My wife and I are building a custom home this year and our design calls for a double sided gas fireplace that will face into the great room on one side and the foyer on the other side, and our foot print is limited to about 4' wide X 2'6" deep. Since I was hoping for something more realistic looking than the typical direct vent, fixed glass gas fireplace units I started researching the nicer looking vented gas logs (Eiklor Flames). Most of these vented gas logs require installation into a solid fuel burning fireplace or stove. So searching around the web for a factory built, double sided wood burning fireplace I stumbled across the JUCA company http://mb-soft.com/juca/indexf.html#f-9a . Although it is not a zero clearance unit the model of interest is the F-9AX http://mb-soft.com/juca/indexf.html#f-9a3 JUCA says the current production time for this model is about 5 weeks. There is a LOT of information about wood burning fireplaces on the JUCA website. Does any one out there have any experience with a JUCA?

@Annie: Thank you for the link, it's from a reliable source so I am considering carefully what it says. Both of our stoves are connected to outside air and have been for decades. The inlets are on the typically upwind side of the house. Except of course, when we're having a Nor'easter. This house was built before the Civil War and has no insulation in its wall cavities (and none is possible due to the contruction of the wall assembly). So it defines a "leaky house". No problems here with "sick-building" issues related to being too tightly sealed. Sometimes I think we might as well be living outside! When we installed the O/A inlets it made an immediate difference in the draftiness of the rooms so I would be reluctant to go back, but fire safety is a paramount concern for us so I will be talking to my husband about this. We have no other combustion stacks (obviously no furnace or boiler, and our DHW is electric) so we have no carbon monoxide risks with or withhut the OCA. But I am planning on installing powerful vent fan in the current kitchen which is where the wood-burning stove is. (I'm moving the kitchen to another room to get away from the woodstove, but it will still close enough to be affected by the fan's power, I think.) I'm picturing in my mind the pathway of the combustion air within our stove and trying to decide if I have a risk of drawing super-heated air or coals back down into the combustion inlet piping (which is utterly unshielded along its entire length as it lies slap up against the wood sheathing of the wood room) if the system was depressurized, and I think not. But this is particular to my stove, and model, and not true for many other stoves that would simply feed the air directly into the firebox. I really appreciate the heads up and will ponder it some more, especially as we are slowly getting around to installing the new stove (which likely has an intake air pathway that is completely different.) @mjlb: LOL at your DH's association to arched doors and a crematorium. Fortunately the woodburning stoves like the Jotul, while perhaps slightly arched on top have lovely glass doors that don't seem like crematoria, at least to me. Soapstone (or other masonry) thermal mass stoves are fab, but not really the same fire-appreciation sense as any fire place or regular woodstove. They are intended to burn much smaller, hotter fires, often only a couple of times per day. They also are not really retrofitable into an existing hearth and chimney stack since they require different stack pathways and massing. Plus they are extremely heavy and must have a substantial foundation. I love them though, and am considering converting from woodstoves to masonry as we age in place. Woodstoves require such constant vigilance for safety and a considerable amount of physical activity to attend (even leaving aside processing the fuel from tree to firewood) that I can see it may be a problem at some point. We're in our 60's now. With no other source of heat if we couldn't burn wood we'd have to leave the house. My late MIL in the last year or two before she died had issues around her wood heating and cooking arrangements. Her cognition was becoming muzzy enough that I had decided she couldn't live alone there another heating season. Plus as she became frailer just loading the logs into her stove started to become a problem. I remember one miserable day when I split her entire winter's wood down into smaller pieces because she was forbidden to pick up anything more than 2 lbs. She wept the whole time I did it, and I felt so sad for her. A masonry stove since it is fired only two, or at most three times a day could be managed by someone paid to come in and attend to it. The rest of the day it just radiates heat, mildly enough so that you can sit on it safely. I considered getting a soapstone-walled woodstove before choosing the cast-iron Jotul. The soapstone walls are NOT safer to touch than cast-iron (unlike a masonry heater made of soapstone which relies on thermal mass). And having looked at several in the shop being repaired (cracking) we decided to stick with the familar cast-iron. There is one nagging issue for me around wood-burning: it can contribute to diminshed air quality from particulates in the smoke. When you get a whiff of a wood-burn, it usually smells quite pleasant, but in truth you are inhaling particulates and smoke, even in the cleanest, most efficient burning ones. One wood-stove is a trivial air degradation, but wood-burners in every household is a community problem. In many parts of the UK (and some cities here in the US) wood-burning, not to mention coal which is even worse air-quality-wise, is illegal. Stilll this is a harsh climate and some form of heat is necessary. As we have the woods (and generally only use thinnings and blow-downs), and process it on the farm, it seems environmentally better than oil or worse, fracked gas. But it is not totally environmentally benign. We have installed more solar panels to make power, and will add more to provide some electric heating capacity as well. There are no free lunches when it comes to heating in a cold climate. L.

We had an gas insert put into our main fireplace in the living room and we all LOVE it. It has a remote control with a timer and you can set the temperature as well. For example, set the temp for 68 and it will automatically come on and the house will be toasty warm when we get up. It has a blower to circulate the heat through the house but it so quiet, I really don't hear it. The blower can be turned off as well if we really don't want the heat but want the fire on just for "show." We loved it so much that we added another gas freestanding stove to our sunroom off the kitchen. That one has a thermostate on the wall to set the temp. Both have real "fire"-to me it doesn't look one bit different than our old "fire" but oh boy, what a world of difference. No work-nothing-push a button! we use them all the time and never even use the whole house heat anymore. Please go look at the stores before you decide because this was one of the best improvements we ever made! The things I hated about the "real" wood fireplace, getting the wood and having it in a buggy stack outside, hauling in pieces and the mess it made inside, "tending" the fire, sparks flying, cleaning the mess, worry of having it still burning if we had to leave the house and trying to put it out, and most of all, our pediatrician told us it was really bad for the babies. She said even the best of fireplaces contributed to indoor air pollution. Things I love about the new insert and freestanding stove-pushing the button! Being able to set the temp to come on automatically, being able to raise and lower the flame to change the look, the realistic looking embersm NO cleaning other than once a year the company comes in and cleans the glass and checks it out for a minimal cost. Just for your info, they really can get HOT, you don't want to underestimate the power just because it is an insert. Ours seems to be much more efficient than the real wood fire and I would not put it too close to my kitchen table!

4Kids, Full disclosure, I have a gas fireplace insert that behaves like a stove. I am currently roasting in front of it:-) I love being able to use a remote to start my gas fireplace. Having said that, my home already has a gas water heater and a gas wok burner. If I were an all electric house, I would have gotten a wood burning stove insert. The newer wood stoves with catalytic converters are fairly easy to start and use very little wood at a time. They also minimize air leakage into the house. In my area, if you don't have a gas line already, it is cost prohibitive to get one. I had a friend who built in a neighborhood that did not have it. The cost was north of $5k (US dollars). I personally don't love propane and the power reduction in the appliances when using propane is a concern. I also have an induction cooktop. Knowing what I know now, I would have readily bought the induction wok burner and skipped gas. I live in a snow area and any time the wind blows, we lose power. I have a small generator that will not run the induction cooktop but I have a grill outside and can use a camp stove when needed. The gas wok burner is a fail safe when the power is out. For the cost to bring in both propane and gas lines, if one is not existing, I would spend the money on a fabulous wood fireplace:-) I want to be clear because I often get confused by fireplaces. I am referring to fireplaces that act as heat sources, not just something that is pretty to look at but actually can heat a room or several rooms. They function like stoves and can be used with ducting to heat other rooms. I have the Mendota FV44 I would have loved to have the Morso Wood burning fireplace insert. This is a youtube video to give you an idea of how they operate. If money were no object, I would get a Phenix Green. Good luck!