I am exploring wood stove options for emergency heating, possibly cooking too.  Any suggestions of places to check or look at?  I plan to have it professionally installed.  I want to put it in the basement, my thoughts being that heat rises and can heat the house and keep my pipes from freezing if there is no power.
Intended for emergency use mainly, otherwise will not be used much, but if there were a long term issue, it would get used a lot more.  A cooktop could be nice, but not essential, there seem to be few options in this area.  Looking for something for at least 2k to 2.2k square feet.

Would like to keep it around $1k-$1.5k if doable.  Still looking through the Internet, but don't have any experience with this.  Thanks!

For 1k-1.5k your looking at used and self installed.

The issue with wood stoves is the chimney..   Basically, you really really really need the good insulated triple wall stainless pipe throughout the whole house, from basement up through the roof.  And here is the problem:  The pipe alone, just the pipe, will be in excess of your budget.  You haven't paid labor or installed it yet.

The basement is a good idea.  Wood is dirty, so it stays down there.  And heat does rise.  Typically you've got about 3 or 4 feet of single wall black pipe, then it runs triple wall allllll the way up.  The good chimney pipe keeps the smoke and heat warm, allows it to draft well, and it doesn't accumulate on the insides of the pipe as much as it might with single wall.  And the triple wall exterior is cooler:  Far less chances of a house fire.

In all seriousness, you are looking at a solid $4500 + for a wood stove, necessary piping, and install.

If I were building a home today, I'd intentionally plan a center-of-the-house "chase" all the way through, top to bottom.  Think of a 30" x 30" wide 'channel', from basement right up to the center line of the roof, totally unimpeded by floors or ceilings.  Line the sucker with fire resistant material, place the triple wall in the center of that mess, all the way up.

As for refits, you've got two choices.  A straight run from stove thru roof works best, but its hardest to do.  You're coming up through floors, through living spaces, through ceilings, to the roof.  You don't want a section of stainless pipe in a room, so most people are going to loose a closet or something similar.

The other option is some form of a dog leg.  Up out of the stove, a 90 degree, out through a wall, another 90, then up the outside of the building.  Two problems....If it comes up outside the building and runs up the outside of the house to or near the peak of the roof, its awesome.  But if it comes up a the eaves, you still need a decent six feet of pipe or often more sticking wayyyyy the hell up beyond the eaves to get it to draft right when wind is coming from the other side of the roof.  Its ugly, and support is an issue.  And if you get significant snowfall, snow sliding off the roof will trash that pipe so damned fast it aint even funny.  And those dog legs?  Well, if you have a decent 4 feet of exposed concrete basement wall from underside of the floor to the grade level, you've got it made.  Most houses don't.  The first 90 degree bend to punch out through the wall to the outside SHOULD be 18" or more from the underside of the floor joists overhead.  In many cases, that means you are still below grade...   If you cheat, and try to bring the pipe close to the overhead floor joists so going outside is easy, you now have major fire hazard issues.

Most people give up, put the stove on the first main floor, ideally next to an end wall that is under the gable end of the house.  They go up about two feet from ceiling, punch out through the wall with a thimble, then up the outside with an appropriate standoff to protect the exterior wall, up beyond the peak about 4 feet.  

Call your insurance company before doing anything.  Around here, a wood stove triples your rates or drops coverage entirely.

Can I suggest an unconventional approach?   Look at a pellet stove, a small solar set up, and some batteries. Or a pellet stove, a small inverter generator, and a stock of fuel.     Pellet stove chimney systems are MUCH easier!  and a ton cheaper.  You can cleanly and easily stock a couple tons of pellets.  The downside is your need power to run the fan and auger system.  Hence the small 2000w inverter generator and/or the batteries and solar.  Its not a true off grid solution, its more a half-way-there approach.  But far cheaper.  And most pellet stoves use a simple double or triple wall 3 or 4 inch vent pipe and a simple wall thimble.   Its a TON cheaper and easier to do.  I'm not saying its perfect, only that it bears consideration

If you're putting it in the basement you should consider a wood burning furnace or a stove with a blower that you can tie into your existing duct work, it would heat your house a lot more efficiently than just relying on "Heat Rises". In a power out situation you'll have to power the blower but a small inverter generator can handle that.


The $4500+ estimate is probably right for a professional installation.  When I was in Michigan I heated with a Quadra-Fire 4300 Step Top, total install price was close to $5000 on a new construction home.

To add some more discriminators:

Ensure the stove/heater has secondary combustion.  This nearly doubles the heat output per unit of wood.

Ensure combustion air is from the outside/exterior of the house/home.  There is no good reason for the stove/heater to suck combustion air from inside causing a vacuum and outside air infiltration.

Of course, this costs more $$$.

Clarification, the stove only itself, not the installation.   Looking at $1k-$1.5k for purchasing just the stove.

I plan on a separate installation from a company that does this, did my parent's house.  Initial estimate of that is about $3,500.

I was considering two option, one with the chimney going right outside the basement wall and up the outside, which would be less installation work, but would not centralize the stove for efficiency as much and the installer said they don't usually recommend that, condensation or something in the cold, not sure.

The second option would put the stove centrally in the basement and placement would be a near vertical up through the roof, more costly, but doable.

England Stove Works (made in the US) are good stoves for a reasonable price. I have the Englander Madison in the basement.

I asked my insurance about this and was told any solid fuel appliance would add $400/year to my premiums - they don't care if its wood, pellets, corn, or buffalo dung - if the fuel isn't liquid or gas you pay.    Strangely enough they don't care if you have a fireplace!!

    Even going out the wall and up will be close to what you are spending going through the house.  Difference is you are cutting more holes in the floors going up then the roof.

 Class A pipe is expensive no matter how you run it, but going out the wall you are only cutting one hole then up the side of the house.   That said it depends what your eves are like, can they go through it or do they have to go around it?    You also have to consider the pitch of the roof.   If it is a steep roof, the cap on top of the pipe has to be 2ft above the peak or 10ft from the roof itself. Assuming codes are the same as they are here in Washington?  It's called the  Ten/2 rule.  

The other nice thing of going out the wall vs through the house is when the chimney needs to be cleaned.    A "T" package will need to be installed out side to support the weight of the pipe going up the side of the house.  There will be a clean-out plug in the "T" support for just that.


  Either way your looking at way more then you are thinking.      One other thing to consider is if it is a straight shot up through the house?    Floor joists and trusses need to line up perfect for the clearances or your going to have to offset the class A pipe maybe even more than once.    Those off sets are expensive as well.

I will be having a consultation in the next couple of months from the installer, I am NOT a professional, so, going to get the options and see which works best.  Just trying to see what options on stoves mostly.  

Did a check downstairs a bit more, the best option might be where my reloading bench is located!  Will have to see.

May I suggest a visit to Hearth.com? It is a fantastic resource, with lots of info and members, and many have experience and advice with what you want to do..

Hearth

We did a self install of our stove. Not that big of a deal, just read the documents that tell you how to install it, the clearance requirements, etc. 10 years later, not a single complaint or problem. We love it.

The basement generally ISN'T a good place, for a few reasons, including lack of insulation, and the amount of openings for the heat to rise and find it's way into the upper living spaces. If your living spaces are warm, your basement won't freeze. We just did 17 days below freezing, with a few trips into the single digits. Our basement never dropped below 55F.

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Puppy approved

Where I live, in the north east the basement IS where you put woodstoves.  We heat our house about 75% of the time with firewood sourced from our property.

Our whole house is insulated including the basement which is finished except for a utility room.

We do have a dog leg in the basement but a straight run of triple wall stainless from there.  I clean the chimney every year but everything pretty much ends up in the dog leg.  Takes me about an hour in the spring to get everything nice and clean and ready for next year.  I take apart the dog leg and clean them all out, then lay a tarp down and run the brush up X amount to give the main chimney a quick brush.  We are lucky in that we have a dual level so we have a walk out basement which makes bringing firewood in pretty easy.

I've been using a wood stove for the last 7 years,  I had been using a Vermont Castings Defiant 1 wood stove.

Last September I installed a Kuma Aspen wood stove.  The firebox has a lifetime warranty, it has secondary burn tubes and a warrantied catalytic combuster.  I heat solely with wood, it keeps my house quite comfortable, it has a fan and an ash drawer.  

My wood usage has gone down by almost half compared to my older VC Defiant.

You're not going to get an efficient, new wood stove without spending closer to $2K.

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Kitties love a wood stove. If it's really cold out my two old girls will hang out near the stove and fuss if I don't have the stove going, one will even paw at the wood rack. If they were bigger with opposable thumbs I suspect they might try to start the stove themselves.

My Englander Madison was around $700 as I recall and it’s a very efficient stove. It also has the secondary burn tubes. I grew up with old wood stoves and can’t believe how much less wood this Englander burns for the same heat.

You can install yourself if you are handy.  As mentioned hearth.com is a good resource.

The stove pipe, chimney, and related hardware will consume your current budget.  DO NOT go cheap!  Buy high quality materials and install them properly.  Burning your house down is a heavy price to pay to save $500.  

Buy a good modern stove if you want to save your back from hauling cutting wood.  Your neighbors will thank you too.

NO!

You really need the pipe specified by the stove manufacturer. It's the pipe it was tested with to achieve the UL listing and anything else would be considered a code/safety violation.

Additionally, the vast majority of stoves specify Class A which is just dual wall stainless fiber insulated. Yes, still expensive but near the cost of triple wall. Class A can be bought for $25/ft, or $500 for a 20-ft chimney.

OP, if you can forego the cooking part this can be done within your budget on a self-install. You could still heat and simmer things on the top of a free standing stove but not pan fry, saute, boil, etc.

The triple wall stainless chimney is the best way to go for most stove installs. Great chimney. We have a triple wall stainless chimney from the basement to out of the roof. Due to a minor clearance issue we went with a double wall stainless (coated black) connector pipe from the stove to the stainless chimney instead of the typical single wall. The chimney cost more than the stove...by around double the cost of the stove.

Pellet stoves are cool but the price of pellets has risen a LOT over the past few years. The stoves are more money than a wood stove but the chimney is a lot cheaper. Comparing the cost of pellets vs propane in my area, I’d go with a propane stove. That might change in other places depending on fuel costs.

Came in here to discuss that issue.  The problem with basement installs is the lack of insulation between the basement (usually concrete) walls and outside ground.  It sounds great in theory but then you find that you're wasting gargantuan amounts of heat trying to heat the Earth.  Waste of time and energy.  Insulated?  You've got other considerations to think about, backdrafting being one of them.  But those can be dealt with unlike the lack of insulation, which is usually difficult if not impossible (or very $$$$).

OP, I would register over at Hearth and discuss your plans with them.  Details will be asked for, in far greater than has been done here.

The first of which will be:  What is your firewood situation look like?  Have you started processing firewood including but not limited to Cutting, Splitting and Stacking (CSS) firewood?  100 acres of woods or a big pile of logs or rounds = Doesn't mean shit.  Firewood does not start drying until it gets CSS.  Most good firewood will take a year after CSS (sometimes far longer), which means you may already be late for next year.  Better get cracking!

Wood stoves:  I like the Englander 30-NC, because that's what I have.  It's been replaced with the Englander 32-NC to meet 2020 EPA emissions.  About $1050 at HD; free shipping.

Good luck!

Mine is in the basement and I love it there.  My basement walls are insulated (2 inch rigid foam sheets) but the basement is always cool.....except when the stove is running.  75-80* is common.  Heat rises so it comes up to the main part of the house.  I'd much rather have it in the basement than in the main part of the house.  It also drafts really well. Somewhere on the internet, a rumor started that a basement install doesn’t draft well. Probably was a bad install that got blamed on being in the basement. There are MANY basement installs of stoves that work great. Install it correctly and you too can have a working basement install.

THIS!  RTFM - it will specify exactly what is required for that stove.  Install something else and your house burns down - for whatever reason - and you're forked.

Follow the manual for your stove.

I have a Lopi Liberty.  Large fire box, very efficient and really throws out heat.

There is only so many brands of Class A and interior DBL wall type pipe.    Some is less price wise then others, but most major stove company's are usually approved  for any of them within reason.

This. Some people like to overthink things. Look at any stove makers chimney requirements listed in the stove manual. They will usually list multiple available chimney options between metal and masonry. I don’t know of a single stove out there that would prohibit using double or triple pipe stainless chimney. Double wall is good and triple wall is even better (exterior stays cools enough to touch even with a hot fire).

I'm shopping too OP. I have a 1979 Vermont Castings Defiant. It heats the house great but I know it's inefficient. We heat with it anytime the temp drops below 30 or when we just want to look at a fire. We had a stove in the basement at our old house and we would have the windows cracked a bit to let some of the heat out upstairs. I liked that it kept the basement dry, the mess downstairs, and the upper floor warm. I did not like moving the stove up and down the steps or carrying wood down steps every weekend.

We have a walkout basement so we stack the wood outside and carry it straight to the stove.  I wouldn't like it as much if I had to carry the wood downstairs.

I put in a Quadrafire 23 years ago. It heats as well today as it did back then and has kept me warm through all those Montana winters. It only burns fir and larch (because that’s what we have in MT) and I clean the chimney once a year even though it never seems to need it.

I did a self install on the end wall of our ranch home.  There was no hearth at all had to build from scratch. Double wall pipe to the ceiling thimble and triple wall up and through the roof.  We bought a Woodstock Soapstone Co "Fireview" catalytic stove and it easily heats the whole place 1800 sqft. This year we should finish up burning about 2 cords.

My parents' have a wood room below ground level, it's just an unfinished section off the main part of the basement with a stairwell and exterior door where they stack the wood. My dad took some OSB cut it half the width of the stairs and installed a ripped down 2x4 seam to the bottom of one of the halves to help with the weight in the center and installed hinges on the sides and made like a wood ramp, he folds the 2 halves down over top of the stairs and brings wheelbarrows full of wood to the door and dumps them down, then once he thinks he has enough he shuts the door goes in the house through the other door and down to the basement and starts stacking it, as he takes the wood from the bottom the wood higher up slowly moves down the ramp to the bottom where he can grab it. When he's done he folds up the 2 ramp sections and you can use the stairs again.

They have an old American Eagle stove from the 70's with a central brick lined chimney going up through the house to the peak of the roof. they have a steel floor grate above it on the second story, In the winter you have to open windows when it's cranking because the whole house is about 85 unless you shut bedroom doors on the ends of the house. I don't know if It gets hot enough to cook on but I can attest that it will give you a nasty freddy krueger arm for a bit if you fall up against it, I have no idea how I don't have scars from that. My mom simmers chili, soup, and tomato sauce on it in the winter time.



Looks exactly like that, it used to have fancy glass in the doors with a white tail deer and a bald eagle on the panes.

There's now a 26% tax credit for epa rated wood/pellet stoves/inserts/etc.  It goes through 2023 but the % decreases each year.  From what I've gathered, there is no cap and it applies not only for the appliance but install as well.

This is correct, making 2021 a great year to put in a good stove.  When I did my stove a few years ago there was a flat $400 tax credit, but 26% of stove and installation costs would have been real nice.  

Just want to add, once you get the stove installed and winter comes it is very important to spend time learning to run your stove in your home.  Sounds obvious, but it really is a learned skill to efficiently run a stove.  Every install is unique, so even if you have the same model stove as others, your home's chimney (straightness, height), draft, air-tightness, and local weather patterns are unique and will strongly affect how your stove runs, what it likes to burn, etc.  Don't be the guy who doesn't bother to learn the stove until the power goes out.

+1

It's a good idea to be around the stove all day for the first couple firings of the stove.  You have to figure out how your particular stove works.  You don't want to overheat it.  You also want to light the first fire when you can open the windows because the first firing of a new stove will cause the paint to smoke.

Or better yet, burn it a couple times outside before you install it.  I bought mine March/April 2014, but didn't get to install it until Nov. 2014.  I put it on a rolling platform in my shop and every once in while, I pulled it out and fired it up.  

Draft sucked massively.  Call Englander CS and talked to one of their techs.  He sort of chuckled when I told him I had some cheap hardware chimney section on it 4' high.  Yea, not gonna work.  Stove needs a minimum of 15' of stove chimney.  But it did burn off all the paint off gasses - my wife never smelled any burning paint smell when it went inside and we started using it.

We fired ours a few times as per the instructions (I think it was 2 or 3 fires successively hotter fires) inside but we had all our windows in the basement and main part of the house open.  Once we did the break in fires, we had no odor issues.  The worst one was the first.  The subsequent ones weren't bad.

We’re in process of getting a new place and this is pretty much the route I’ve settled on. Our current has a wood stove that we love, the new place has a pellet and basically a walkout basement design where there is no good way to put in a pipe and no good place to stage wood if it was in the main level. I’ve got generators but a solar bank just big enough to run the blower and a few other small things that the initial price and battery replacement won’t be too much to outweigh the cost

Make sure the whole system is installed right!  There have been 2 homes lost to fire in our area in the last few months.

#1 is a DIY home the guy has been working on for years.  They were about ready to move out here full time.  He left this home to go into town to be with his family for turkey day and the place caught on fire.  The fire people think it was a wood stove caused fire.  The pipe came out the wall and up instead of going straight up through his roof.  I was never inside of the house, so don't know how it was set up inside.  Sad deal, nice folks.  Total loss of house down to the foundation.

#2 was a +/- $500K home on a lake.  The owners gave me a quick walk through several years ago.  Wow views of the lake!  I don't remember a wood stove, but they had a huge fireplace in the living room.   Early morning fire takes the house.  All people there are able to get out.  The house was partly built on huge steel I-beams.  The fire was so hot it warped (partly melted?) those beams.  "Might" be 5% of the structure left, the rest is just gone.  I haven't heard what the cause was.  With that view (all that glass!) it was an expensive place to heat and they had plenty of wood available for the fireplace??

Rant off:  In any case we bought a Blaze King Ashford and had it installed in our new home.  It keeps our home warm.  We thought we were getting NG in the area, so bought gas appliances and set up with propane in the short term.  The NG deal fell through and we are using propane long term.  I read a post on here some guy "back east" was paying $1.80 something a gal for his propane...ours is $3.80 something a gal.  We burn our wood stove all the time; any excess heat we sent out into the garage.  We burn birch only in our stove; wood we cut, split, and dry ourselves.

We have the pipe work and stove professionally cleaned and checked every year.

The Ashford has a removable top, so it "could" be used as a cook top if needed.  We've never tried it.  We had outside combustion air piped in so the stove doesn't use the house's warm air.   Edit: We bought the built in fan...makes a lot of difference.  We have a small Honda generator and we just plug in the fan when we loose power and keep enjoying all that "free" heat.

The Wife always says the wood stove was the best thing we spent $ on for the house.

My Grandmother had a wood stove in the basement of her Montana farm house.  It was huge and did a great job of heating her home.  They had an opening in the basement wall to bring in the firewood.  It was a messy and labor intensive chore to keep that thing fed.

We just bought a wood burning cook stove. I haven’t picked it up yet. We are in the process of and building up what we call our “sunroom“. He will now be an enclosed room completely. The stove will go in there. Of course it needs cleaning
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We currently have an outdoor wood boiler, which I really like....keeps the mess outside and even on the coldest days we get I only fill it twice a day.

That being said, we've been contemplating putting in a wood stove in the basement as a backup heat source, we live out in the country and have pretty good power reliability but not 100%.  I already cut / split wood, so that part would be covered.  My issue right now is the cost, by the time I get a decent stove and get the chimney completed, I think a whole house generator would be close to the same price which would obviously cover my "back up" heat, along with everything else.

Have you measured the daily power requirements for your wood boiler pump(s) and fans (if equipped)? Seems like a few batteries and the appropriate number of solar panels would make a good system but I’ve never measured the power draw of a wood boiler so don’t know if it’s viable or not. I know it CAN be done but depending on the load, it might not be worth the effort. I’d still make provision to charge the batteries from a generator because if you are out of power it’s also likely the weather even that led to the power outage is also going to negatively effect your power production.

I haven't.....I don't expect it would be too high though, it's got a surprisingly small pump on it.  I'd also have to be able to power the fan on our furnace to circulate the heat though the house.  Honestly working out the logistics of separating those circuits out to route power through a separate setup pushes me more towards the whole house generator.

In addition to the backup heat source part of me wants the "backup" indoor wood stove simply because I like them.  Our old house had a fireplace, we elected not to put one in when we built our new house and both the wife and I miss gathering around a nice warm fire on a cold winter day on occasion.  It's just a large expense at this point for the handful of times a year that this particular scenario comes into play.

Our house had a small Avalon Arbor (same as Lopi Leti) in the basement when we moved in.  We used it the 2nd season we were there, and were amazed at how much difference it made in our comfort level, floor heat (on upstairs floor), as well as gas usage (propane).

A year or so later we went full hog, and installed a Kumma Vaporfire furnace.  Had to replace all the existing ductboard ductwork with metal, due to solid-fuel heat source.  About $5k for the furnace, about $5k for the metal ductwork install.

The Arbor/Leti stove made me a believer in the new EPA stoves.  Crazy how much heat they put out given the quantity of wood they burn. However, it was also a PITA to get up and going into the gassification phase.  Took a lot of babysitting and and hour or so when a new fire started.  Lots of fiddling with air levers, draft, etc.  That PITA was one reason we went for the Kuuma...it's essentially load an forget.  Love it.

This is the setup I have, except we have a series of the pumps that circulate hot water through in floor pex and radiators.  This winter I decided to limit the usage of the outdoor boiler just to see how much wood it took to keep the house warm, and if our indoor stove was sufficient.  I found that our basement wood stove would keep the house hot in the basement, warm on the first floor, but uncomfortably cool on the second floor.  The stove was kept going all the time.  Our basement is not well insulated, the rest of the house is.

Your outside boiler probably draws about an amp for the circulation pump, and perhaps a few amps for a blower if your boiler has one.  Your fan on your furnace could probably be fitted with a plug to plug into it's current power source, with you having the ability to use an extension cord to reach the furnace blower in an event of a power outage.

Nothing wrong with a whole house generator, but if it is only for this equipment, you can probably get away with a less expensive and more fuel efficient method.

I've put some thought into going this route, as it's obviously the cheaper route.

If I'm being honest, I'm somewhat trying to justify the purchase of the whole home generator.  Not having it installed when we built the house is one of my few regrets from our build.

No need to justify anything to any of us, we understand.  If you believe you would be better off with one, you should get one.

Not sure of any sales but this is the time of year for them. England Stove Works is what I’d be looking at. They sell them at Lowe’s under the name Summers Heat.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record:  Burning Dry vs. Wet firewood, various YT videos discussing - and showing - the difference.

We have a vogelzgangs at our fish-camp.
Burns wood like crazy and hard to regulate even with another damper in the stovepipe.
Common because they are cheap and light so your not out much if it is stolen.

Englander used to put their 30-NC on sale right around now at HD.  I understand with their new ownership, they don't do it anymore.  The 30-NC has been replaced with the 32-NC to meet EPA 2019 or 2020 emission requirements.  It's about $1050 at HD with free shipping.  Assuming your $1000 budget is for the stove alone, this is pretty close for a very highly rated EPA-rated wood stove.  If total budget for wood stove and chimney system is $1000 - you're fucked.  Either on the front end or the back end.

I would not get a non-EPA rated stove even if you gave it to me for full time winter heating.