Recently bought an old(ish) house, built in 1921. The fireplace and chimney need some work. The flue is broken, the outside doors don’t close and as a result the Wisconsin winter air blows down and makes the living room pretty drafty and cold. I got two quotes before we bought the house for $4000 and $7000 to get it functional (new flue, new chimney cap, new doors and some random tucking and pointing). Thinking about getting a woodburning insert with a blower. I have access to a wood lot, so I can cut my own wood and won’t have to buy it. I am not trying to heat the whole house with it but would like to have some fires on the weekends etc. Anybody have any experiences with these? good/bad?
They can be very efficient especially if you also put a ceiling fan in front of it as well. At the end of the day it depends on how much you want to deal with splitting, hauling, storing, and generally dealing with wood. If you don’t like the concept of having piles of wood all over a pellet or natural gas insert would probably be better for you.
Love it. Use it all the time. Will bring my living room from 64 to 69 in about an hour. I’ve got a decent size living room. I was facing at least $4000 to fix, there was a 30% tax credit up to $1500 when I bought it. It really was a no brainer.
My only complaints are the fire box is kind of small, 18in length is the longest wood I can really get in there. The second complaint is the rods that circulate air in the fire box could have been .25in longer. The first few fires I knocked it out when shoving wood in the firebox, amybe 3x total.
Takes about 60-90minutes to install.
There are some pics on my blog of it in action if you care to see.
I know you said wood-burning, but we have a pellet stove and it heats our whole house (2500 sf). We haven’t even used 2 ton (each ton is about $200) and we store the pellets in our garage. YOu can get a fireplace insert with piping for about the cost of your repair for the chimney (and you won’t need to repair it since you will use piping to exhaust.)
Plus, the pellet stove runs 24 hours and keeps a constant temp…which is great when you are gone for a while, you don’t have to worry about adding more logs to keep it running.
Love it. Use it all the time. Will bring my living room from 64 to 69 in about an hour. I’ve got a decent size living room. I was facing at least $4000 to fix, there was a 30% tax credit up to $1500 when I bought it. It really was a no brainer.
My only complaints are the fire box is kind of small, 18in length is the longest wood I can really get in there. The second complaint is the rods that circulate air in the fire box could have been .25in longer. The first few fires I knocked it out when shoving wood in the firebox, amybe 3x total.
Takes about 60-90minutes to install.
There are some pics on my blog of it in action if you care to see.
I have a Zero-Clearance wood stove that has been in operation for 21 years. I’ve had to replace the fan motor maybe 3 or 4 times in that period. It is in a wood framed fire place with lined pipe thru a wood chimney. It heats the 1400 sq ft floor it is on with no problem. No insert required.
That was included with the stove. It’s a 6 diameter insert chimney that they run up through the existing flue, capped and sealed against weather coming in. Although here in AZ that’s mainly sunshine.
My sister has one and loves it. However, when my borther-in-law re-injured his ACL, her love quickly faded as she was lugging wood from outback. I will say that the thing heats up their ranch style house very nicely. They do produce a huge amount of heat, as that is the purpose, so if you have kids, think about a large gate to keep them away.
