25 yr old house in the midwest. I have a lousey wood fireplace that Ive covered up because it just makes that room real cold with its built in draft. The opening in the wall is 36w x 33 tall. Whats the good brand or make for an efficient fireplace? I think I want to stick with wood so I can heat part of the house when the power goes out or something happens to the natural gas line. My first thought was getting a gas one installed for ambience mostly but from an emergency perspective that doesnt help if the gas goes out.
What Tony said... High efficiency direct vent...keeps all the heat in the room....get all fancy and get one like the one we have down stairs and you can do your best Leon Phelps with the remote control.
If you're looking for an actual wood burning fireplace that will actually heat you're looking at a retrofit kit of some form. Something like these, or similar. www.ahrenfire.com heatshieldchimney.com/priorfire Another good option would be a wood burning insert. One problem with the inserts is they utilize a blower to move air from around the stove into the room so when the power goes out you loose some heat. The retrofit kits are the most expensive option and are generally not a homeowner install option. An insert is much more cost effective and can be installed by a homeowner, just make sure the chimney liner that connects to the stove is installed correctly.
What Ive got right now is an insert. Hmm. Now I know why folks that have wood heating put their stoves in the middle of the room.
Depending on how much room you have you could pull the insert and install a hearth stove. Basically a woodstove set on the hearth extension and plumbed through the fireplace. The stove would sit a bit further into the room and without the shroud that surrounds the insert.
I have a Harmon insert with an afterburner cold winter I’ll go through 3 cords of wood if I run it November to March and it heats the majority of our 2200 square foot home. Burning wood keeps the heating oil bill low and I have 40 acres of timber, a wood splitter, a couple chain saws and people that like to come from the city to do “farm work”. If you don’t have an insulated stainless steel flu liner look into one, it will significantly slow cold air when insert is not in use an also create a stronger draft as well as protect from chimney fire damage. When we lose power in the winter a Yamaha 2200 runs the insert blower motor and powers the tv and satellite dish, the the other 2200 runs the fridge and basement freezer. If it looks prolonged I get out the 7500 and lots of extension cords. Vermont castings also makes some good stoves and inserts, stay away from the TSC stuff, it’s cheap for a reason in comparison to a quality stove. I have run my Harmon since it was new in 2008, rebuilt it about 2 years ago, all new rope, new after burner and some other parts, when it’s in good shape and efficient it will go 6-15 hours per load of wood and based on outside temps. When we see negative numbers i get that thing running hot enough that the afterburner cover is cherry red, it’s 3/4 inch thick cast iron.
Current fireplaces pipe in directly the outside air for the combustion - instead of pulling the outside air into the house, into the fire... - so being next to an outside wall isn't a bad thing.
If you don't have a wood supply like @tdelegram does, and a impromptu flexible labor force, consider a pellet stove. I have a Harmon fireplace insert in my basement and all that I have to do is go to my local Ace Harware, pick up a ton of wood pellets (40 pound bags on a pallet). The staff there loads it up via forklift into my F-Tree Fiddy, and I drive home. Now I have to unload those bags and stack them in my basement, but other than when I need a bag to fill the hopper, that is the only other time I have to handle the fuel for the fire. I burn about a bag per day and in Maryland as long as it stays above 30 degrees I have a house at about 70 degrees. I also have an oil furnace, and even with pellet costs, it reduced my oil/pellet combined cost to heat my home in half versus just oil by itself. With that being said, I did replace my entire AC/Furnace system about 2 years ago, so this unit also is much more efficient than the vintage 70's oil burner I had. Had a leak in my oil tank and figured if I'm doing the tank, just do the whole damned thing and be done with it.
I have an oil/wood burning furnace, installed in 1992. If I was motivated I could easily heat my house (2800 sq ft 3 story) entirely with wood. I have 30 acres, about 20 wooded. Unfortunately I like not getting up at night to feed the furnace so it kicks over to oil. When oil was 60 cents a gallon, no biggie. Now I'm rethinking it. If I was redoing everything I might put in one of those outdoor burners that can go for a couple of days on a load of logs. Not enough life left to make that pay back. I rarely use the 2 heat-a-lator fireplaces. They work OK but are more for show than what you would be interested in. You need to do a honest evaluation of your tolerance for what a PIA wood can be versus the savings. Even with free wood it's still days and days of labor to generate the wood pile, not to mention cutting, transporting, splitting, stacking, restacking, cleaning, dumping ash.......
