Umles you can put two separate liners inside the chimney, one for the furnace and one for the stove, you cannot "share" a chimney with two different fuel sources. Also, todays woodstoves have a smaller exit than the existing chimneys. Today's stoves have a 6 inch flue so you will need to line any existing chimney with a stainless steel liner 6" in diameter.

I heat exclusively with wood and pellet stoves (and I live in northern NY, so that's a lot of woodburning: four cords of hardwood and 4 tons of pellets!) First: No, you can NOT combine flues with a furnace and woodstove in the same flue. The risk is that the exhaust gases from the furnace in the basement might, under certain circumstances, enter your living space through the wood stove. This could result in carbon monoxide poisoning and death. This will be a fixed, never-permited thing, so give up the idea completely. When you install woodstoves you not only have to be sure of the chimney's condition, but also the floor and nearby walls behind - and beside in the case of a corner mounted woodstove - to protect. Fisrt let's talk about the chimney. I would never burn in an old chimney without having it lined with a stainless steel liner. The standards for fire safety were much different in 1900, and they weren't burning modern airtight stoves, and the mortar between the bricks was a hundred years newer. In short, with any old chimney it would be hard to be sure that it was completely tight and offered no oppportunity for smoke, gasses, and in the event of a chimney fire, flames to escape into the wood parts of your house. A lined chimney is also much easier to maintain and much less likely the give you problem should you have a chimney fire and it will not crack from the heat of one. Now depending on what stove you choose, you will have to set up some kind of hearth-type protection. Many people believe they can get away with just slapping a non-flammable material on the nearest combustible walls and floor and they're good to go. But you need to take care that the stove is far enough away from the protected non-combustible surface. The stove dealer will be able to give you a diagram. You can install additional heat shields both on the stove (some models) and along combustible walls which will allow you to move the stove closer to the wall and still be safe. But the only way to do this safely is by using the manufacturer's specs. And not fudging it. Unless you are installing the stove in an existing masonry hearth intended for a wood stove, most people are surprised how much they need to protrude into the room. For instance, the front of my main woodstove (a VT Castings Encore) is nearly 3 feet from the wall behind it - and that's with both stove and wall heat shields to reduce the projection. And I have a further 15" of raised brick floor shield in front of it. My 160 year old house has never had any form of central heating. It, too, had multiple flue thimbles through walls and entering chimneys on different floos, but this is not safe. A day or so after we bought this house I happened to to looking at the kitchen chimney while making toast. I pointed out a "ghost" of a flue opening to my husband by tapping the area with my knife. The knife went straight through the painted-over wallpaper and entered the chimney. Somebody had previously stuck an old paint can lid in the opening which had fallen down. So my flue was "closed" by nothing more than 5 layers of wallpaper! Needless to say this prompted a through review of the flues and and proper closing of all the uneeded openings, which is what I recommend to you. Finally, it is nice to have an independent source of heat in the case of power failures, but woodburning takes a lot of work and it can be pretty messy, too (especially in the kitchen). But most important is that with a woodstove you must rachet up your attention to it and never let it waver or you risk having a serious fire. It's not a casual thing to do and if you can't put enough focus on it to be safe, then I would do something else. One of the reasons we have the pellet stove is that it is much less demanding to live with, and in our case is installed with a direct vent connection so it has no roof-high chimney to fuss with. We clean our woodstove chimney (from the roof top) and the inside connector pipes once a month, which is a lot of work. We have it inspected by a chimney sweep before every burning season. Finally, if you live in an old, somewhat under insulated and sealed house I recommend you consider installing an outside air feed for the stove, particularly in a kitchen where you might also have an exhaust fan running. Providing outside air keeps the stove from exhausting all your heated air and makes the rooms much less drafty. Not all stoves have outside air capacity, so ask before you buy. As for brands, although I have been using VT Castings stoves for nearly three decades, I would not purchase any of the newer ones as the quality has reportedly declined. My next stove will be a Jotul. Unless it was a stove saved strictly for the rare emergency use, I would not opt for an old stove, no matter how picturesque, unless it had been completely overhauled to modern standards and certified. But those stoves often cost more than "regular" new stoves with better air-quality standards. (And you will be breathing your own smoke-contaminated air so it does matter.) Too much is riding on the integrity of your stove to take a chance with a dodgy old stove. HTH, Molly~

It depends on whether anything vents into it--a water heater, furnace, etc. If nothing does, then you can run a duct from the range to the chimney--my kitchen's chimney already has a hole for a vent which was used by the old stove--now I only use it to add a draft during very hot summer days, the rest of the time it is covered by a brass cover. That same chimney has another hole in the bath above where an old heater vented. It was common practice for a house to use the chimney both for heating and cooking ventilation from the old wood stoves. My chimneys were put up in '08, and are lined with flue tiles, so you may find yours the same, with no need to re-line them if an inspection shows it is intact. It should be surprisingly easy to remove the chimney yourself if you want to do it--start at the top of course and work your way down using a heavy hammer to loosen the mortar joints, then you can reuse the bricks elsewhere; you will then have to patch the holes in the floors and roof, but you could also use those as chases for wiring.

Sautesmom: Thank you for the suggestion. I didn't even think of that! I've never done this before, but I will certainly pursue this avenue. It is certainly going to create some waves in this small town. When I went to see if a permit was ever pulled for the installation of the new furnace that the Seller had installed a few months (Feb. 2008) before he put it on the market, the town said "no". When I told them about my ordeal with the chimney flue, showed them the digital photos and the photos the chimney company took, they told me (this was last week) that they would have to condemn my own house! I was in tears at the town hall when they said this, and told them I have no other place to go, and that the chimney people did scrape out all the debris, enough to start letting the flue gases escape. The chimney company said this would be sufficient until they got out here on Nov. 13th to put in the new liner. So, I asked the building inspector to please come to my house and see that I was ok, and not to throw me out. Long story short, he did, and saw that the debris was scraped out. And therefore, that's why I'm still here. The town did call the chimney company to make sure that I am getting the work done on the 13th, and they will be sending out the town inspector again to make sure its fine. Since then, I've talked with the chimney company and they seem very distant in talking about my situation, and tight lipped. Before all this, they said, "we've had this happen to many new homeowners and helped them out." Now, it's "good luck". I hope they will agree to appear in court if I ask to pay them. If not, I do have all their documentation, diagnosis, and pictures they took of both chimneys. Now, the town is involved and I think they are scared that they will get fined. They did say that the furnace company could easily get their license suspended since they never pulled a permit. I'm not looking for trouble, or get anyone in trouble. But, I'm also paying now $4,000 for other peoples mistakes: the furnace company, the Town, and the Seller. I'm sure I won't be popular around here if/when this goes down, because it seems as if they are all friends, but I also can't be paying for others mistakes. Suzyq2: I just downloaded all the information from my Attorny Generals website in order to make a claim. I will absolutely do that tomorrow. Thank you so much for the suggestion. I'm so sorry the seller did that to you! Wow, I guess this craziness does happen to others. My realtor had the same reaction. It is so unfair. And yes, I'm hoping karmic payback comes back around to hit the Seller. He is a very wealthy and prominent doctor in New England with 4 other properties in the state. It blows my mind that he could be so careless about this. But my neighbors did tell me that he also didn't change his leaky cesspool until the neighbors asked him 3 times and threatened to call the Department of Health. The raw discharge was creating a huge (literal) stink in the neighborhood and coming out a pipe from the house onto the street. It is beyond me how he could ignore this until forced to do something. He had 4 children living in this house. For their health - at least - he should have been more proactive. He just got the new septic system in last year after 17 years of living here. Unbelievable. Well, I thank you both very much for your great suggestions, advice, and support. I will post back to let you know how I'm proceeding with them. :)