Fireplaces are a waste - of heat. An insert can help with that issue. https://static.toiimg.com/photo/msid-72956147/72956147.jpg?439130 insert vs stove https://static.toiimg.com/photo/msid-72956147/72956147.jpg?439130 https://static.toiimg.com/photo/msid-72956147/72956147.jpg?439130 something to think about for the coming power outage season(s) once you decide... https://static.toiimg.com/photo/msid-72956147/72956147.jpg?439130 For those not in the Trades - it is well worth hiring a professional to do the install and have it inpected - your home insurance company with insist on it.
My insert is going on 25 years this winter,it’s been a good one. I have replaced the fan motor twice and the door gasket about every other winter. No need to build a great big roaring fire and they will last longer if you don’t. It heats my three bedroom house ok. Sometimes I will turn the central heating unit to get the chill off and then the insert will do it’s job.
We've heated our home with two Country brand fireplace inserts for 25 years. Not the most efficient but they do the job. One in the basement and one of the main floor. I will say, with a ranch home, the bedrooms do get a bit chilly, the one in the basement w/ no walls does a decent job of keeping the floor warmish at that end of the house. Big bonus to wood heat is, power goes out due to ice storm or some dolt taking out the power poles .. we don't freeze. but we do have to move closer to the stove. And it has a flat top big enough to put a big cast iron pan on it so we can make hot food during the outage.
We do the same. Insert in the living room does a good job on that tend of the house, and when the weather dips into the low 20's or below, I fire up the freestanding stove in the half basement area under the other end of the house (master bedrm/bath). Insert is a Regency brand we've had about 15 years, almost zero maintenance other than cleanout once year. Wood is our primary heat, we burn 4-6 cords/yr Insert sticks out quite a ways from the FP opening, you can cook on the surface of it if need be. Door to the right is my homemade wood lift. Door slides up/dn using counterweight, wood car (30"x30"x4') moves from basement to the main level with electric winch. Car will hold 4-5 days worth of wood in max burn times. Basement, I move one of my "4 cord sheds" contents in come fall, and that usually does us for the winter. Four cord shed (1 of 4)
Inserts were the main reason I gave up being a sweep. They must be removed when cleaning the flue and fireplace. Most people had an idea of how to properly use them. Many people didn't. I would remove a crazy amount of creosote sometimes. Occasionally the creosote would form as a baked on tar like substance that couldn't be removed except with using chemicals. Not to mention single handedly removing a huge piece of iron far enough out to get behind it to clean. Fireplaces are very inefficient. Inserts solve that. Problem is that the opening on top of them doesn't duct directly into a nice round metal flue like a wood stove does. So instead of the gases being directed straight up, they vent into the top portion of the firebox and smoke shelf swirling around a while before heading up the flue. This causes the excess formation of creosote against the relatively cool fireplace bricks. Like water condensing on a glass of ice water on a summer day. I would instruct people on how to limit this. First thing was using well seasoned wood. You would think people would know better than burning newly cut wood. Or bowling pins! Second was how to burn. Most people like to close the air inlets when burning to slow down the fire. Great idea unless your looking to cook everyone out of your home. Or worse damage your stove. Problem is when people put in new logs and smolder them it causes incomplete combustion. Creating large amounts of smoke and creosote. Its best to open the vents a bit to start the logs burning well then close it down. Easy enough to see it from outside. Lots of smoke equals bad combustion. Had one customers neighbors very happy when I taught the people how to burn properly. Creosote removal products work by removing the moisture from the thick tar like buildup. Making cleaning with a brush much easier. Normally not needed in fireplaces. They draw enough air to burn relatively clean. Same in wood stoves. The metal flue gets hot enough to not allow that much buildup. Unless of course your having a slow smoldering fire most of the time. But its still a good idea to use the removal products. Makes life much easier on those who clean them. And please never forget Co/smoke alarms
When we put ours in, I ran a 6" stainless flex liner down the flue (which was a 12x18 clay tile) and it connects directly to the back of the stove with a T section that has a 'trap' on the bottom. First year I cleaned it (do have to shove the stove to one side of the hearth), the trap had maybe 1/3 of #10 can of creosote in it. Running a brush down the liner resulted in maybe a handful more....almost none. I was impressed with how little, given we'd probably run 4 cords of wood thru it. It does have the gassifier re-burn system in it....the exhaust is almost clean at the chimney top. I built the fireplace/chimney originally in 1984. Used a metal insert "Heat-a-lator" fire box with the air circulation fans. It's the black box to the left of us working. I also built a special grate for logs out of black iron pipe that I circulated water from a 500gal insulated tank in the basement. Another pump connected to a wall thermostat circulated water to baseboard radiators around the house. Set of metal 1/4" steel doors I'd clip on the fireplace opening so we could turn the fireplace into a stove at night when we'd go to bed to keep the room air from being sucked up the flue as the fire would die out. I figured I got the efficiency up to around 40%, but we still burned a LOT of wood. On the other hand, I could load it up, and you'd be opening doors in January.....ahahahhaaaa. I actually wrote my Master's Thesis on this project.
This statement is absolutely true for some fireplaces and false for others. Probably needs qualification. I have a fireplace that can put out 10,000 to 50,000 BTUs per hour and pretty much heat most of the house. Its built into the wall in the living room and is a joy to watch and sit by it. And it can operate at up to 77% efficiency so its appetite for wood is rather frugal to boot. I very much like it. FOCUS 320 – ICC-RSF The key to efficient burning is keeping the fire box hot enough that is sustains pyrolysis. It usually needs to be in excess of 300 degC and even up in the 400s for good decomposition and gasification of the wood. The gases then burn quite cleanly and efficiently producing good heat. In my fireplace the introduction of air is via overhead tubes in the fire chamber and the air is super heated before it enters the chamber so it doesn’t cool the chamber. The box is also insulated with fire brick and insulation further up to keep temps up. When its burning good, the flames don’t really come off the wood but kind of mystically develop floating above the wood or around the air induction tubes. Pretty cool to watch. This video is of a newer and smaller version of my fireplace being developed but the fire looks pretty similar. Stay warm. AT
Copy in the library over at the local University along with the work of few thousand other grad students....doubt it's available online. My sole published work.....ahahhaaaaa
If there is a dog leg in the stovepipe, there will be more efficiency out of the wood burnt. The shorter and straiter the exhaust travels, the more of the heat is lost up the chimney. fact.
We are living as caretakers on a historic farm and have an old "outside wood burner" furnace to heat the house. The company that manufacturers this model went out of business last year and this is an early model without all the EPA gadgets so it's very simple to operate. We've been burning it now for six weeks and it's really working well. I've never heated with wood before and I've received an education in almost every aspect of wood heat as we've had to create our wood stacks and clean out the previous owner's mess. I have split wood for the first time by hand as well as operated a splitter and we're really enjoying the self-reliance of this method of heat. I wish this furnace were more ecologically friendly but we'll never be able to afford to replace this unit. I'd like to have an inside free standing stove for the reasons stated in the op and we could ensure that we'd be warm even in a power outage. We may be able to install a stove later but I'll get arguments from my wife about the need for that type or preparation. She'd think it'd be better to get a backup generator to power everything, but that's another issue. Great thread; thanx.
You can do the same thing by adding fins onto the stovepipe that capture and radiate heat. The real problem with the dog leg is it makes cleaning the stovepipe a PITA, so you are less likely to do it, resulting in chimney fires. So, unless you're going to pay a chimney sweep, a lot to think about. I have a wood stove with a straight pipe and even that is a PITA to clean annually. I also only burn seasoned wood. Still a painful day cleaning the debris up, and I'm not getting any younger.
I had a wood burning love for years in a single store house, once a month I would clean the pipe out-never had a flue fire. Made a pipe cleaner out of a 8" wire wheel (made for bench grinder) mounted it to a long pole maybe had 10 bucks invested in it and it worked great. Commercial pipe cleaner brush were crazy expensive,
Cleaning the stove pipe is not that big a deal, but you know I go through a fraction of the wood conventional stoves consume, so you do the math.
I have a 45 in my stove pipe coming into the insert woodstove. I have no issue cleaning it, which I do twice a year. Standard pipe brush and commercial pipe brush rods flex thru the bend without issue. I take the top brick out of the stove and am able to get all the way into the combustion chamber.
