New to Forum - Building my Hearth / Progress Hybrid

[M@dMinute]

I have been lurking around here for about a year now. I moved into a 100 year old farmhouse last November. As you can imagine I spent a fortune in heating, even burning the King Stove Insert I had. I think I used about 3 cords of Wood. I went through roughly $6000 in oil. My electric bill was at least $500 each month because I had to use space heaters to keep pipes from freezing! House was only at a comfortable 60 degrees. The house is on a limestone foundation, about 3100sqft and and 10ft ceilings.

Well it is a new year. To keep my wife from killing me this winter we are upping our heat output and sealing up the house. I ordered my Progress Hybrid about a month ago to replace the King Insert. I am currently working on the hearth. Taking plaster off the chimney. Just thought I would finally drop a message and thank everyone for all the information on here.

I am also looking at using one of the other 2 fireplaces to install a Harman P35i Pellet insert. More to come on that.

 

[webbie]

Quite a project!

Now we'll see if 1/4 ton of stone and iron can make a dent in heating that place!

 

[begreen]

Kind of looks like someone ran a freestander in front of that fireplace at one point. The cracks in the face concern me. Has this chimney been video inspected for integrity? Are you installing a fully insulated liner for the Progress?

 

[M@dMinute]

Yes, it is a fully insulated Liner.

I have the chimney guy coming back because of the other two chimneys, he wanted to inspect this one from the top but we had already removed the stove. I have insulated liners in my other two chimneys as well, but they didn't attach the insulation to the liner just wrapped a piece of wire around it very couple of feet and my chimney guy said he did not feel good about reconnecting the Appalachian Stove inserts that I had in the fireplaces as it could create fire hazards due to hot spots where the insulation could have fallen off/ gotten stuck when they slid it in. He told me he may be able to get out the liner and insulate it, but they are not as flexible the more they are burned. If I wanted it connected I would have had to sign a waiver. I passed, I have a 15 month old and another on the way. Not worth it at all.

That is why I am looking at a pellet stove, He said the insulation around the liner isn't needed for them. He said he has done a pellet stove vent to 6" adaptor to connect the pellet stoves to an existing liner a couple times, hasn't had anyone call back with issues. He seems to think it should work fine. I am thinking about the harman p35i, my chimney guy sells breckwell, but my wife does not like the way they look. Seem to be mostly good things about the Harmans on here.

I will be going though and repointing all of the brick to make this fireplace look nice. I wanted to do stove pipe up to that old hole, but the old chimney is divided into two chimneys, my oil liner goes up it on one side and the old stove hole is right in the middle.

 

[begreen]

Sounds good. The guys in the pellet forum will talk your ears off about pellet stoves. Lots of options and opinions out there. I like Enviro and Quadrafire stoves, but haven't kept up with recent changes. The Harman needs too frequent cleaning for my taste. I cleaned our Quad once every two weeks burning a bag a day. The insert was reliable and easy to work on.

 

[M@dMinute]

So I unfortunately had to pull out the slab of granite that was in front of my old fireplace as it was not large enough for the stove. My question is that I have a brick floor from the original fireplace, then wood floors surrounding that. I have my micore and durarock. I will have to cover both brick and wood to keep the floor level and make the pad to size.

Should I just use masonry screws to attach the durarock to the brick and regular cement board screws into the wood? Is there a better way to do this?

 

[begreen]

Did you keep the granite slab? I'd be tempted to put it back, then get another, thinner slab that you can put insulation under and use that as an extension. It could get a nice collar trim frame in wood and look pretty sharp. Run a thin bead of black silicone between the two slabs before placing the second one.

If you no longer have the granite, then proceed with the current plan A. Is the brick flush with the wood or slightly lower? I'm wondering if you could put a thin layer of thinset between the brick and cement board as a leveling compound.

 

[M@dMinute]

I saved the granite. It had a crack in it already for the floor not being level. They put some thinset down years ago, not nearly enough to make up for the difference in the floor. I will use the granite for another project somewhere else. My wife wants a colonial style farmhouse so we wanted to change it back to brick. I put down thinset last night, 1/2" micore 300, and 1/2" of durarock. My goal is to get the stove in before it gets too cold and then get a mason out to work on repointing the chimney.

 

[Nick Mystic]

Have you had a professional mason look at your fireplace for integrity purposes? All those cracks in your photos make me wonder if repointing the bricks is all that is needed. A fireplace and chimney made of brick and mortar is an awful lot of weight and you certainly don't want it coming down inside the living room one day! You pictures make it look like that pile of bricks is holding things up. I know you pulled an insert out, so the bricks must just be piled there as a convenient place to store them. If it was me I would get a mason to check things out and not just rely on a chimney sweep who may not really be all that familiar with sort of damage.

 

[M@dMinute]

The pile of bricks is support for the liner, the chimney is getting inspected from the top sometime soon, chimney guy asked me to put something under it so it didn't slide down when he took the cap off. Those are the bricks I removed from a free standing wall. Previous owner had built a non-load bearing wall in front of the original to house the larger insert. I tore down the wall to get room back for the stove.

Had a mason out, he spent some time looking at it. He just said he would have to replace a few bricks that were cracked, The 2 cracks just followed the mortar joints except for about 6 bricks. He didn't seem concerned at all. He said the reason there was a crack was they had about 6 rows at the bottom all with the joint lined up. He was going to try and remedy that.

 

[M@dMinute]

Moved the stove up on the hearth after I laid the brick and mortared it in. If you can get a pallet jack by far the easiest was to go If your hearth is not way up. Should have it burning this weekend. The chimney guy is coming out tomorrow to inspect/clean or possibly replace the liner depending on what he sees. I am very excited to burn it the first time.

I put in a Harman P35i Pellet stove myself in another room. It has been doing a decent job keeping the house a respectable temperature in the 40 degree weather overnight. So far the oil furnace hasn't even been used.

 

[M@dMinute]

Chimney inspection was good, so I do not need a new liner! They cleaned out the chimney while they were here too.

So I am all ready to burn for the first time, planning on doing it this weekend. The weather man is saying it should be warm outside and I can open the windows. I was reading the manual about seasoning and it specified to do a low to moderate burn.
The paint sheet Woodstock had in the manual said 400 degrees. I know that cat burns much hotter. The manual says that turning on the cat reduces pipe temp, and increases stove temp.

I am guessing that I should light the fire keep it small and close down the damper to keep the fire small but should I kick on the cat at 250? Or should I not use the cat at all during seasoning to keep the stove temp down?

 

[Jags]

Do not engage a cat unless you are at temps high enough to light it off. During the break in fire it is not uncommon to simply leave the cat out of the picture until your final burn at full temps.

 

[begreen]

The liner is for more reasons than just safety, though that is an important one. The liner should roughly match the stove venting requirements for decent draft and reduced flue gas cooling. How is the stove being vented? Is it stubbed up in the chimney? What are the chimney liner dimensions?

 

[M@dMinute]

It was a 6" or 7" stainless insulated liner I would guess 25-30'. Chimney guy added installed a "T" and cleaned the chimney.

Due to the awesome weather in Ohio this weekend, I opened up all the windows and did two small fires lasting about 2.5 hours each to season the stove, then let the stove cool off between. It is suppose to randomly be 80 today. Then drop later in the week to 30 overnight.
Seemed to have plenty of draft even from a cold start. When I lit the match it pulled all the smoke up the bypass. I even did a "top down" start both times and had no issues.