Quarry tiles inside fireplace firebox behind wood stove - is this ok?

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KennyK

Feeling the Heat
Oct 26, 2011
351
Boston
Hi All,

I am fixing up my fireplace in anticipation of a wood stove install in the next two weeks. I'm going to be putting a Jotul F100 on my hearth in front of the existing 130 year old fireplace and rear venting it with an insulated flex liner up the chimney. The floor of my fireplace box (hearth inside firebox) had tiles that were pretty busted up and I wanted to make everything look nice before installing the stove. I pulled some tiles out and brought them to a tile store, where they told me they thought they were ceramic saltillo tiles, which they didn't have, but were very similar to ceramic quarry tiles which they did. I bought a box of the unglazed quarry tiles and have installed them (all but mortared them down), but thought before mortaring them into place I should ask here if there's any problem with this. I bought some Rutland castable refractory fireplace cement, which a person at Rutland told me I could use like mortar for putting the tiles into place. The person at the tile store told me that the quarry tiles are heated to 2000 degrees in the kiln, so they should be fine with the heat. In the past, people burned logs right on top of the old tiles in my fireplace box, and I will just have the back legs of my wood stove on top of them and only the rear inch or so of the stove directly above the tiles. Does anyone here see any concerns with this? I've attached pics of the old tiles, new tiles and how things look now (also hit the steel surround of my fireplace with stove bright paint) - again, the tiles aren't yet mortared into place, which is the final step. Thanks for any input!
 

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