Hi all! My husband and I just purchased an old farmhouse in central NY on 27 acres (18 woods) and for obvious reasons, would love to heat our house with wood, rather than the oil heat presently installed. We would also prefer not to be totally dependent upon electricity to warm our 2200 sq foot house, so we're looking for the best options - a couple of woodstoves, one, perhaps, right at the foot of the stairs to heat the kids' bedrooms and the upstairs and another in the kitchen; or perhaps one woodstove with a non-electric circulating fan, and some degree of acceptance that the bedrooms might be cold (not generally a problem for me, although since we're expecting another baby, it will probably mean one more winter relying on some oil). We've rejected and outdoor woodburning furnace because of the electric requirements. So I have two questions, since I know little about this (I grew up burning coal, not wood). 1. Anyone have favorite woodstove brands to recommend? We're looking for something that will heat as much of our house as possible, with the addition of a non-electric fan. We'd also like to be able to use the top for some cooking, (boy, do I wish I could afford a cookstove!!!!!) so none of those weird domed things, or strange decorative things. Please tell us how much space you heat with them, and what the advantages and disadvantages are.

Second question - the house we bought has a *huge* stone fireplace, about 8 feet long and 11 feet high, running from floor to ceiling, that acts as the wall between the living and dining rooms. I'm not too thrilled about having the pretty but useless (worse than useless) decorative source of heat, but we're certainly not going to rip it out. The fireplace openings are too small to allow for easy cooking (although you could do some in an emergency)and the thing is just going to be a pain come winter when we can't prevent our hard-earned heat from running up the chimney. But I did wonder if it would be possible to turn it into a masonry stove? We can't afford to build in a new masonry stove, but we've certainly good a huge amount of fieldstone mass to retain heat if it were properly redesigned. We aren't going to try it ourselves (*way* beyond our capacities thus far), but as I understand it, the most expensive part of a masonry stove is building in the mass to retain heat, and we've certainly got that. Can someone who is wiser and a better engineer than I give me some sense of feasibility (given the limited information here) before I start calling in professionals to check it out?

Thanks in advance - much appreciated.

Sharon

-- Sharon in NY (astyk@brandeis.edu), July 06, 2001

Answers

sharon: wow....lots of choices. we're still trying to figure it all out. we have a woodstove and propane for heat, and a cookstove out in the outbuilding because of the details of moving it all around....think we might wait and burn the whole house and build a new one. but, LET ME GET TO MY POINT (and I have one). You can't turn that fireplace into a true masonry stove. masonry stoves are built up with a complicated flue pattern which weaves back and forth throughout, which is how they heat so much of the rock with one or two burnings a day. We have a Fisher woodstove that was left here....but if I had your perfect option available, this is what I would do, which friends of ours did: they put a great woodstove, into a hearth. then the piping up through the chimney sends the heat into the bricks throughout the house. So, they have the woodstove for heat, that is very energy effecient/tight/long heating, plus the benefit of having it encased in a riverrock flue to hold the heat further....best of both worlds. their house is about half your size, and they have a small woodstove, but sarah says they fill it in the morning and before bed, and that is all they do. keep the electric heat though for when you want to go out town in the winter. a friend of mine up here in wisconsin and her partner can't go anywhere together in the winter because there is no one to tend to the fire, and they have to worry about bursting pipes. good luck with the baby!

-- marcee king (thathope@mwt.net), July 06, 2001.

Dear Sharon,

Congratulations on the baby and new house! Sounds like an exciting time for You!!

One idea regarding the living room fireplace - it may be possible to place a Franklin-type stove in the opening and run the stovepipe up the chimney. Some Franklins are designed to be open like a traditional fireplace or closed like a stove. Heat from the stove would be absorbed by the thermal mass of the fireplace and chimney. I *think* You could also have a collar placed at the chimney top leaving just an opening for the stovepipe which would help conserve some heat. This probably isn't the most efficient solution by thermal engineering standards, but would be inexpensive and may provide adequate heat besides. I've my eye on a two-story log house built about 1800 where I intend to try this in the 2 downstairs fireplaces.

Best of Luck!!!!

Randle

-- Randle Gay (rangay@hotmail.com), July 06, 2001.

WHOA! STOP> DONOT place a stove at the bottom of the stairs to heat the kids bedroom unless there is ample alternate fire escape routes and your kids are old and level headed enough to save themselves. As a reminder to everybody: make a plan for fire escape; practice it, have an outside assembly point. That toddler that slep downstairs may now be a preschooler who sleeps upstairs; do they know how to get out in an emergency? At 3:20 a.m. in 17 inches of snow with sirenes wailing in the distance is not a good time to hear"Wheres the ladder"?

-- mitch hearn (moopups1@aol.com), July 06, 2001.

Thanks for all the info - especially about what makes a masonry stove different than others. As it stands now, I'm not convinced we could put a woodstove in the fireplace unless we could find a *Really* small one - the aperture just isn't that big.

Thanks also for the reminder about safety - we do have multiple stairways and all of the rooms (including second floor) have safe other means of egress, but it probably isn't the greatest idea in the world anyhow.

I'd still like to hear more about specific brand recommendations (and how much they cost and how well they work). Also, does anyone have a non-electric (heat powered) woodstove fan that they use? How does it work?

thanks,

-- Sharon in NY (astyk@brandeis.edu), July 06, 2001.

Sharon, here are some plans for a masonry stove that I think will show you what it is, how it works, and why you can't turn your fireplace into one: Masonry Stove Plans

Maybe this insert would fit, you don't say what the dimensions of your fireplace opening are:

Hearthstone Homestead Wood Stove

I don't THINK this has to fit inside the fireplace but rather the pipe runs out the back and into the fireplace opening which is then sealed up around the pipe inlet. I could be wrong on that, call Lehmans and ask them for more information.

-- Sojourner (notime4@summer.spam), July 07, 2001.