To Buy or not To Buy

[ontherise]

That really is the question.

I am looking at blowing through about 1000 gallons of #2 HHO at a current discounted price (member of Our Town Energy Alliance co-op, this year no pre-buy.. Rack Plus pricing.. about .14 lower than the daily retail raite.. The thinking is the prices will drop and current pricing is totally out of whack..) of 4.55/gal. Obviously the price drop will not be substantial and I estimate I won't pay less than 3.50/gal for any one delivery for the upcoming winter.

I have a gas (LP) fireplace insert in my dining room (when we built a few years back we weren't thinking of heating efficiency apparently) So we are thinking of doing a pellet stove insert where the gas fireplace is. Maybe sell the gas fireplace and hopefully get a little bit of a subsidy towards the pellet stove project.

I am concerned that we won't see drastic savings because of the location for the insert. I have attached a really crude drawing of our downstairs. The house is about 2500Sqft.. Upstairs is simply a balcony overhanging that open foyer area (L shaped with the bottom of the L lined up with the front door), then a long hallway running Left to Right, a master bedroom over family room/bathroom area, a bathroom over the kitchen, and 3 bedrooms off of the hall.

I am thinking the ideal place would be in that foyer area, along the staircases wall but that won't be possible. The spacing between the living room and dining room is not a doorway but an "arch" that is probably at least 5ft from Left to Right at the base.

If we were to put in a 40,000 or so BTU insert in the gas fireplace area (hoping the fit will be right and the direct vent chimney add-on (it's a modular has a typical little roofed mini chimney type addition.. the peak of it's roof is not quite the second floor and the direct vent comes out of it's front (which is the right side of the house) do you think with fans (all bedrooms, and living,family rooms have ceiling fans and we can get those doorway fans that circulate air) we would be able to at least provide sufficient heat for the downstairs? I am thinking I would probably want to move my thermostat near the door to the cellar stairs, in the foyer area...

Any thoughts/suggestions would be helpful.

 

[webbie]

No pic attached.......

However, keep in mind that your existing gas venting will have to be 100% removed - and replaced with Pellet venting.

Also, you may want to check on the efficiency of your existing gas fireplace - and compare the price of LP to pellets and oil.

I also predict a drop in heating oil this coming season....but who knows?

do some calcs at:
https://www.hearth.com/compare

 

[ontherise]

Yeah no pic posted. At work, haven't found an image hosting service that is not blocked... Anyone want to PM me an e-mail and I can email it? Or I can just post the pic when I get home tonight. Either way works for me.

When you say ripped out completely, are you referring to just the smoke pipe/direct vent itself or the method we are using entirely?

 

[webbie]

The gas fireplace and it's piping must be ripped out - so the unit is basically a new install.

you can email the stuff to webmaster (at) hearth (dot) com and I will post it in this thread.

 

[ontherise]

Thanks for the reply and the offer for the posting. On it's way.

I realize the fireplace will need to be ripped and it's piping but I am hoping to at least be able to reuse the insert location, hearth and chimney box (or whatever you want to call what I am referring to). I don't have the dimensions handy for the insert, but I believe it to be of a standard size (at least for gas fireplaces)

 

[ontherise]

Wow. Two long years waiting for this one to be done! Finally took the plunge and bought and Oslo and just started doing our break in burns recently.

We ended up keeping the direct vent gas fireplace in that room with the propane disconnected (the pilot on that thing was killing us in propane.. Get filled once a year now with just using the propane for cooking. Much much much better.. The manufacturers of those gas fireplaces and the pilot systems (at least the one i have) must have a lot of money tied up in the LPG market!).

This house design wasn't great for a wood stove but we put it in the family room on that corner with the two doors. We removed the double french doors that open into the alcove and ripped out the header that was there. The other wall, with the single door we ripped out the door frame and actually ripped out the horizontal wall that faces the Breakfast nook from the rightmost spot to just left of where the door frame was and we built up a half wall there.

Not ideal but with some fans moving right it should work out well. In our first "test burn" (after break in burns) the other night with an outside temp of about 45 or so and an inside start temp of 69 we got that thermostat in the dining room up to 74.5 in a few hours with the back slider open and several windows open.