Cat vs non cat is a hotly debated subject. Bottom line, non cats are less maintenance, and dont have anything to remember to engage. Cats are a little more efficient, have moving parts, and a part that wears out and need replacement.

You should look at the biggest unit that will fit the fireplace, it doesnt sound like you will waste the heat. 60,000 btu's should be sufficient.

Any mass you heat up in the chimney is lost heat from the flue. You want to keep the flue hot, so insulating it is best. Draft is hard to establish on high efficieny fireplaces, heat is what drives the chimney.

Blowers work well on low, if there to high they just cool the unit down and you get less complete combution, run your blower in low and your celing fan on reverse, that will distrubiute the heat the best.

I dont think you will save much on having two installed at once, it will take two liners and double the labor as one. Call your local hearth shop for a bid on both installs.

Its a fine line between heat output and burn time. these newer stoves put lots of heat out for the size firebox they have. Celing fans will help cool things down, the problem is there is not a stove with a long burn time that doesnt crank the heat. You might consider a thermal mass stove like hearthstone or woodstock and sit it in front of the fireplace. It will not get as hot as a steel insert. The hearthstone homstead and heratige are designed for this application. Hearthstonestoves.com

Thanks....non-cat sounds the way to go for me then. You really think 60,000 BTUs will be enough? I don't have enough room for a stove (it would just out into the room too much) but one of the units I was looking at based on some feedback I had found here and some newsgroups was a Hearthstone Clydesdale......it's 60K BTU but the firebox is smaller than I would like but I understand that's because it is lined with soapstone.

Its hard to find inserts much larger then 60k. Also the all night burn is hard to get on most appliances unless your upwards of 3cf firebox, the downside is that 3cf will typically produce 80k/btu's. I am not aware of one thats that big, they might exist, but dont in the lines i sell and are familer with. Dont forget the upstairs doesnt count on heating capacity if its a open floor plan. glad i could help.

I'm sorry, what do you mean by the upstairs doesn't count on an open floor plan?

The heat will rise up there, so you dont count the square feet up there if the floor plan is open.

Thorpe, if you measure the hearth you may find that you will eliminate a lot of choices in large fireplace inserts. I just purchased an insert last winter and we absolutely love it.

My advice, get the biggest insert that will fit in your hearth with the biggest firebox so that you don't have to tend it very often. You can always have a smaller, less efficient fire or just open a window when it gets too hot but you can't build a hotter fire if your insert doesn't support it. I'm sure I'll get some replies about that smaller fire comment, but it's the truth.

As for the basement, you can save money getting a big insert that doesn't have enamel or brass or any of that stuff. A plain cast-iron heater will save hundreds of dollars on the appliance but get the blower option to move the air around.

So, to recap... As big as possible, as hot as affordable and get blowers on everything to move the air around. I went with a secondary combustion unit because I didn't want to have to worry about procedures and replacement of the catalytic element when it went bad.

Best of luck and let us know what you go with.