What to do with this gaping hole above gas fireplace insert?

[ghulse]

We recently installed a Chaska 29 gas fireplace insert in our fireplace This has been a long, painful process in which we hired three different contractors and fired them all, although the second one was by far the worst. I'll skip the gory details and cut to the chase. As seen in the photos, we have a hole that we have to fill with something non-combustible. I would love some suggestions.

The existing brickwork is extremely uneven (thanks to contractor no. 2 mentioned above). Would a mason be able to lay bricks to match what we have?

My current contractor said he could install a textured cement wall, but I can't imagine that would look great. Then again, I don't have the background to know what is possible.

The wall needs to be about 30 inches wide by 20* inches tall and about 1 inch thick.

*The Chaska trim overlaps the open vertical space. The actual open space is 12 inches.

Any ideas? It would be much appreciated.

 

[bholler]

Why did they open up that much?

 

[ghulse]

Why did they open up that much?

The original fireplace was pretty big. The mason built a new facade that was supposed to work for a Hampton H27 gas stove, but he didn't leave enough width or height for required clearances. (The mantle would have had to be removed as well.) He quit before the job was completed. The Chaska 29 was one of few products available that would work in that 30-inch narrow width. Lots of ay caramba moments!

 

[bholler]

The original fireplace was pretty big. The mason built a new facade that was supposed to work for a Hampton H27 gas stove, but he didn't leave enough width or height for required clearances. (The mantle would have had to be removed as well.) He quit before the job was completed. The Chaska 29 was one of few products available that would work in that 30-inch narrow width. Lots of ay caramba moments!

Yes a decent Mason could fix it

 

[wooduser]

Sorry to hear about your difficulties.

The installation manual for your fireplace insert is at https://www.kozyheat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/CSK-29-L-July-2016-Rev-4-EN.pdf


section 8.2 on page 8 discusses shrouds, which will probably cover your hole and make it look respectable. It looks like you already have ashroud installed, but perhaps you can get a larger one to fill the hole you have. Or you might find or make some ceramic or sheet metal decoration that would fit and fill the space you have. Think of it as an opportunity to be creative!

Pay particular attention to page 19, clearance to combustible mantles. A conventional fireplace sucks in all kind of room air, so mantles aren't usually much of an issue. Gas insert allow a lot of hot air to flow up directly above the fireplace, and onto any mantle above the stove. Pay careful attention to getting the proper clearances to the mantle, and ANY combustible material that stick out above the insert is a mantle. Stockings hung by the fireplace with care ----NOT recommended I'm afraid!

There are other things that should be checked carefully, such as installing the logs according to the description the manual. Doing that correctly can be very important.

 

[Millbilly]

Interesting. What were your original fireplace opening dimensions? Just by eyeballing your mantle seams pretty high. There are other options such as mantle a mantle heat deflector and some stove have shorter leg kits that decrease the mantle clearance required. Fireplaces that have higher than normal height to width ratios are often good candidates for stoves over inserts.

 

[ghulse]

Interesting. What were your original fireplace opening dimensions? Just by eyeballing your mantle seams pretty high. There are other options such as mantle a mantle heat deflector and some stove have shorter leg kits that decrease the mantle clearance required. Fireplaces that have higher than normal height to width ratios are often good candidates for stoves over inserts.

The original fireplace wasn't that big. I honestly can't remember how exactly we ended up with the current vertical space. The "contractor" we were working with seemed to know what he was doing. He removed the granite that was already there and installed the two cabinets and did all the brickwork and put in the mantle as well. I wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing, but after a while he seemed to be taking forever to finish the job, so I began to ask more questions. And then suddenly he and his wife said they were moving. The guy said he would be coming back to finish the job, but he never did. One day I got my tape measure out and realized that he made the opening too narrow for the Hampton H27 unit that we had intended to go in there. The H27 and the manual had been sitting in the room all this time, and the contractor was well aware of the necessary clearances. Perhaps he didn't think they were important.

I called back my original contractor, who noticed that there was no proper support for the brickwork, so he installed the lintel that you see in the photo. By now I realized it was hopeless to install the H27 because it's not really designed to go inside a fireplace. It can't sit inside the fireplace at all, due to required clearances. We would have had to remove the mantle as well. I should have gone with a gas insert from the start. It would have saved a lot of time and money.

The required clearance to mantle for the Chaska 29 is 16 inches, and we have 24, so we're good there.

The latest wrinkle is that the gas line is supposed to be sleeved and so we have to remove the recently installed fireplace insert and have a plumber or gas company come in and put in a new gas line. We had a building inspector tell us originally that the gas line was already sleeved, but apparently he was overruled.

As a famous politician once said, mistakes were made.

Bholler said a good mason can fix our hole, and so we have a mason coming out on Monday to take a look at it. Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. This has been a real fiasco, but I think the end is in sight.