ZC fireplaces for whole house heat?

[Chad S.]

I have a raised ranch (half of the basement is a garage) with an old heatalator p.o.s. in the basement and acsess to lots of wood. We have no ducting, our house is 100% electric. Threw out the idea of tearing the inside chase down and throwing in a stove upstairs because of the newly tiled floor and carpeting, plus my 14 Mo son touching the thing. I am wondering if the osburn stratford might be a good solution. I could run the forced air kit upstairs in the living area and back to the halls for the bedrooms and keep the basement nice for the cats. House is 500sf basement, 1500sf upstairs. Btw I also have solar hot air heat and the temp was 25-30 and the solar with the sun out heated the house to 78!! With only one blower in the hallway ceiling!! Our basement is also completley finished, 2x4 studded vapor-barriered and insulated. I do not want to spend more than 3000 for the fireplace and central kit so my choices are very limited. The chiminey alone seems like it will cost about 1000. The only reason for wanting a fireplace is the forced air to heat the upstairs as I do not see a woodstove doing much in my basement to heat the upstairs due to the design of the house. Quadra 7100WAY TOO BIG AND $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

[stoveguy2esw]

I have a raised ranch (half of the basement is a garage) with an old heatalator p.o.s. in the basement and acsess to lots of wood. We have no ducting, our house is 100% electric. Threw out the idea of tearing the inside chase down and throwing in a stove upstairs because of the newly tiled floor and carpeting, plus my 14 Mo son touching the thing. I am wondering if the osburn stratford might be a good solution. I could run the forced air kit upstairs in the living area and back to the halls for the bedrooms and keep the basement nice for the cats. House is 500sf basement, 1500sf upstairs. Btw I also have solar hot air heat and the temp was 25-30 and the solar with the sun out heated the house to 78!! With only one blower in the hallway ceiling!! Our basement is also completley finished, 2x4 studded vapor-barriered and insulated. I do not want to spend more than 3000 for the fireplace and central kit so my choices are very limited. The chiminey alone seems like it will cost about 1000. The only reason for wanting a fireplace is the forced air to heat the upstairs as I do not see a woodstove doing much in my basement to heat the upstairs due to the design of the house. Quadra 7100WAY TOO BIG AND $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

sounds like the house olds heat quite well, as for the heat in the basement have you looked at pellet? one of our 25-puf units , or the breckwell "big e" might not be so bad, they direct vent so the flue kit would only be a couple hundered bucks likely. also i think harman has a pellet furnace that ties into ductwork if you have available, maight be worth peeking at , expensive , but you would be buying quality (as you would with the others i mentioned, however they are convective not central heaters so the setup is simpler and less expensive)

just an option

 

[DiscoInferno]

A ZC with the gravity or forced-air vent kits should fill the bill, you can probably stay under $3000 with a few models if you shop around on the internet and do the install yourself. Installing the gravity vents on some models will let you cover up the top grill on the fireplace, forcing most of the heat upstairs rather than the basement.

Something in the Security BIS line might make your budget also, my Ultima + 25' of air-cooled chimney + vent kit w/ blower and 25' of insulated flex duct came in around $2500, although that was through a chimney sweep that got me something like 20% off list from his distributor.