OOPS, need advice on extending my Hearth

[z-man]

OK, I'm in the dog house. We started looking for a stove in the early spring of 2006. I took down ~10 trees on my property, and have split and stacked about 3 cords so far. After countless hours of research, we bought a 1yr old Lopi Freedom wood insert. We loved the look of it, the size of the firebox, have 2 local dealers nearby (in Northern Massachusetts right on the NH line), and especially like the fact that it extends onto the hearth so you can have a cooktop surface.

Well guess what? It is supposed to be installed next week, and I JUST noticed that our hearth is 3inches too narrow We need 16" plus 7" that the stove extends on the hearth (23"), but only have a little over 20" of hearth. My options are to:
1. Mount it flush. Then we lose the cooktop and have to purchase a flush mount kit.
2. Extend the hearth. issues here are cost, and whether the new brick can match the old.

Has anyone here encountered this and had to extend their Hearth? I saw a single ref to this in my forum searches. I'm really interested in the cost and matching the existing brick (nothing fancy, standard red brick with a carpet running up to the base).

Any help you guys can give is appreciated. To date I have used this board to learn how to fell trees, cut to length, split, stack, build a wood storage area, burn safely, BUT NOT how to measure

Thanks.

 

[Harley]

Wow... that's a bit of a time crunch, in order to get the hearth extended in time for the install. I would doubt you would be able to get someone to get that work done in that short order. I'd be concerned about the matching of the brick. That's pretty tricky, and depending how old the original hearth is... may not really be possible.

Do you have a pic or drawing of the layout? Is the hearth extension needed to meet the clearance to combustibles issues, or is it because it needs to be farther out to support part of the insert? I'm not quite picturing what you need. There may be some way of getting by with a less asthetically pleasing extension "temporary" extension for the time being, then after this season, find someone who could do a more permanent job and find matching brick.

I don't know the costs... you could also have it mounted set back in the fireplace for this year, and then move it out after the hearth is extended.

If matching the brick with the extension is a huge problem, would you be OK with extending and covering the whole hearth with some other material, like tile or other stone? My gut tells me that might be a the least costly approach.

For some ideas on how that would be done... see the step by step pictures of Don's hearth in the picture section I think entitled.... So it begins? (its a few pages back) I would think something like that could be done over your existing hearth and maybe give a nice contrast to the existing fireplace.

 

[JAred]

cover it in low cost natural stone or tile. , Slate ilegrout your in it for less than 200 bucks. and you get an updated hearth to show off your new stove!

just my opinion

 

[begreen]

How about not trying to match the brick exactly. Perhaps you could make a border for the exisiting hearth out of similar or contrasting bricks. We have a bunch of half bricks that are 3.5" wide. Would something like that work?

 

[BrotherBart]

Are we talking about a raised hearth here? If so how high off the carpet is it? How close to the edge is the bottom of the insert going to come?

If you have a raised hearth, get an inch thick for so insulated stove board to put in front of the hearth. The Freedom only calls for a 24 gauge hearth non-combutible hearth thickness and if it is a raised hearth there isn't much heat going to radiate down a foot or so before it gets to the stove board anyway.

That beast of an insert of mine is only five inches from the edge of the eight inch raised hearth and I had a one inch thick, eighteen inch deep stove board in front of it for years to meet code, and mostly just to have something to sit the loaded log carrier on when loading the stove. The board or carpet never has even gotten warm. The convection air coming back into the bottom of the stove travels right over it. I finally replaced the stove board with a hearth rug a few years ago just to have something to catch the bark and crap that I wouldn't trip over all of the time. Radiant heat travels straight out. Convection heat goes up.

Edit: I see that from the manual that the insert is going to come within four inches of the edge of the hearth.

 

[z-man]

Thanks to all for the replies so far.

Brother Bart - you're post really has me thinking now. My hearth is 10" tall, as measured above the carpet. The Freedom manual requires 23" total (7+16 as I explained in my 1st post), and I only have 20.25". The insert will be 13.25" away from the edge of the hearth. But, If I include the hearth HEIGHT, I have plenty of room but the manual never mentions height as a factor.

What confuses me is that the Lopi site and manual I used to buy the stove clearly show 2 inserts that have way less that 16" in front of the stove (and they are both on a raised hearth).

(broken link removed to http://www.lopistoves.com/product.asp?dept_id=5&sku=34)

(broken link removed to http://www.lopistoves.com/product.asp?dept_id=5&sku=37)

Does anyone know if hearth height factors into the clearance to combustibles equation? The UL listing states that 'Clearances may be reduced by methods specified in NFPA 211" but I am unclear on what that means. I'm 2.75 inches away from sleeping a whole lot better tonight......

Thanks,
Mike

 

[BrotherBart]

And the manual says it must be .018 inches thick. Put an inch or so thick hearth board in front of that sucker. There are really nice ones out there.

Your coffee table is going to catch a hell of a lot more heat than anything on the floor below the front of that stove. Ring up the inspector and ask him. It will be a judgement call on his part and should be fine with the raised hearth.

If not, I really like that Lopi Freedom insert and am in the market...

 

[begreen]

I'd want the distance in front of the hearth regardless of height. There have been one too many times over the years when I'm filling the stove and a chunk rolls out. Or a sudden pop of gases released from a burning piece of wood sends a big spark out the door. Our old carpet in front of the fireplace hearth got several burn spots in it from these incidents before I installed the pellet stove. So if code says 16", our hearth will have 18 or 20". If an attractive hearthboard covers this and isn't an object to trip on, then it may be a good plan.

 

[JAred]

I had to put a row of 12'' tiles on the floor in front of mine. Good thing too cause most of the time I get rowdy in their and pop somthing out on to the slate.

 

[BrotherBart]

Yep. Ya gotta have something out there in front. In another post I told of when all that was there to catch the log was the eight hundred dollar pair of boots. They did the job real well but...

 

[MountainStoveGuy]

Yep. Ya gotta have something out there in front. In another post I told of when all that was there to catch the log was the eight hundred dollar pair of boots. They did the job real well but...

If i had a $800 pair of footwear, it would be in a shadow box on the wall......not on my feet.

 

[BrotherBart]

Yep. Ya gotta have something out there in front. In another post I told of when all that was there to catch the log was the eight hundred dollar pair of boots. They did the job real well but...

If i had a $800 pair of footwear, it would be in a shadow box on the wall......not on my feet.

Wanna see the $2,800 pair:

Perfectly matched Allen Edmonds gator hides.

 

[JAred]

800 boots? I haven't spent that much on footwear in the last 8 years!

Holy crap man! You could see those things from outer space!

 

[begreen]

Wanna see the $2,800 pair:

Perfectly matched Allen Edmonds gator hides.

Them's serious sh*tkickers BB.

 

[Roospike]

Yep. Ya gotta have something out there in front. In another post I told of when all that was there to catch the log was the eight hundred dollar pair of boots. They did the job real well but...

If i had a $800 pair of footwear, it would be in a shadow box on the wall......not on my feet.

Wanna see the $2,800 pair:

Perfectly matched Allen Edmonds gator hides.

Dem`dare boots steel toe ? Wouldnts wants to crush a toe when your out cutting fire wud in dem dar boots.

 

[BrotherBart]

Yep. Ya gotta have something out there in front. In another post I told of when all that was there to catch the log was the eight hundred dollar pair of boots. They did the job real well but...

If i had a $800 pair of footwear, it would be in a shadow box on the wall......not on my feet.

Wanna see the $2,800 pair:

Perfectly matched Allen Edmonds gator hides.

Them's serious sh*tkickers BB.

The only "I owe myself this one." in sixty years. Everybody else always got what they needed and wanted and I have worn Edmonds shoes for years. So one day I just said "The hell with it. I want something that is the only one of its kind on the planet." and had'em custom made.

Spent every dime I had saved from chopping trees for thirty years I guess, but what the hell. I have always heated with wood because I wanted to. Not because I had to.

Earned those boots in the woods.

 

[JAred]

We know you earned them. You don't need an excuse to look like a texas oil Billionare.

 

[BrotherBart]

We know you earned them. You don't need an excuse to look like a texas oil Billionare.

I don't think them billionaires keep the same old stove for 21 years because they spent all their money on a pair of boots.

 

[brian_in_idaho]

And I thought Danner's were expensive!

Heck you spend more on boots than I am on a stove

 

[BrotherBart]

And I thought Danner's were expensive!

Heck you spend more on boots than I am on a stove

Just that once my friend. Just that once. Now I am scraping for the dough for a replacement stove. They won't take the boots for a trade-in.