Speaking of burning pine, does pine creosote/ash have a stronger more acrid smell, here I mean in the house hours afer the fire is out will an old pine fire smell stronger/worse that a mixed hardwood fire? I have burned a bit of pine this year, maybe 30%, and we are having trouble with a bad odor when the fire has been out for a while (hours/days). I had used the fireplace and a stove in the basement over the past 20 years and it is only recently that the smell has become troublesome. Yes, I have had the chimney swept, about once per 2 cords, that may be two years total lapsed time. In the past I burned little or no pine. I have a lot of pine trees, but just composted the wood that came down, until this year.

Thanks for the information! I know what it's like to have a regular fireplace, and I have to admit that I wasn't crazy about going without a wood stove because the last house I lived in had a fireplace and it had a ventilation system where you'd just flip the switch and the fan would come on. It did a great job with pulling all the smoke and soot up, but the heat went with it as well. I've got someone coming to inspect the chimney and clean it out, and I've already found a replacement stove that I'm hoping to have put in within the next few weeks. This particular situation just threw me for a loop because I've never had a fireplace or wood stove in a basement before. If everything works as planned, I'll keep my fingers crossed for lower electric bills this winter!

Who installed the stove? Was it installed by a professional to all fire codes? It sounds to me that it's too close to a combustable surface. And if that's the case do NOT burn the stove until the situation has been rectified! As far as the ceiling goes, is it cracking near the stovepipe? If so, is there an insulating collar at the ceiling? Most house fires start at the collar where it goes through a wall or ceiling. The fire starts long before you're even aware of it. Contact the dealer and have a rep come out for an inspection. See if you can get heat shields for the stove. And if this is not possible then install a non combustable surface behind and above the stove where the chimney goes up through it. You sound like a house fire just waiting to happen! And if your homeowner's insurance is unaware of the stove, you may be denied coverage in the case of a catastrophe.

Naomi, Just to be clear, the heat shields on the stove and pipes are metal and purchased from the manufacturer. I would say they stand about 1 3/4" to 2" away from the back of the metal parts of the stove. The heat shield on the wall behind the stove is cement board. It is held about 1 1/2" off the wall by long screws that go through those porcelain electric fence post insulators between the back of the board and the wall. The insulators are there so the screws can be snugged up and not bend the cement board which always seems fairly fragile even though I've been using it for more than two decades, with plenty of chances to accidentally break it. When we first designed this set-up we didn't plan on using the insulators, but had trouble getting the board to stand off properly and we came up with the idea of using them . They did the trick, and have the advantage of being cheap and readily accessible. Along the base the bottom edge of the heat shield is supported by 3 or 4 angle brackets. The stove heat shields buy you some reduced clearances and the additional heat shield on the combustible wall buys you some more. But the back of our stove is still probably 20 or 21" away from the vertical plane of the heat shield on the wall. Our installation does not look like a fireplace with stove insert. It looks like a big stove sticking out into the room. And as such is actually quite historically-accurate as big old coal and wood stoves were parked right out there in the room. (I have pictures of my house interiors c 1875 and the these ornate behemoths were standing proudly in most of the rooms. The really shocking part is how long the horizontal runs of stove pipe ran before they entered the chimney. Some of mine were 15 feet or more. It's astounding any of these houses survived.) But the stove standing the middle of the room reality flies in the face of the modern colonial-esque aesthetic with wood-burning appliances tucked discretely into former fireplaces, surrounded by lovely paneling and mantles. And yes, our wall heat shield is painted with ordinary latex paint. I have repainted it a couple of times when we moved or changed decorating schemes. The screws are countersunk into the cement board, but because it is not very thick there is a limit on how concealed they can be. Around the hole where the chimney pipe goes into the chimney we have cut the cement board back and covered the the area with one of those round panels. The hold up on the tiling is that it would be fairly permanent and you would have to destroy it to take down the cement board because the screw holes would be concealed by the tiles. I have never worked out a solution to this although I'm sure there is one. It is also a place that is hard to clean behind. I finally settled on using one of those wands intended for cleaning under a refrigerator. Are you thinking of having a mantle and surrounding supports? I have some rudimentary ideas about that, though haven't worked out all the details, yet. Molly~