New Guy here, question...

[pr0vidence]

...the first of many I'm sure.

Just unloaded about a cord of good split oak into my back yard yesterday (my friend took down a tree in his yard), and as I'm unloading it off his truck I'm thinking.... man, it would be great to be able to harness the heat this will put out instead of letting it all fly up my chimney.....and here I am

So anyway, I started doing some reading here and there about fireplace inserts. One thing I have yet to see and is honestly making me a little nervous is an insert that will go into a corner fireplace. I know these are not common, so I hope I will be able to do something with it. There in lies my question. Can you get an insert that will fit into something like this? here is a picture of it:

Thanks in advance for all the advice I suspect the vets on the board will be giving me in the coming weeks/months.

 

[begreen]

I think you'll want to extend the hearth and put a freestanding stove in there.

PS: can you downsize the image? Some folks are still on modems here.

 

[pr0vidence]

done, sorry should have thought of that earlier.

What do you mean by extending the hearth?

 

[evan]

Stoves (and inserts) require clearances to combustible materials. For example, my stove requires 16" of non-combustible material in front of the stove. If you put a stove in the fire place (which is what I did), you will need to make sure to conform to the clearances. We didn't have 16" in front of the stove so we put a hearth extender which is a fire proof (resistant?) mat which we will place a fire resistant hearth rug (since the extender is an ugly black thing). You could do something like that or pull up some wood floor and put in hearth material.

Evan

 

[jtp10181]

Is that a metal prefab unit or a masonry fireplace with a custom door/screen? Looks masonry to me but hard to tell. If its masonry and you have the space I like BG's idea the best, put a stove out in front on either side. You could just yank the ugly doors off and repaint the inside.

 

[pr0vidence]

yeah it's a masonry fireplace with a custom grille on it. It looks terrible because the cover is old and falling apart and needs to be replaced. I am thinking, instead of replacing that, put in an insert or a free-standing stove and just do away with it entirely.

The fireplace is smack in the middle of the house. It's a one floor ranch, no basement sitting on a slab. The large side of the fireplace is open to the living room, and the small side opens to the front door. Behind it is the kitchen, you can see a little piece of the kitchen in the upper right hand corner of the picture). The house has a VERY open floor plan. The kitchen and living room are practically one room. the house is 1300 sqft overall. I am hoping that I can get a wood burning setup that will be either supplemental to my very expensive oil forced air heat, or maybe even make the oil heat the supplement to it. I can draw up a floor plan of the house but what do you experts think, is that feasible, or am I dreaming?

 

[swestall]

Yes indeed, looks like a nice place for a freestanding wood stove!

 

[Hogwildz]

Is the subfloor concrete slab foundation? If so you could do the freestanding, or go with insert and build out the open side with non combustibles.

 

[rdrcr56]

A Hearthstone homestead would look good there, and being slab foundation no hearth R factor to worry about.

 

[pr0vidence]

Yes, I know the house sits on a concrete slab. The "wood" floor is actually pergo, so it would be easy to cut some of it out and build out the non combustible area if I had to. There are a few fireplace shops close by to me, I am going to stop by a few of them and see what my options are. I was thinking insert, but I might be leaning closer to free standing at this point. Time will tell.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm sure I'll be posting more as questions come up.