New vs old. Please help

[Fletcher2003]

Let me start by saying I'm new to wood stoves and new to this site. I recently traded my gas log insert for an old black bart II fireplace insert. I sanded and painted the stove myself and spent several hundreds of dollars trying to get it in shape to burn. The man I traded with is a welder and talked me into letting him cut an 8" diameter in the top of the stove for an 8" pipe rather than buying the piece that's was suppose to go on top. I'm sure that wasn't a great idea but once again this is my first time with a wood burning stove. The stove is now installed and works good but it doesn't heat my home like I expected. If the outside temp is 30-40 it will maintain the same temp inside as long as I am feeding it wood, and this thing loves wood and lots of it. My home is 1600 square feet with 8ft ceilings. I have seen where free standing stoves put off more heat and I could probably make that work. $2000 for a complete Install is about all I could spend on one. I have been reading a lot on here and was just wondering if it would be in my best interest to try and go with a newer stove. I was wanting this to be my primary heating source but it not working like a planned. Still spending a lot of money on propane for my central unit. I live in the south and can't find anyone around here that knows anything about wood stoves and what I may need. Any info would be greatly appreciated. Also I have seen people saying they use doorway fans for moving heat room to room. Which fans should I be looking into?

 

[begreen]

Welcome. 1600 sq ft in GA should be relatively easy to heat as long as the house is not very leaky and poorly insulated. The two essential ingredients for success with a modern stove are a good flue system and fully seasoned wood. Tell us about the chimney that the insert is hooked up to. Was a full chimney length, 8" stainless liner put in? Tell us about the wood. When was it split and stacked? What species are you burning?

Can you post a picture of the current installation?

 

[Fletcher2003]

The chimney is ,3 5ft sections of double wall stainless steel stove pipe. I am burning chinaberry, persimmon, and oak. The chinaberry and persimmon were cut about a year ago and recently split. The oak was cut about 3 months ago and I am now finding out it is too green to burn. I'm assuming the wood needs to be split as soon as it's cut? Not really sure how long the wood needs to sit before I burn. Didn't really have time to prepare a full season of wood to burn because it was a last minute decision to install the stove.

 

[Fletcher2003]

Sorry Begreen, I don't have a home computer and I can't figure out how to upload the picture from my phone.

 

[begreen]

Unseasoned wood will not deliver much heat. That is the first problem. Oak needs at least 2 years to season unless it is split quite small. The chimney piping may not be class A high temp. If that is the case it will need to be replaced with proper high-temp chimney.

For posting pictures on the site from a phone there is a free app called TapaTalk that makes it easier to view the forum and post pictures.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/tapatalk-mobile-app-for-hearth-com.89979/
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/possible-mobile-picture-posting-tip.85034/

 

[Fletcher2003]

(broken image removed)
This is as far as I have gotten. I am planning on laying tile this weekend in front of the stove and I have been searching for any type of basic black trim kit but I do not know where to look. Because I am in the south I am having trouble finding a store or anyone that knows how to help me. My main question is how good this black bart II is compared to a new stove around $1000. Should this stove be able to heat 1600 square feet? I have looked and looked but there just isn't much info out there. Another thing is my stove is in the front room of my house and I don't really have any way to move the air between rooms. What is a good quality room to room fan that can move a lot of air?

 

[begreen]

The primary question should be - how safe is my installation? The hearth obviously is not safe. But perhaps more important, is this insert installed in a masonry fireplace? What was here before this insert's installation?

 

[Fletcher2003]

There once was a brick lined firebox but I had my house moved and they had to remove the entire chimney by law to move the house so it is no longer there. So I had pretty much a 4'x6' hole going up to my attic. I have my box sitting on 3" square tubing to elevate it off the floor. And I have 6 inches of clearance on the sides of the box. What exactly do I need to do to make this safe?

 

[begreen]

This is a dangerous install This unit can not be run there. It only can be used in a masonry fireplace. The insert is too close to combustibles. It would need to be 36" from the nearest wood to be even close to compliance. The best thing that can be done here is to tear out the wall and make an alcove for a closer clearance modern stove. Proper clearances must be honored. This installation is a serious fire hazard. The insert should not be fired again in this location.

 

[therdlesstravld]

Oh DAMN man are those 2x4s on the side of the stove framing that stonework? He's completely right you shouldn't make another fire in that thing until you get your clearances figured out.

Don't be discouraged, heating with wood is complex for a beginner but we all started somewhere and I'm sure did some not so safe things! Get your wood split and stacked and do some research this winter. Save up the money for a safe install and go back at it next winter with a different perspective.

 

[begreen]

For sure. If you want to heat with wood we will help, but it must be safe. This insert can not be used unless it is installed in a masonry fireplace or outdoors. Sell the insert now while it's cold and let's come up with a better plan.

We should start with the chimney pipe. This looks like a zero clearance fireplace enclosure. Did the chimney pipe come from the old fireplace? If not, do you know what it's brand is? We need to be sure the chimney is rated for wood stove use. Old fireplace chimney is not rated for the same use. It is lower temperature pipe. Is there a label on the chimney pipe that says it's part number?

 

[tarzan]

Fletcher, don't take the above messages lightly. Hang around and folks here can guide you through every step of a safe install as economically as possible.

 

[Fletcher2003]

Well I knew this was going downhill quickly for me but I do appreciate the help from u guys. I have very limited help for this type of project where I live. No one I know has a wood burning stove. I am only 29 years old but I feel like I am old for my age. I am sick of spending butt loads of money of propane to heat my house and I love chopping wood and doing things old school. I don't have $5000 to drop in a professional install stove but I would like to be able to keep my family warm during the winter and safe. Obviously I have some safety issues, so some baby steps would be appreciated. Begreen you say make an alcove? I have no clue what that is. I need to know what steps I need to take and which stoves I need to look into to be able to heat my home safely. If I need to pay someone to do some brick work or whatever I will. Obviously u guys have been around this stuff your whole life and u know much more than I. As far as the chimney pipe, it is brand new. I went to a heating and cooling store a bought 8" double wall stainless steel stove pipe. That is all the info I can give you. The pipe puts off hardly no heat at all. I think it is suitable for my install. I apologize for being so green and somewhat incompitant to this subject but I'm not going to give up. Your advice and help are greatly appreciated.

 

[samfatboy]

Fletcher, definitely do not try to burn in that stove again in its current installation. Spend this coming weekend going through all the wood burning forums on this site and you will find plenty of information to make a choice for your home, but it does not look like that stove is a good fit for your current situation. There are many, many variations on how you can go, from very simple, like doing a through the wall pellet stove install for around $1500.00 (very easy), up to completely replacing your masonry chimney and installing an insert for many thousands of dollars. Whatever choice you take, please, please research the proper building code for the application you take, and follow it. Do not risk the precious lives of your family by trying to take short cuts when dealing with fire.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Well I knew this was going downhill quickly for me but I do appreciate the help from u guys. I have very limited help for this type of project where I live. No one I know has a wood burning stove. I am only 29 years old but I feel like I am old for my age. I am sick of spending butt loads of money of propane to heat my house and I love chopping wood and doing things old school. I don't have $5000 to drop in a professional install stove but I would like to be able to keep my family warm during the winter and safe. Obviously I have some safety issues, so some baby steps would be appreciated. Begreen you say make an alcove? I have no clue what that is. I need to know what steps I need to take and which stoves I need to look into to be able to heat my home safely. If I need to pay someone to do some brick work or whatever I will. Obviously u guys have been around this stuff your whole life and u know much more than I. As far as the chimney pipe, it is brand new. I went to a heating and cooling store a bought 8" double wall stainless steel stove pipe. That is all the info I can give you. The pipe puts off hardly no heat at all. I think it is suitable for my install. I apologize for being so green and somewhat incompitant to this subject but I'm not going to give up. Your advice and help are greatly appreciated.

Don't apologize for not knowing things. That's what this site is for. You made a big mistake by trying to do something like this without having a clue what you were up against, but you did the right thing by coming here now, and the folks here will guide you. Just promise you won't do any more stuff DIY on this or anything else until you've thoroughly researched it, OK?

They're totally right when they tell you what you have now is wildly unsafe and you must not do a fire in it again the way it is now. Too bad because that's a very handsome old stove. In Georgia's climate, you won't need to spend an arm and a leg on a stove that will do the job for you, but getting a proper chimney set-up, install, and a safe hearth, etc., will add up some.

 

[begreen]

Hang in there. If you have good class A pipe then you are partly there already. 8" is oversize for most stoves, but it should work if the run is straight up. You can get a decent new stove for around $800-1200. In order to us help point some out, tell us a bit about the house. How large an area do you want to heat with the stove? Is the stove room open to the rest of the house or is there just a doorway connecting this room?

Right now you have a large boxed out area where the old fireplace was. If you pull off the stone veneered framing face of that boxed in area you will have an alcove. That is a recess in the wall about 4ft deep. Does that sound about right? In order to use this for a stove alcove, the exterior walls should be insulated then sheathed in either drywall or cement board if you want to tile, or put up a stone or brick veneer. The top of this alcove should have a ceiling framed in. This will support the chimney pipe at the ceiling level with a ceiling support box. The alcove ceiling should also be insulated and sheetrocked. The stove will need a hearth. If you get a stove that only needs ember protection then the hearth can be a simple tiled floor that extends at least 16" in front of the stove door.

There are several examples of alcove installations here. It's late, but I will dig up some threads that show the whole process tomorrow. You can also use the Search box and search on Alcove in the title of thread in this forum.

 

[Bobbin]

Safety is key! I know diddle about the nuts and bolts of proper installation but I've always been big on "following the directions". And I've always been big on dotting i's and crossing t's. We did everything necessary to meet all relevant codes in our town and in turn, that helped greatly with our insurance carrier (they're rightly concerned about wood stoves and their installations). You have to be safe in your home! and while you may miss this heating season you'll be sitting pretty for next year.

Absolutely agree that you shouldn't be put off by criticism of your present installation, you need to tackle it one step at a time. Your wood will have time to season properly, and you will be safer and far less frustrated by burning.

 

[mellow]

Here are some Alcove install threads for you to read and wrap your mind around what it is going to take, yes they are all BK but the fundamentals still apply:

My Blaze King Alcove Build
Out goes the Heatilator. In goes
Blaze king install....help!

 

[begreen]

A few more alcove projects for inspiration and ideas.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/beginning-stages-of-alcove-build.128251/
Jotul alcove install with wall shielding (hopefully you won't need this)
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/alcove-build-for-jotul-rangeley.124967/
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads...ncy-zc-wood-burning-fireplace-project.114875/
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/my-alcove-install-in-pictures.74192/

 

[Oldman47]

Well I knew this was going downhill quickly for me but I do appreciate the help from u guys. I have very limited help for this type of project where I live. No one I know has a wood burning stove. I am only 29 years old but I feel like I am old for my age. I am sick of spending butt loads of money of propane to heat my house and I love chopping wood and doing things old school. I don't have $5000 to drop in a professional install stove but I would like to be able to keep my family warm during the winter and safe. Obviously I have some safety issues, so some baby steps would be appreciated. Begreen you say make an alcove? I have no clue what that is. I need to know what steps I need to take and which stoves I need to look into to be able to heat my home safely. If I need to pay someone to do some brick work or whatever I will. Obviously u guys have been around this stuff your whole life and u know much more than I. As far as the chimney pipe, it is brand new. I went to a heating and cooling store a bought 8" double wall stainless steel stove pipe. That is all the info I can give you. The pipe puts off hardly no heat at all. I think it is suitable for my install. I apologize for being so green and somewhat incompitant to this subject but I'm not going to give up. Your advice and help are greatly appreciated.

I am also new to wood heat but I got lucky and recognized that before it got me in trouble. An alcove is simple, it is a U shaped area that is recessed into the wall so that the stove and its hearth need not eat up too much floor space. Every stove has its own specs as far as how deep and how tall an alcove must be. Many of those specs also limit how deep an alcove can be. The typical alcove must be 84 inches tall from floor to ceiling. That is just 7 feet so almost any building could meet that requirement. Don't get me wrong, as soon as you zero in on 84 inches your stove of choice will require 90 inches so check the specs and don't rely on typical. All stoves will specify how close a stove can be to each wall in back and to both sides. These numbers vary a lot but the numbers must be met to be safe. Some stoves specify ember only protection while others require a certain R value for the hearth. A fairly cheap and popular stove is the 30-NC but it requires an R 0.8 hearth. That is not just a layer of non-combustible material but is a special built layer system that gives adequate protection. Ember only protection means that there is no need to insulate at all but just to keep sparks that jump out of the stove from starting a fire where they land.
Some terms to understand:
Hearth is that floor structure under and in front of your stove that protects the floor from becoming a fire hazard. It may or may not be raised above the main floor area.
Chimney is the pipe that starts wherever your stove exhaust first passes through anything like a ceiling or a wall.
Connector or stove pipe is the pipe between the stove and the chimney. If things are tight, you will want a double wall stove pipe.
Flue, a fancy word for the pipe going from the stove to the roof.
Distance to combustibles - ignore everything in between and just measure from the stove to the nearest stud, drywall or other combustible material. It is counter intuitive but distance to combustibles ignores ever6y7thing between except a proper shield.
Shield - a properly spaced non-combustible barrier that has an air passage behind it to carry away any heat before it gets to the combustibles. Typically there is a specified minimum air passage size along with an opening on top and bottom of a specified size for that air to flow through. Unless the stove itself comes in a shielded configuration, figure the shield is something you may not want to tackle on a DIY installation.

Another couple of notes here. A chimney is a UL tested configuration and trying to mix brands means you are in completely uncharted waters. Don't do it. The manufacturers will not stand behind any mixed application. A stove pipe is like a chimney, it has only been tested as a unit, not a bit of this brand and a bit of that brand. Again, don't go there. If you want to use one brand for the chimney and another for the stove pipe it is no problem but I found the chimney so easy to work with that I stayed with the same manufacturer.
I bought all Selkirk components and found the chimney install very easy to do but I am working in a new house installed the chimney pipe before I closed up the attic space. That made that part far easier than it would have been on an existing house.

 

[Fletcher2003]

Thanks for everyone's help. This is the floor plan so I guess my first step is to see if you guys think a a stove will heat my house due to my limited open space. The fireplace is double sided. On bedroom one side I have the exact same setup as the original pic but I still have my gas log insert installed. So right now the gas log insert and the black bart are sitting back to back. Gas logs being in bedroom one and black Bart being in the living room. I'm assuming the other gas insert will need to come out for my new project so then u will be able to see through to the other room. Any ideas?

 

[begreen]

If the gas log fireplace is properly and safely installed it may be able to stay. This will depend on how it is installed and vented. The venting needs to be independent of the new wood stove. How is that unit vented? Whether it remains or not is your call. You may want to pull the gas vented log fireplace and increase closet space in the bedroom.

Thanks for posting the floor plan, that helps a lot. With the removal of the bumpout for the area where the Bart now sits you don't need an alcove. It would be more like a corner install with the closet being one wall of the corner. That will make the install easier. Just rebuild the wall behind the stove making sure this partition honors the gas vented log fireplace clearance requirements.

As far as heating goes, in your milder climate I don't think it will be too hard to heat. A 2 cu ft stove would make a very large difference. You could go for larger but most of the time it would be idling. The main trick will be getting the heat distributed. Does the home have a basement? How large is the opening between the living room and the dining room?

 

[Fletcher2003]

The gas logs are non vented. Just the logs and a box. No I do not have a basement. The opening between living room And dining room is only 36". And the opening between dining room and the hall leading to the bedrooms is 48". Neither have doors, they are just walk through openings. Although my wife won't be happy about it, I will install Whatever fans are necessary to make this work.

 

[begreen]

Getting the living room warm should be no problem. Getting the heat out of this room and into the rest of the house will be a bit more of a challenge due to the small doorway between it and the rest of the house. Here are some thoughts on possible solutions:

1) Widen the doorway to about 5 ft. by removing the area that ties it to the center wall. (yellow X). If this is done you may be able to just skip to #4 and keep things simple and a bit more affordable.

2) locate an in-wall fan system to pull air out of the bedroom and into the stove room. This will cause warm air to be pulled from the stove room into the bedroom hallway and then into the master bedroom. Tjernlund makes a fan for this purpose called the AirShare. It uses the wall cavity so that you can put an intake grille up high on the bedroom side wall, and the fan down low on the livingroom side. The stud cavity acts as a duct that blocks light and noise spilling in from one room to the other. This would be installed somewhere on the wall labeled "a"
http://www.tjernlund.com/airshare_ventilation.htm

3) put in a second AirShare at location "b" blowing cooler dining room air into the stove room

4) Locate a simple 10-12" table fan on the floor somewhere near letter "c".
he idea is to blow the cooler air down at floor level, toward the stove. Here is the general idea: For more even heat in the house put a table or box fan in a cooler room within sight of the stove room, placed on the floor, pointing toward the woodstove room. Run it on low speed. It will blow the cooler air down low, toward the woodstove. The denser cool air will be replaced with lighter warm air from the stove room. Running this way you should notice at least a 5F increase in the room temp after about 30 minutes running. And the stove room temp should drop by a corresponding 5+ degrees.

I will let others comment on the gas logs. Personally I don't like unvented gas appliances, particularly not in a bedroom and would remove them entirely. They raise humidity which can cause mold problems, consume room oxygen and have the risk for introducing carbon monoxide into the room. There should be a CO detector in the bedroom. For more info and questions on unvented gas logs, post a new thread in the "It's a Gas" forum here.

click to enlarge this picture thumbnail:

 

[Fletcher2003]

I will more than likely remove the gas logs altogether because I am limited on space in my living room.i would rather have stem the stove recessed completely in the alcove. I have read several of the alcove threads you shared but I'm still a little confused on exactly what I need to do. I have seen some with Sheetrock only but most of them have stone and the dura rock backing. I have seen some that say they have spacers between the studs and the backing. Is this something the stove manufacturer will help me with so I will know exactly what I need to do?