What do you think about this idea?

Good eye Bob. She has had the issue of smoke in the house since they bought it. The solution was to crack a window. The chimney is spotless with a large rectangular flue for the fireplace. That is why I suggested a pellet stove over a wood stove due to the outside air for the pellet.

My guess is she will go for a freestanding stove in the corner over the insert. Mostly due to the scarcity of good inserts.

 

I thought the same thing looking at the pics.

 

wildwest the model # of your genny didn't show in your post...how many running watts is it? I recently switched to the Harbor Freight 3500w Inverter unit (actually, 2 of them that run in parallel). VERY quiet, pretty inexpensive.

 

A deficient draft will nearly always result in smoke wafting back into the room at times....I noticed the soot on the front of the mantle too...
A top cap that swivels with the wind direction and that creates a slight vacuum in the chimney really helps

Very nasty issue to deal with.
We had a huge fireplace in the old Ranch house here and the fireplace took up the entire end of the living room.

There were two 4" pipes that were sort of concealed in the brick work that delivered fresh air (OAK) right to the base of the fire box...they even had a damper valve to adjust during various weather conditions.

This kept the "Back draft" from happening and also kept the heat in the room rather than sucking all the air/heat up the chimney.

I am surprised that a fairly new house would not have had a combustion air inlet..

I would be quite easy to install a fresh air inlet along side the fire place that directly supplies air to the fire place and save from opening a window and letting cold air travel through the room.

The same fresh air supply would also be plenty to satisfy the pellet stove as well.

 

That is unusual. Typical pellet stove will use about 90 - 100 watts when up and running. Same as a good old fashioned light bulb. Granted, it will use more at startup when the igniter is doing it's thing. What is the model / specs of the Honda generator you have? Silly me, I just assumed it would be one of those ~2000w inverter generators. If it's a non-inverter genny then you are probably looking at an issue where the power it supplies is not clean enough. I had a similar issue a few years back, where the generator would make the moving parts in the stove sound like they were screaming in pain, lol. Picked up one of those little a 2800w Champion inverter generators, problem solved. That little Champion generator is fantastic.

 

We've had good luck w/ the Craftsman-branded 6,500 watt Gen set here, but it does require using a UPS readout to adjust (no load / partial load) Hz output every few years - (59.5+ - 60.5 Hz), I think that's where a lot of folks get bit on the non-inverter output.

Edit / full disclosure: And we use the CyberPower 1500 PFC (pure sine-wave) units on all 'sensitive' electronics here also: Pellet Stove, entertainment center, Networking / IT equipment.

 

I think that would be the most efficient / cost-effective install.

Edit 1: Staying on the ground for an install = priceless.
Edit 2: Thanks all for the well wishes / welcome back.

 

X2

 

OAK