New Hearth & FP installed in September

[gkucera]

Hello,
We put in a Quadrafire 7100fp. I must say the support from Quad was not great, with vague answers to my questions and a non-response. I was a bit disappointed. If I had to do it again, I might go with one of the other options, the large BIS Tradition or the Delta.
We needed a big unit as we have a large great room. The fireplace is at one end, but the house is an open style and the upstairs wraps around the great room on three sides.
The before picture looks much better than the actual fireplace looked; it was a decorative gas unit with marble tile that did not go with the house.
The final product incorporates 4.5 tons of South Bay Quartzite (it is from New York) and almost a ton of Arizona flagstone. The hearth is 4.5 inches thick and 24" deep, the mantel is 5.5 inches thick and 7 ft. The width of this corner of the room is 10.5 ft.
I have my own nits about how it turned out, so any input/feedback/comments are welcome.
Regards, George

 

[stejus]

I really like it. It came out great IMO. Much nicer than before. Nice detail and area to store a few days worth of wood. Looks like high ceilings, I hope you have some fans up there!

 

[Ratman]

That's no woodstove, it's a shrine.
Very beautiful.
Do you actually put wood in there?
Just jealious..

 

[Hogwildz]

What is underneath all that stone, supporting all that weight?

 

[gkucera]

Thanks for the nice comments guys. I posted too hastily earlier and forgot to mention a couple of items. First, this site was very helpful in several ways helping me plan my fireplace; THANKS to all who have contributed and answered my prior posts. I explored too many options to mention here and avoided some important pitfalls (I hope all of them) with building a hearth to encase a unit. Second, after carefully selected a good mason to do the job. I wanted tight mortar joints and a good shaping. My mason was top notch and I am very pleased with that. Third, I also shopped around for material a long time. I resisted sandstone at first for the hearth and mantel, but am happy now with it. I could have paid a couple of thousand more for granite or quartzite slabs, but it didn't work into my already large budget. The material supply store near me was very, very helpful as well.
Since the sublevel (daylight basement as we are on a slope) is partially built out (about 630 sq. ft.), I decided to add the option to pull convection air from below if I desire. I don't think the vacuum effect will pull much warm air down the stairway, but it may help a bit to distribute heat. I am putting dampers on the y-joints of my HVAC so that in the Winter I can focus more heat to the sublevel instead of the greatroom and in the summer, do the opposite with A/C.
I have only done one small curing burn so far. Soon I will do a few more small burns to finish the process. I have three + cords of oak outside and am building a shed to store it in right now. The upstairs is partially open to the hallway near the top and two bedrooms share walls on the 2nd floor. I was thinking about putting damperable vents in both bedrooms to allow hot air to flow in as desired. Also, the upstairs HVAC return is about 7' from the top of the room (room is 20' high). With all of this I figure I will get the heat spread out a bit. We will see this winter.
The overall weight added was about 8.5 tons (with 2 tons of mortar, framing, the 550 pound quad and the 27' of Duraplus chimney. The sublevel had to be beefed up considerably. Two 4x4 posts were added under the outside girder and a 6x6 reinforcing the central girder with a separate footing). Spanning between the girders, resting on top of the existing 2x10 joists are two new beams, a 6x8 and a 6x10.
If anyone wants advice, I did do my research, so please contact me; I would be happy to help you! George

 

[abby4000]

BEAUTIFUL................ a man could get alot of thinking done in front of that while watching the fire.
Very nice job.

 

[firefighterjake]

Very sharp looking.

 

[stejus]

Do you have any work in progess shots? That would be a great series of pic's seeing it go up.

 

[thewoodlands]

Hello,
We put in a Quadrafire 7100fp. I must say the support from Quad was not great, with vague answers to my questions and a non-response. I was a bit disappointed. If I had to do it again, I might go with one of the other options, the large BIS Tradition or the Delta.
We needed a big unit as we have a large great room. The fireplace is at one end, but the house is an open style and the upstairs wraps around the great room on three sides.
The before picture looks much better than the actual fireplace looked; it was a decorative gas unit with marble tile that did not go with the house.
The final product incorporates 4.5 tons of South Bay Quartzite (it is from New York) and almost a ton of Arizona flagstone. The hearth is 4.5 inches thick and 24" deep, the mantel is 5.5 inches thick and 7 ft. The width of this corner of the room is 10.5 ft.
I have my own nits about how it turned out, so any input/feedback/comments are welcome.
Regards, George

Nice, whens the party!

Zap

 

[gkucera]

Do you have any work in progess shots? That would be a great series of pic's seeing it go up.

Here are the few that I have...and a gratuitous shot of my daughter in front of the semi-finished unit.

 

[gkucera]

Here are some earlier foundational photos. In the one you can see the 6x10 and the 6x8 with two 2x2 risers, where they attach to the central girder. They are sitting on 3/4" plywood to spread some of the weight to the underlying joists and 1" plywood on top of the beams to spread the weight around as well. My two sons provide some perspective. The other pipe going up is the exhaust from my lower level water heater close to directly below the unit in the unimproved part of the sublevel.

 

[semipro]

Beautiful! I love the wood storage but would kind of miss the book storage too.