Let me start by saying that I have found hearth.com to be the single most valuable resource as I started this wood stove project. Everything from stove selection, install, first fire (yet to do, but great instructions when the time comes) and so much more.
This post is meant to highlight my project to date. I have included pictures below, but will focus on questions I had and things I learned / wish I could do over.
An overview of the project. We moved into our new home over a year ago. The main living area has 15foot vaulted ceilings and is placed at the southern end of the house and sits above an unconditioned garage. It is roughly 900SQ feet with a lofted section. When we first moved in, the only source of heat for this room was a large propane gas fireplace insert, with a mantle that direct vented out the wall(see photos). It was large and dated. One of our first upgrades to the home was replacing the 30 year old oil boiler with a new high efficiency propane combi boiler. With that project we added a new zone into the great room so we were not solely reliant on the propane fire place. The goal of mine was to always replace the propane fireplace with a wood stove. We can all agree that there is nothing that compares to a wood stove on a cold winters night, and living in Vermont, there are plenty of those. So we made up our minds that we were going to tackle this project this fall. Installing it all ourselves to save some money. Here were our steps and feedback along the way:
1) Stove location. Originally I had it in my head that I wanted to stove pushed over into the right corner of the living space. It would be out of the way, easy to gate off to the 3 little kids, and open up the space even more. However, this would require far too much class A chimney poking up from our 10/12 roof line, thus resulting in a very poor draft. We also didn't want to run the internal pipe up the roof line like some posts indicated as the supports for that amount of run are not recommended by any manufacturer. So we settled back to the center of the room.
2) Stove selection. This was the single biggest question my wife and I went back and forth on. For obvious reasons. After months of deliberation, we settled on the fact that we wanted a soapstone stove. We spend 75% of our time in the great room and we didn't want to be sweat out of it with a cast iron or steel stove. We also loved the look so it was a win, win. It was down between Hearthstones Heritage and Woodstock's Progress Hybrid. Now I understand these are two very different stoves in terms of heat output, but we were originally concerned with how far the PH would protrude into the room. You can see in the photos of the original mantel that there are some tape outlines of both heritage (blue) and PH (white) to show where each stove and their hearth pad would reside. Ultimately we settled on the PH for a few different reasons. We like the idea that if we need more heat (2400Sq ft) we have it, and the customer service made it easy to pull the trigger. We jumped on one of their fall specials and drove down and picked up the stove in person that following Saturday.
3) Hearth layout and accent wall. We always wanted the hearth pad to be flush, so after much research on this forum we found a solution to keep our R-value to the recommenced .40 that the PH requires (with optional ash lip). We went with .5'' cement board with .25'' ceramic tile on the subfloor. We prefer this look and think it allows for more space in the room. Laying tile for the first time had me anxious, but once I was able to get the proper ratio of water to mix I was relieved on how easy it was. My first couple floor tiles were entirely too soupy but after a while I got the hang of it. If I were to do it again, I would make sure to add smaller amounts of water to the mix at a time . My other major area of oversight was the accent wall up the back. I did not verify that the walls were plum. One of the 2X6 wall studs was .5 inch inset from the rest. This became evident when laying tile. It is directly behind the stove, but if I were to do it again, I will make sure my wall was perfect before laying down cement board.
4) Pipe selection. I hope this is not an area I grow to regret. We settled on Duravent's DVL stove pipe with their matching class A chimney. Simply because of cost. The project (like all tend to do) was quickly going over budget. We saved some money ordering online and choosing this pipe. If I had more funds I would have sprung for the Selkirk. Only time will tell.
Overall we are extremely happy with the project. I will finish up grouting and install internal pipe in the next couple days.... I was 9inches short as I miss ordered one of the pipe lengths. It was a sad end to the install day to say the least.
First fire should be Thursday. I will be sure to post final photos and my feedback on the stove as we move through our first full burn year.
This post is meant to highlight my project to date. I have included pictures below, but will focus on questions I had and things I learned / wish I could do over.
An overview of the project. We moved into our new home over a year ago. The main living area has 15foot vaulted ceilings and is placed at the southern end of the house and sits above an unconditioned garage. It is roughly 900SQ feet with a lofted section. When we first moved in, the only source of heat for this room was a large propane gas fireplace insert, with a mantle that direct vented out the wall(see photos). It was large and dated. One of our first upgrades to the home was replacing the 30 year old oil boiler with a new high efficiency propane combi boiler. With that project we added a new zone into the great room so we were not solely reliant on the propane fire place. The goal of mine was to always replace the propane fireplace with a wood stove. We can all agree that there is nothing that compares to a wood stove on a cold winters night, and living in Vermont, there are plenty of those. So we made up our minds that we were going to tackle this project this fall. Installing it all ourselves to save some money. Here were our steps and feedback along the way:
1) Stove location. Originally I had it in my head that I wanted to stove pushed over into the right corner of the living space. It would be out of the way, easy to gate off to the 3 little kids, and open up the space even more. However, this would require far too much class A chimney poking up from our 10/12 roof line, thus resulting in a very poor draft. We also didn't want to run the internal pipe up the roof line like some posts indicated as the supports for that amount of run are not recommended by any manufacturer. So we settled back to the center of the room.
2) Stove selection. This was the single biggest question my wife and I went back and forth on. For obvious reasons. After months of deliberation, we settled on the fact that we wanted a soapstone stove. We spend 75% of our time in the great room and we didn't want to be sweat out of it with a cast iron or steel stove. We also loved the look so it was a win, win. It was down between Hearthstones Heritage and Woodstock's Progress Hybrid. Now I understand these are two very different stoves in terms of heat output, but we were originally concerned with how far the PH would protrude into the room. You can see in the photos of the original mantel that there are some tape outlines of both heritage (blue) and PH (white) to show where each stove and their hearth pad would reside. Ultimately we settled on the PH for a few different reasons. We like the idea that if we need more heat (2400Sq ft) we have it, and the customer service made it easy to pull the trigger. We jumped on one of their fall specials and drove down and picked up the stove in person that following Saturday.
3) Hearth layout and accent wall. We always wanted the hearth pad to be flush, so after much research on this forum we found a solution to keep our R-value to the recommenced .40 that the PH requires (with optional ash lip). We went with .5'' cement board with .25'' ceramic tile on the subfloor. We prefer this look and think it allows for more space in the room. Laying tile for the first time had me anxious, but once I was able to get the proper ratio of water to mix I was relieved on how easy it was. My first couple floor tiles were entirely too soupy but after a while I got the hang of it. If I were to do it again, I would make sure to add smaller amounts of water to the mix at a time . My other major area of oversight was the accent wall up the back. I did not verify that the walls were plum. One of the 2X6 wall studs was .5 inch inset from the rest. This became evident when laying tile. It is directly behind the stove, but if I were to do it again, I will make sure my wall was perfect before laying down cement board.
4) Pipe selection. I hope this is not an area I grow to regret. We settled on Duravent's DVL stove pipe with their matching class A chimney. Simply because of cost. The project (like all tend to do) was quickly going over budget. We saved some money ordering online and choosing this pipe. If I had more funds I would have sprung for the Selkirk. Only time will tell.
Overall we are extremely happy with the project. I will finish up grouting and install internal pipe in the next couple days.... I was 9inches short as I miss ordered one of the pipe lengths. It was a sad end to the install day to say the least.
First fire should be Thursday. I will be sure to post final photos and my feedback on the stove as we move through our first full burn year.
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