeks and am blown away by all of you! I'll try to make this quick. We are laying the foundation now for a new house which has plans for a fireplace, but we want it to actually be useful for heat, although not our only heat source.

- house is 2 stories over a basement. 9 ft ceilings on first floor, 8 ft on second, I don't remember how tall the attic is but it could be converted later to living space so it's relatively tall
- the chimney will run up through the center of the house and out the peak of the roof
- the stove/fireplace will be in the main living/dining room area (1st finished floor) and we are most concerned about the comfort of that room - if it's too hot to stay in there, there is no point
- we will have a central HVAC unit and are blessed to have free gas, but it still costs to blow the air around and we do have power outages in this part of the world (ice storms...)
- we would much rather do this right the first time
- temperatures vary here a lot, even in the winter it can be 15 or 32 or 50 or 70
- we do not have permits or inspections so we better know what we are doing to insure safety

We are leaning towards a soapstone stove - Heritage or Fireview. The biggest drawback to a stove, for us, is it sticking out into the room. Our thought was to use that area already designed for a fireplace for a recessed hearth, does that sound reasonable? Any pictures? We like the soapstone for the looks and the reports of "soft heat". The advantage to the Fireview is it can be burned cooler - true? The advantage to the Heritage is it can be closer to the wall - true?

Would we need support in the basement for the stove? Would you recommend an insert over a stove? Seemed like it might take fewer inputs in material/$ to do a stove although I know the soapstones are pricey. How would you build a chimney, flue system economically and safely? Do we need to bring in outside air? I don't mean for you all to do all our work for us, if you have a good place to point me I don't mind doing my own homework.

Thank you all so much!

 

[jlow]

Our home is 2 story with 1/2 basement at 2900 sq.ft. We installed our Hearthstone Equinox soapstone in the center of our living room(see pictures). We love the fact that we can sit around it and it heats the room(800 sq.ft.) to 74-80 depending on how hot I burn. It is quiet (we decided to forego the blower). Heat moves fine. Upstairs bedrooms (68-72). The stove actually sits in the foundation wall in the basement, but you should be fine ( what width are your floor joists). Ours weighs almost 700 pounds.plus the bricks for the hearth. Sounds like you are going to have a real beautiful place.

 

[edthedawg]

You're not going to get cooked out of the room by a Heritage or a Fireview. They are both pricey stoves. You might consider, based your unspecified future square footage, going bigger - to the Mansfield or the Equinox, esp. if you have a big house planned here. But the Heritage is good for the sq. footage in its rating.

Are you planning to build a brand new masonry center chimney? You can configure the Heritage w/ proper shielding to get pretty close to the wall, and minimize your overall footprint into the room. I wouldn't try to do some recessed build from the get-go, unless you're really crunched for space. You said you wanted to do it right the first time? Well, sitting in the room is "right" to some extent.

I'm a little uncertain on what exactly you are trying to do, but it sounds like you're ok w/ having the stovepipe go straight up and turn into a thimble, or vent straight back into a T w/ cleanout inside the fireplace... Trying to think how I would re-build my setup if I had the option. I'd almost be tempted to go with an insert but I definitely like having the stove out in front of the fireplace.

Stoves don't heat purely by radiant heat transfer. Convection is the far more effective means of heating your space - pushing cold air at the big hot thing. If you recess it or use an insert, in my mind, you effectively limit the accessible surface area of the big hot thing, thereby limiting its ability to warm up your rooms. People combat this with fans / blowers but the extra noise is a routine complaint. We're perfectly fine w/ a silent ceiling fan above, and a box fan in the corner of a neighboring room.

Basement support should be a non-issue. Stove weighs about 500 lbs, spread out over many square feet. If you can put three grown adult males in that spot without the floor collapsing, I'd think the stove could live there a few dozen decades without suffering any gravitational attacks.

You should plumb in an outside air kit (OAK) no matter what - even if you later decide not to use it. Easier to block it off than to retrofit it later.

Sounds like a tall chimney, too - go w/ a flue damper on your stovepipe. Again - you might not need it, but it's easier to install it and not use it than to go back and install it later.

Good luck and welcome to the Hearth!

 

[farm mom]

Thanks for the input. I forgot to mention, it is a 3000 sq ft house and I know those two stoves would be considered too small for that. My thinking was that the downstairs is about 1500 sq ft, and hot air rises, and we don't like to sleep "hot" - and basically a smaller stove won't take as much room... ;-)

jlow, your stove and house look awesome! I don't know if out in the middle like that would work for our application.

Edthedog, thank you for all those thoughts. We have a fireplace drawn on the plans and in the budget, but truthfully it's one thing we have not nailed the GC down for details yet. So, yes, I think it's a masonry chimney and there is already a recess in the wall plan as this is an interior wall. (There are closets using that space in the adjoining room.) But I guess what I was trying to figure out if we should rethink that wall and if there were other better or as good but more economical ways to do the chimney if we aren't going to do a fireplace. Now I have to go find out what a thimble is...

 

[jotul8e2]

I've been lurking around here for a few weeks and am blown away by all of you! I'll try to make this quick. We are laying the foundation now for a new house which has plans for a fireplace, but we want it to actually be useful for heat, although not our only heat source.

-- we will have a central HVAC unit and are blessed to have free gas, but it still costs to blow the air around and we do have power outages in this part of the world (ice storms...)

Free gas???? FREE?? Where do you sign up for that? I live on 50 acres, entirely in hardwood trees except for the acre or so where the house sits, and my firewood cannot be considered "free" by any possible stretch of the imagination.

I am assuming you want a wood heat source for emergencies and perhaps occasionally for some atmosphere? Since your plans already call for a fireplace, I suggest putting your money into three areas:

1) A high efficiency fireplace design, not those heat wasting abominations masons usually build. I have no information at hand but a web search should put you on track. Such a fireplace will be very tall, and very shallow, probably will require custom doors, but will throw off a great deal of heat.

2. More insulation. Remember, insulation works both in the heating and cooling season, so the payback is fast. My house is a story and a half, with 2500 sq. ft. over a full basement of almost 2000 sq. ft., and we heat all but the basement with a Jotul Oslo - about 25% more space than Jotul claims it will heat. BUT - I have six inch walls with another inch of foam on the outside of the sheeting, plus r 50 in the attics. So far, we are good down to 0 deg. f. The basement stays 60 deg. year around.

3. A generator with the switching controls to take you off grid for electrical emergencies. If you have gas available, one large enough to run the furnace fans, a few lights, and the refrigerator will be plenty.

I am not being flippant with these suggestions, I am quite serious. I use a stove (two, actually. I have one in my shop as well), and it fits my needs; but I am not at all sure that the expense and trouble of a quality stove is something you really want.

Mark

 

[TheFlame]

Wood is great for a number of reasons, but in all honestly if I had free gas, I wouldn't bother.

I would go with a gas fireplace unit that can function without electricity. I'm not familiar with what models are available, or how many BTU the are rated at, but if you can find something that will meet your needs I wouldn't mess around with wood. As previously stated, "free" wood is rarely free when you consider the opportunity cost.

 

[Highbeam]

Here's a picture of mine. It's a heritage that is 10 inches from the wall vs. the 7 minimum. The stove sits very close to the wall but the hearth must extend out front due to the front door. If the hearth was not raised it wouldn't matter but due to our raised hearth the heritage takes up as much floor area as a fireview even though the fireview has a huge rear clearance requirement but since no front door there is very little hearth required out front of a fireview. The soapstone is very pretty and does not heat you out of the room. It is cranking away in the picture keeping the house warm.

Don't build a masonry chimney. There are no redeeming features other than aesthetics. They are costly, don't handle earthquakes well, require maintenance, cost about 10x what a standard pipe chimney would cost etc. If you have time to do some major planning then a masonry option is the "masonry heater" which is a really cool device. An insert is not the best choice ever, it is a compromise that you are stuck with if you must reuse an existing masonry chimney. I tore down a masonry chimney and put a stove where the chimney (and Lopi insert) once was.

Free gas. Wow. Well, I would still have a woodstove but I would also have a gas stove and just wouldn't use the woodstove as much. This makes the woodstove an ambiance and fun item and it is less important that the stove be an excellent 24/7 heat source.

My heritage is a non-cat that has served us very well and performed exactly as designed. I would love to trade it for a fireview cat stove that may be more complicated to run (you there backwoods?) but it is not hard and the cat stove has the huge advantage of longer burn times and lower maintained temps.

 

[karl]

If I had free natural gas, I would put a gas insert in. I would put a gas space heater in. They both will run without electricity. Of course my gas generator would make sure my gas dryer, gas oven, gas air conditioner would always work.

 

[wendell]

Well, if I was building a house from scratch I would put in a Tulikivi but with free gas (how the hell do you manage that?) it would be pretty had to justify the cost.

I have a 50 year old house with the original insulation but new windows and can keep all 4000 feet (including the basement since that is where the stove is) at 68 or above when the temp is at around 20 with a stove only rated for 1200 square feet (and can heat us out of the room it is in).

Point being, it sounds like you are only using this for supplemental heat so a smaller stove will probably suite you fine. I don't know your taste but I would sure look at the Morso 3450 or the Scan Anderson 10. Get the soapstone, you will love it.

 

[potter]

With free gas, try pottery, or glass blowing! I would highly reccomend in floor tubing (wirsbo, etc.) and high efficiency boiler (very small, takes up less space, 94% eff.) And really comfortable.
Then get a small soapstone for pleasure fires.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

My heritage is a non-cat that has served us very well and performed exactly as designed. I would love to trade it for a fireview cat stove that may be more complicated to run (you there backwoods?) but it is not hard and the cat stove has the huge advantage of longer burn times and lower maintained temps.

I'm here Highbeam! lol (btw, the reason I don't like your wording about "complicated" is that it can be extremely misleading to potential new wood burners.)

com·pli·cat·ed adj. 1. Containing intricately combined or involved parts. 2. Not easy to understand or analyze.

com·pli·cate 1. To make or become complex or perplexing. 2. To twist or become twisted together. --com·pli·cate adj. 1. Complex, intricate, and involved.


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Although the Heritage and Fireview are not rated to heat as much home as you have you also must remember that it does not get all that cold in your area. With the temperature range you give I would not be afraid to use either. Besides, this stove you are talking about would not be your primary source of heat. When you consider that many have the Fireview in well over 2400 sq. ft. and are very satisfied in how it heats their home it seems entirely possible that it could do the job for you. Besides that, with a new home, you no doubt will be insulating really well.

In case you have wondered about Highbeam's comment about the complicated part, it is a no-brainer! There is a draft and one other lever for the cat. So, you have to dis-engage the cat when you reload the stove and engage it again after 10-15 minutes (about the same time you have to turn the draft down). Methinks that is not so "complicated." Are you there Highbeam? lol

 

[farm mom]

Thanks everbody!

I know, free gas is awesome. We have a gas well on our land and although we don't have the mineral rights we do have the right to run our house off it. That also means that we have to do our own maintenance and over the last 10 years it has cost us a few days without gas - always in the winter of course. The other thing is that someday that gas may no longer be there, from what I've gathered nobody knows when or why a well quits producing. We will have a gas heater or two in the basement.

Karl - yes everything that can be gas here is. Except the only generator we have is the welder. Never heard of a gas generator, may have to look into that one.

And yeah, there's the ambiance of a wood fire and growing boys in our house that need physical labor. :lol:

If one does just a pipe chimney, what do you have to do for it as it goes through the 2nd story and attic? Do you build some type of enclosure? I feel like a ding dong but our only woodburning experience is with standard fireplaces or fireplaces with inserts.

Don't worry Sawboss, I've been reading the cat/non-cat threads and the "complicated" cat doesn't scare me.

Now I've been reading about OAKs - who knew there was so much to learn?!?

 

[edthedawg]

I'm gonna wholeheartedly re-agree w/ some of the others here - unless you have some burning desire (get it? burning? ha! I kill me...) to have a fireplace that you cut off with a woodstove, I would go the route of no masonry chimney - just lay out a spot for a hearth and run your metal chimney in a suitable chase thru the upper floors. No bends, no thimbles, no T's, no cleanouts... No masonry to fall on your head (earthquakes - seriously guys?) Just straight up and out - done right the first time.

 

[Highbeam]

We have some minor earthquakes here so we seriously have lots of chimneys that have been repaired or remortared between the roof and the crown.

I like bricks, they look cool. But I don't want some silly jenga looking stack of them a mile high above my roof.

As the metal chimney goes through the upper floors a chase is built around it that must maintain 2" of clearance to the 6" pipe. Realize that this chase can be much smaller than a chimney that must also run through the upper floors. You can have multiple flues in a single chase just like you can have multiple flues inside one huge chimney.

I have a few OAK pictures in my signature links. I like them lots. They work great.