Wood Burning Insert

8 years ago

I am going to replace our current fireplace which is a base model from the 80s. They are specific to our area and not at all useful. We are replacing with a more efficient model that will throw out more heat and burns cleaner. The plan is to put a cold air return in the ceiling of the room of the fireplace and running the furnace fan to circulate through the home. It will be pretty expensive for the upgrade and want to know if there are others who upgraded and noticed a significant difference. Thanks.

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Comments (5)

jrb451
8 years ago
After adding this new return, how many will you have? Will you have the ability to close off any of the others? The reason I'm asking is that we have 3 returns in our home, one is in the room with the insert, but not in the ceiling. I tried running our system on fan only during one winter to help circulate the warm air. It really didn't work that well with all returns open. I couldn't close off the other two.

I think that the improvement in circulation would not justify the expense of adding the extra return and duct work. I achieve much better distribution of warm air by placing a small fan on the floor pointed into the room with the insert. (I'd tried blowing the air from the insert room out but this way works much better.) This costs less than $100 for a reliable, quiet fan.
Cookie8
Original Author
8 years ago
Hm, thanks. None of the returns in our home can be closed off. We do have a fan in the hall going upstairs which can be turned on. I have just started to look into fireplaces so my knowledge is bare bones. I am wondering if it is even worth the expense to put in a new fireplace. Granted a cleaner burning fireplace would really mean a lot to me. I have to say the salesperson didn't really emphasize cleaner burning when I was in the shop.
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First of all, all stoves today require a 6" chimney. So you will have to put a 6" liner all the way up in your existing chimney and possibly insulate it with Kaowool. And then place a rain cap on it. You cannot just vent a stove into the existing chimney. NO code will allow that. Now you say you're doing it yourself. How much experience do you have in this area? I ask simply because you must notify your homeowner's insurance company that you now have a stove. And you will be asked who installed it. If you installed it they may require an inspection by a certified person to ensure the job was done correctly. If you don't tell them about the stove and there's a fire or other situation due to an incorrectly installed stove, they could deny the claim. Have it done by a pro.
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Concerning an insert: First let me say we've been using a wood insert or stove for our main source of heat for almost 30 years. You say you have 1700 sq ft. Is that your whole house? You always want the bedrooms to be cooler than the rest of the house. How cold does it get in winter where you live? There's also differing opinions on blowers. The stove creates radiant heat where the walls, floors, furniture, etc is heated, while a blower converts that radiant heat to convection heat, thereby heating the air, not the furniture. Now if you just want to move the warm air to another part of the house, you can get small doorway fans to do that. That's what we use. You also should not get a stove that's too big for your purpose. Getting a stove with 20 to 24 inch logs seems quite large. The ones I've seen will heat 3,000 sq ft. And you do NOT need one of those! You need to "size" the stove to the main area you're heating. You see, if you have too large a stove, you will always be too hot. Then you will either open the windows or build smaller fires and creosote will build up. You want to keep the surface temperature at about 500 to 600 degrees. My home is 1200 sq ft. It's a ranch style and the stove is in the living room. It's a Regency F1100 and is the small stove in their lineup. And it heats the house just fine in our Vermont winters. It has a 6 hour burn time. We pack the stove before we go to bed, and in the morning there are always coals to start another fire. Now the stove is operating at it's limits when we go to minus 40 degrees, but those times are really not that often. Maybe 3 or 4 times a winter. My suggestion to you is to Google stove and fireplace shops within a 50 mile radius of your home. And go to them! Look at as many different brands as you can, but always buy one a LOCAL dealer can service! Let the pros tell you what size stove will work best for you. And then select the brand you're comfortable with.
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As you already noted, the smoke comes from colder, heavier air pushing the smoke back down the chimney. The fact that you have an external chimney doesn't help either. For its use right now an outside air kit would probably not help much. I would seriously look at an insulated metal liner but only if you dump that older inefficient rather dangerously installed insert for a newer clean-burning insert, like maybe an Avalon Olympic. I have a small freestanding wood stove in a chimney like yours with an insulated liner and it drafts like a charm. I burned two cords of wood in it last year, swept the flue this past weekend and had less than a 1/2 gallon of very fine soot in the liner.
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"They are the only thing besides automobiles that must be rated by the EPA for emmissions." Unfortunately, that's not really the case. The EPA regulates almost every aspect of your life for better or worse; lawnmowers, PWC's ATV's weedwhackers, boats, trains, powerplants, the kind of wood that can be used on you're deck, the pesticides, fertilizers, household cleaning supplies, roofing etc. - pretty much EVERYTHING. Today's woodburners are better in many regards: in general they burn cleaner and use less wood to achieve the desired heat ouput through secondary burn or catalytic technology. Having said all that, you CAN achieve decent efficiency and a clean burn by proper firing of almost any older appliance- although it takes more care. You can find many older (pre-epa regulation) inserts for sale second hand in good shape for around $500, plus the cost of a liner if necessary. As far as newer woodstoves being designed to last a "long-time" i would disagree strongly with that statement as it applies to MOST, but not all modern stoves. I would expect most modern stoves (especially secondary burn) to last less than half as long as the average life of your ordinary pre-epa fisher or timberline style steel stove.
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homepro01
8 years ago
Some wood burning stoves and inserts come with the option to add additional vents from the fireplace to different rooms in the house. I am not sure what models or brands of inserts that you have looked at. Most European style newer fireplace inserts are EPA certified and have smoke clearing functionality. Wittus is an example of this capability. They are not the only one. I am not sure I under the issue about cold are returns. Many of these fireplace inserts have the options for fans too.

Good luck!
User
8 years ago
I'm confused. (It doesn't take much)

What is a "clean burning fireplace"? I know stoves and the like are built today so they burn efficiently because of either CATs or secondary burn chambers, but they're airtight appliances.
Cookie8
Original Author
8 years ago
We have a model that isn't airtight or have a secondary burn chamber. This is what I am unsure of. Right now we have an open fireplace (a double folding glass door with a screen we slide back and forth to stoke/start fire) that just opens a flue to the chimney and releases smoke, and it seems like sparks, as I have seen coming from other homes' chimneys who have the same fireplace while go for night time walks and no fan. This is the one I am looking at

http://napoleonfireplaces.com/products/high-country-3000-wood-fireplace/.

I honestly don't even know if this has a secondary burn chamber in, if we can even have a secondary burn chamber due to the previous construction of chimney/fireplace? Ha ha, I guess I have been putting it on the backburner, but they are having a sale for $500 off for the next two weeks so I better get on it. The salesman said it releases a lot less smoke from the chimney although he didn't say why or how. I guess I will dig in and start my research.

Wood Burning Insert

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jrb451

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Wood Burning Insert

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jrb451

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