Fireplace vs. Wood Stove

My family is inching ever closer to purchasing our new home and I had a "burning" question to ask everyone. Pictured below is the fireplace that has been in this home for 31 years. I have fallen in love with wood burning stoves, not necessarily the one I have now, but the concept. We are planning on using the fireplace in the new house this winter, as we will not be able to afford a new wood stove so soon, but that begs the question. Which one does a better job of heating a home? I know that there will be many factors, so for sake of argument I will give you the details of our home. It is a well-insulated, brick home. One story, with the fireplace at one end of the house. I would guess that the thermal mass of the fireplace and hearth it could be better suited for holding heat for a longer amount of time. On the other hand, the wood stove may be more efficient at radiating the heat being produced out into the home, as well as a more efficient burner of wood. Any help is appreciated.

 

Well, pretty much what he said. ^^^^

 

Horkn can give you some good insight on this

 

Uh yeah I can.

I have owned my home since 2008. It had a brick FP pretty much exactly like yours. It may even have had the same brass doors as yours. We did have a heatilator fan FP rack that helped a bit more than just the fireplace. I have great high btu wood, and seriously, the FP was more of an as ambience thing than a heater. I once tried to heat the house with wood in my FP and left the furnace as low as possible. The room with the FP and the heatilator fan at full blast was warm, but only by the FP.

Last year I bought a used but barely used Quadrafire 4100i insert. I installed that in early December. I used the open FP until i installed the stove, with the SS liner.

Huge difference, massive actually. I cut my natural gas usage per day to around, $1.30-1.50 a day, from about $4 a day. We have a ng furnace, gas range and oven that gets used pretty much daily, gas water heater and gas clothes dryer. So we'll never get down to zero ng usage.

But to drop that much dollar wise a day/ month is substantial. Because I got my stove and liner for the ridiculous price I paid, the insert already paid for itself the first winter. Actually I was ahead on winter #1 dollar wise.

Here's my stove after I installed it.



We went from being chilly in the house and still having a sizable energy bill, to a tiny gas bill and being downright warm. The blower on the unit works great, we get easy more heat from each log,a and we use the same amount of wood, but it heats the whole house, all the time, not just at night.

 

As you can see HighCountry straight from the horse's mouth Horkn has been there and done that recently and had huge increases in the amount of heat he gets in his house with the insert compared to a fireplace that is really not a heater at all.
So you should probably start planning right now to get you a nice insert or redo the whole thing and have a free-standing stove which would be better yet.
There's a lot of knowledgeable people here that will help you figure out what you need to do for your insert and chimney install, or whatever you end up doing.

 

X2 ^^^^^ it can get cold in mountains in NM

 

Maybe in New Mexico all you would need is the fireplace to get by with, but to answer your question, wood stove.
I had two homes with a fireplace in it few decades ago....just for looking at-even when it was used, only near them (same room) was comfortable. But again, that's up here in The U.P. not New Mexico.

I'm thinking you'll get the stove!

 

I vote freestanding stove if possible. We had a Clydesdale insert at our last house and it heated the house great, but the fan is incredibly annoying. If you get something with a fan make sure it's very quiet. I also missed not having a "cook top" for a steamer or actually cooking, if needed. My parents have a freestanding set on a fireplace hearth and it works well and doesn't look bad at all not being inside the actual fireplace.

 

I have a fireplace with a freestanding stove partially inside it. Looking at your picture, you have about 10 courses of brick that puts you around maybe 26 - 28" in height to work with? You are going to be limited on your stove selection due to the size of the opening. The larger the stove, the more difficult it will be to make connections to a liner. You have to figure that it may very well have to be rear vented with a short horizontal snout to the tee.

Consideration needs to be given if you rear vent and move the stove out as much as possible out of the fire box. You need to have your minimum 16" or 18" distance ember protection on the floor from the front of the stove door out.

I have stayed with Jotul for their quality of stoves, the short leg kits to lower the stove height to fit in the fireplace and parts availibility.

I'm hoping down the road, Jotul will re-design their current "F" line of stoves with a cat if EPA emissions lower.

I'll still try to convince Backwoods Savage to persuade Woodstock to develop a medium-sized, front loader cat stove to help us brick-bound burners stick some soapstone in the business end of our fireplaces.

 

Inserts are a bit of a compromise. I have the same one as Horkn in fireplace that is rather similar to what you picture. They do work. The biggest drawback in my opinion is the constant noise from the fan that pulls the heat out from behind them.

 

In my case, the fan on the insert was less than the fan noise from the heatilator wood rack that we had on the open fireplace.

It's pretty quiet. No louder than the fan on the lopi endeavor stove that was in my parents cottage for years until today.

It was replaced with a jotul gas Allagash stove.

 

These are all very valid points. I have become pretty enamored with having a free standing stove, which is why I will probably just end up reworking the hearth to be able to put a stove there. I will also keep an eye on inserts, but I am leaning towards making the space ready for a stove.

 

I burn from mid October thru most of April, and some days in early May if needed. I live at 6600 ft. elevation and nights in early to mid May can get quite cold. Go with the free standing stove, I think you'll get better radiation. You can add an external fan if needed. My stove is not centrally located, but I only use a fan to move heat on really cold days and nights. While we don't get as cold as the UP, having good, steady cheap heat for the 6 months of our winters is great!

 

I too don't get as cold as UP or Michigan but our burn season is much longer. Much longer. Mid September to mid June so 9 months of the 12. Had an insert, tore down the whole masonry chimney and replaced it with a freestanding stove and a vertical pipe chimney. Far superior setup for efficiency, quietness, power outage capability, cost for stoves, options for stoves, cooking, daily awesomeness, and burn times. Only use an insert if you can't make a freestander work.

 

Once I got our stove figured out, mostly due to threads on this site, it was wonderful. Our gas bill went to virtually non-existent, and I love that freedom.

 

Yup, there is a learning curve with a wood stove for sure. Lots of people won't admit that and search high and low for any type of excuse to justify their lack of experience of burning.