Fireplace advice appreciated

[mjarrels]

We have a wood burning fireplace in the living room... used about 5 times in 8 years... Harman coal stove in the basement... running at 400 degrees now... 900 square foot basement is HOT now... Upstaires very warm... Third flloor is nice for sleeping... Nothing burns hotter than coal... Wind chill tonight should be 15 below... nice and warm with coal. BUT coal is not cheap anymore... About 200.00 a ton and I can burn a half ton a month if it is really cold.

mark

 

[hockeyhead]

$50 a month for coal that sounds cheap to me. I have a pair of Napolean 1401 fireplace inserts in 2 of our 3 fireplaces. They have been good to us, both are running at 400 plus degrees right now. It is -6 outside as I right this, they say we had 35mph winds today, and it was windy with a high of 7 degrees. now that the sun is down the winds have dies out. The natural gas furnace hasn't kicked on since I fired up the second insert Fri night. Now tomorrow everybody goes back to work and school so the gas furnace will be back at it until I get home and fire up the insert in the kitchen to help out. All that said a free standing stove is much better the a fireplace insert for generating heat.

 

[Egon]

Eddy, sounds like you looking for an "Ambiance" fireplace rather than a heating one.

Take a serious look at the non airtight inserts as they will lend themselves to a more traditional fireplace look yet do provide some heat.

 

[EddieWalker]

Terms are killing me. I figured out that a catylatic insert has higher efficency, but requires replacing the eliments every six years or sooner. It depends on usage, wood and how careful you are. For the same money I can buy a non catalytic insert and not have to worry about all that, but have less efficency. I'm going non catyletic.

I'm still searching on the air tight versus the non airtight models. I don't have a clue which is which or the pros and cons of each. I'm still looking and have found several stores that I didn't know about who sell inserts in my area. The swimming pool places suprised me by carrying inserts.

Egon,

Ambiance. Good word. That's just what we're looking for!!!!

Eddie

 

[Egon]

Regency Wood Fireplace Products


This site will show you a fireplace insert. [ note there are many other brands] These inserts lend themselves to replicating the old wood burning fireplace except they have glass doors that may or may not be used. Heating is a secondary function for these units. They do come with fans to aid in heating. They are usually larger in opening than an air tight.

The air tight have glass doors but they must be kept closed. They are a heating unit and firing rate depends on the amount of air the damper allows to enter.

If you back back tract on the site you will find this type of insert. They will be called wood inserts

The terminology will differentiate between the two = Wood fireplace or the air tight which is called a wood insert.

 

[billbill1]

Eddie, the brands that I am familiar with are Lopi, Earth Stove, and Buck. All make inserts and they do a good job of heating. Do a search of the brands and you will find pictures and sizes. The TV above the stove will cause problems IMHO due to the heat rising and being very hot above the stove. I also had a friend that had a Heat-a-la-tor brand that he heated a very large home with and he liked it as well. Lopi and Buck are sold locally to me and are attractive inserts that can have glass doors, the glass doors on the air-tight stoves usually get dark very quickly but you can view the fire. Do a search on these brands and see what you think.

 

[jejeosborne]

I went through this process a couple of years ago and did extensive research on the web. We too decided on using cultured stone and actually designed our floorplan around the fireplace and wood storage. I will post some pictures of our setup to maybe give you some ideas.

You mentioned an insert. Inserts are typically a metal fireboxes that one would put into a masonry fireplace to achieve more heat output. I think what you are wanting is what is typically called a zero clearance unit which is a stand alone unit that can be framed into a wall in close proximity to combustibles. Our unit is a zero clearance unit made by Napoleon.
NZ6000 Wood Burning Fireplace This unit heats our entire house (3600 sq. feet) in southern Indiana with no problem. I put the fan unit in the basement to move the air down and also to minimize the noise. In fact, you cannot hear the fan run unless you turn it up to its highest setting. This unit puts out so much heat that it turns our ceiling fans 15 feet away.

We also consider a unit made by Fireplace Xtrordinair but like the appearance of the Napoleon.
Product Guide - Wood Fireplaces - Fireplace Xtrordinair

As far as flue pipe, I would recommend a solid fill pipe. This type minimizes heat loss and keeps flue temps up. Air cooled pipe cools the pipe which promotes creosote to condense inside the pipe. Your goal is maintaining high temps. Good info here on design woodheat home

You mentioned airtight units. I would highly recommend an air tight unit. Our unit has two 6" combustion air pipes. All the combustion air comes from outside the house. We lose no heat going up our chimney from the house. Another advantage is that in the summer time you cannot get a smelly downdraft into your house. Our last house we built a large masonry fireplace that was beautiful but very inefficient and smelled in the summer.

These pictures are somewhat dated and taken right as we were moving in. Since I have installed hard maple on the ceilings and finished touching up around the storage door.

You can view the back side of the fireplace here http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/projects/114597-bring-more-firewood-easy-way.html

 

[montanaman]

Yes, exactly what he said! An insert is designed to be used with an existing fireplace. It is not cheap to get a high efficiency zero-clearance fireplace, but the only stone work needed will be the facia used to decorate it with. We have a zero-clearance in our house and I just discovered that you can buy some VERY nice high efficiency ones. Ours is very large and beautiful to watch, but you had better be prepared to go get an arm load of wood during every commercial!!

Some of the new high efficiency ones also have additional ports that you can duct the heated air to other areas of the house.

If time and money was no problem, I would replace our existing zero-clearance fireplace with one of these in a second and duct some of the heat into the basement!

Ken

 

[jejeosborne]

Expensive is very true. I have our reciepts in a spreadsheet and just looked them up.

The nz6000 fireplace was $5700. This was just for the unit with the fan. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of steel in this thing. It weighs over 900 lbs and is mostly 1/4 boiler plate steel.

Then you add in another $1400 for just the 8" solid fill flue pipe 30 feet up.

I framed and installed the fireplace myself so that was "free". I did have someone apply the cultured stone to my framed concrete board. Stone and labor $15000. This included the inside and outside with the addition of the pillars on the front porch and 12" around the foundation so prorated for the fireplace would be around $13000.

Total for fireplace with me doing the installation..... $21,100. I could have bought a lot of electricity for many years but would miss out on all the firewoood exercise.

We burn only black locust so it does last for a long time. The larger fireplaces do burn much more wood though. Ours will burn all night with a good bed of coals in the morning...........but.........it holds a lot of wood. It will take a 36" log. My splitter will only accept 24" logs so I try to stay around 20". I stuff about 6 pieces in at night and shut down the air.

Eddie, non-catylatic would be fine for you with the minimal run times in Texas. I wish my unit had a catylatic element because I burn for 4 months non-stop. You get a complete burn with much less smoke. Chimney stays cleaner and you have much fewer emissions to the environment. I was amazed to read about how much pollution a single fireplace emits. Fortunately, ours is better than some of the outside boilers that I see smoltering around. I am no environmentalist but am amazed at the pollution incomplete wood combustion creates. Good information again at Environment

 

[gsganzer]

Eddie,
The fireplace in the photo is a "Majestic" insert. It has a fan and "fresh air "capabilities, also gas lighter capabilities. Ours wasn't hooked up for fresh air, but yours will need to be if you want glass doors. Our fireplace is real stone, but they make a lightweight veneer in all sorts of styles (do a search for texas stone veneer)and it won't require any kind of footing or additional concrete work. The veneer you can do yourself. It goes onto a metal lath over plywood and you use a grout bag to fill the joints. There are also "dry stack" veneers that require no grout.

Our fireplace heats a 600 sq. ft room with vaulted ceilings fairly well. The fan noise is low to moderate.