So I had this idea...

[wagvan]

And if you are a married man, you probably think "oh crap" when someone of the female persuasion says that... At least I *think* my husband says that in his head (he is far too wise to say that outloud.) when he hears me say "so I had this idea". LOL.

Let me preface this by saying that we are owned by an 1880 Brick Eastlake Victorian that was near condemnable when we bought it. It is double wall brick construction, which means there is plaster, then a 4" brick wall then a 4" airspace for "insulation" (yeah, notsomuch) then a 4" exterior brick wall. When we bought the house there was what we affectionately call "the funky door window thing" because they had a window shaped hole with plexiglass in it with a falling apart wood screen door on the outside. (And that is some of the better stuff done to her in the 60s-70s. It's a good thing that the guy who tore off the wrap around gingerbread porch, put drop ceilings hanging from drop ceilings and paneling up and took out a lot of the woodwork is dead, because I would kill him myself.) We put a used metal door in there temporarily until we took care of more pressing things and figured out what we are doing with the door. It is directly across from our front door and there really isn't a need for it to enter and exit the house.

What I would like to do is to put a fireplace in that opening. We would also like to do it as inexpensively as possible, but as good as possible. We are experienced DIY'ers though not above hiring professionals for specific tasks when safety is a factor. Like I do any and all electrical wiring in our house, but we hired an electrician to put in a new 200amp electrical drop to our house and we hired roofers to reshingle our roof 3 stories up on a 12 pitch roof (not to mention the original 1880 wood shakes were up there under the 5 layers of asphalt)

This is a 32" door doorway, and because there is an arch that holds up the wall above it, cutting a wider opening is not like cutting a wider opening on a frame built house) More than likely I would gain some inches by removing the door frame and such. There is a finished room above this area and not a good spot for a chimney to go through it. There is a basement below this area and there is a deck on the exterior. Ideally, I would like eventually to have an exterior fireplace on the back of where the fireplace would be on the interior. The foundation is a melange of fieldstone and brick and is AFAIK a couple feet thick.

I know I could just run stove pipe out the back of the fireplace to the outdoors and up the appropriate height, but that it wouldn't draft properly here in a Michigan winter. (See! I did learn something hanging out here!) I didn't know if it would be better to tear back the deck and pour a cement pad and build a masonry chimney (I'm assuming cement block then face with brick or stone?) up the appropriate height or to use a metal chimney and build a metal stud and cement board chimney chase around it to keep that chimney warm and then face it with brick tile. Would there be an appropriate insulation for that?

I'm assuming (you know what they say about when you assume...) that what we would want is a zero clearance firebox. But I wasn't sure if that is true. Could we DIY a masonry firebox? Are there plans out there for that? I know there is math involved so it draws properly We want this fireplace to heat the house so I figure we need to put an insert in it. I love, love, love the idea of a masonry heater, but I'm not sure that there is room for that. There is an exterior wall about 10" to the left of the doorway and an interior doorway about 2 feet to the right. The prefab DIY masonry heaters are too expensive for us. Are there any good DIY masonry heater plans out there that might work? (tall and narrow, I'm thinking. We have 9' ceilings and the door would be 32"x83")

Cost is a HUGE factor, but we are not in a hurry and are willing to scavenge and salvage materials and do the project in stages. We would also be fine with getting a not ideal, used insert to use until we can save up for a dream insert, for example. We're fine with working our way up the food chain. We also plan to DIY as much as humanly possible. At the same time, we'd like to do the more permanent things right and not half-assed.

So I am looking for thoughts, ideas, codes, clearances, links to plans, blog posts, preferred products, warnings, caveats, sources, etc.

I can get some photos and measurements if that will help. Thanks!

 

[webby3650]

Put in a freestanding stove and forget about the fireplace. 32" is not enough room for a fireplace, and an insert must be inserted into a fireplace.

 

[begreen]

Is the fireplace going to be for heat or just an occasional fire? If heat locate your heating source centrally and try to avoid an exterior chimney if possible.

 

[Jo191145]

Oh crap

As a guy who built masonry fireplaces for 25 years nothing is impossible as long as your willing to follow codes.
That being said your probably biting off more than you care to chew. As far as masonry fireplaces are concerned we have an entirely different set of rules to abide by than the ZC manufacturers do.
You could probably put two ZC's back to back fairly easy. Not my area of expertise tho.
Two masonry fireplaces back to back take up a whole lot of room. Room in masonry means money material and labor not to mention aesthetically unpleasing when all exposed. You'd have a chunk of masonry on your deck that would be disproportionate to the eye of all observers.

A masonry heater would have its bulk inside the house. Never had the possible pleasure, possible nightmare of building one. But I do know they do no good outside an outside wall lol. I'll assume you know that but just to make sure that's part of your vision.

Bottom line I would go with a freestanding woodstove inside and decide between prefab or masonry outside. I can only assume a prefab build would be cheaper, faster and easier for homeowners to tackle.

 

[Simonkenton]

If you want a masonry fireplace to have a chance of heating your house, it must be enclosed entirely within the house. My fireplace, pictured at left, is such a fireplace.
The firebox is in the living room, of course, and the back wall of the fireplace is the inside wall of the bathroom. I burn it for about 5 hours, let the fire go out, then close the damper. When I built the fireplace, I had filled in the space, which is usually open, between the back of the firebox wall, and the exterior masonry wall, with small gravel, so that, the heat of the firebox is transmitted right to the outside wall of the back, and sides, of the fireplace.
And so, on a 30 degree night, the house will stay warm all night. The next afternoon, with a temp of about 45, the living room will be 68 degrees, and upstairs will be 63 degrees, the house is heated by the massive amount of heat, stored in the masonry, and slowly given out over many hours.
Sunset, fire up the fireplace noch einmal, and you can continue to heat the house in this fashion. This is a 1,200 sq foot house, well-built and well-insulated. Run the fireplace 5 hours every night, and it will heat the house with a low of 30.

If you can't put the masonry fireplace entirely within the house, fugettaboutit. Masonry has an R factor of about zero. Masonry transmits heat, or cold right through. The exterior masonry fireplace is a heat sink, as the cold winter temps run right through the sides of the fireplace, especially when the fireplace is not running, and you have to put out extra heat just to heat up your fireplace walls. Even worse, with the exterior masonry fireplace, you get no heat out of the back or sides.

As good of a heater as my fireplace is, it still uses about 5 times as much wood as my wood stove, to achieve similar results.

If you can't build an interior fireplace in your house, and it sounds like you can't, just go with a wood stove. A masonry fireplace is costly to hire out, and would be a daunting task for most do it yourselfers to try. Although, since you as a female can do wiring, your get 5 gold stars as an intrepid do it yourselfer.

I like the construction of your house, brick wall, 4 inches dead air space, and another brick wall. Hell, 4 inches of dead air space is nothing to sneeze at, that ought to be some pretty good insulation.

 

[wagvan]

Well, poop. Can you clarify about putting the fireplace inside? Because the fireplace can be inside. It's the chimney that has to go outside, but we could build a chase for the chimney to be within to try to insulate it from the cold somewhat. Or is that not really helpful? Also, this is not going to be our primary heating source, we have a high efficiency gas forced air furnace. But we would probably want to be burning all day every day when we are home in the winter. We would rather burn free (except for the man-hours) wood rather than paying the gas company. We have an older Hearthstone H2 and an interior metalbestos chimney in an inconvenient location. (It's in the corner of our dining room right on a primary walkway to the kitchen and our primary bathroom.) It may sound silly to all the hard core hearth folks, but I long for a mantel to hang Christmas stockings on and display stuff on in the summer.

I love, love, love what @Simonkenton has done with his fireplace and chimney. That is EXACTLY what I would like, though I would probably put a high efficiency insert in it. Am I wrong in believing that fireplace inserts are basically a wood stove placed within a fireplace? I wonder about filling in the funky door/window opening with fireproof insulated wall and then building a faux hearth and fireplace opening with a chimney opening in the back of it or inside of it that goes up and out. Then just having my woodstove in front of the faux fireplace just like I have seen others put a woodstove in front of their fireplace in order to run the woodstove chimney up the fireplace flue and chimney. Does that make sense?

The actual opening is 36" wide. I was in bed when I made the original post, and I knew the door was a 32" door. I'm not sure if those extra 4" make much of a difference, though.

So what is up with almost every house you see that has a masonry chimney, the chimney is exterior on one end of the house or the other, if it is such a bad idea? Did architects not the the memo? I know there are some houses with central chimneys, (I think saltbox houses have central chimneys) but it seems almost all you see are exterior. That being said, our house has a central chimney. It is no longer being used for the furnace or water heater since both of them are now powervents. But the bottom of the chimney is spalling and crumbling away and would need to be repaired. (which it needs to be anyway...) I assume I could put the woodstove into that on the first floor as well as there are thimble covers on it there and on the second floor. But that while centrally located for heating is also right in the primary walkway. We had considered eventually putting a wood furnace in the basement and using that chimney for it, as supplementary heat, though it would need to be lined.

Perhaps the best way forward would be to put our money and energy towards getting the old house chimney fixed and lined and getting a wood furnace so we have a good supplementary wood heat source and then work on building a faux fireplace/hearth for the woodstove and moving it over where the funky door/window is. Then work on getting a prefab fireplace of some sort for the deck.

@Simonkenton do you have a full sized photo of your fireplace? Did you use any sort of plan when you built it, or did you just wing it based on the rocks that you had?

 

[wagvan]

Oooooh lookee here. One of th threads I had opened in a different tab to read later that is what I was talking about. I wonder if this is do-able in our space. https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/building-the-hearth-for-my-napoleon-nz3000-what-a-quest.74273/

 

[Simonkenton]

Yes, most fireplaces have an exterior chimney. It is easier to build the chimney outside. Fireplaces and chimneys take up a lot of floor space.
The main thing is, nobody, except me, is building a fireplace for heat, they are building it for looks.

For the reasons I detailed above, your entire fireplace, including the chimney needs to be inside the house if you are going to get any serious heat out of it. Massive amounts of heat, for over 24 hours, are given off of the back and sides of the chimney, so your back wall of the chimney needs to be inside the house.
I designed my fireplace, it is a modified Rumford design. In fact, this is a brick and concrete block fireplace, and it is covered with rocks. The thing is, I used huge rocks that are 2 to 3 inches thick, some of them weigh 90 pounds. Using such big rocks, it looks like a stone fireplace, when in fact it has a "frame" of 3,000 bricks, and 250 concrete blocks, and a covering of rocks. Used about 5 tons of rocks.

ps Note exterior air intake on the left. I put a big floor register there, it is 8 inches by 14 inches. Ran a big duct pipe from the register, down in the basement, to the outside. The little wooden box directs the outside air straight into the fireplace, otherwise, you have cool outside air swirling around there on the left side of the fireplace.
A fireplace uses 10 times as much air as a wood stove. If you want to heat with a fireplace, use an outside air intake, or fugeddaboutit.

 

[begreen]

My BIL built a similar stone fireplace, but with a thermal break filled with vermiculite to keep the mass heating effect in the interior.