Posted: 8/28/2010 8:51:21 PM EDT
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I have a force air natural gas furnace for our primary heat source. Our house has a fireplace but it has some problems. We had an inspection done some time back. Unfortunately I wasn't home at the time to get the info first hand but I do still have the condition report.
1. It has a few cracked flue tiles 2. The damper assembly is loose/not attached to firebox 3. Firebox back wall eroding, needs sealed to face tile before burning. The inspector told my wife that once we got the 3rd issue taken care of it would be okay to burn a small fire while attended but as it stands now we shouldn't use it at all. So we took his advice and stopped using it. I'm now looking at my options on how we can utilize this feature as a backup heat source. I'm hoping we don't have to spend a fortune and I fear if we have to get the flu tiles replaced it could be a fortune. We do enjoy the atmosphere of the fire and would occasionally use it for that purpose, but my primary concern is backup. I have access to firewood but we have to buy it and we don't have a great place to store a large load, so I'm leaning toward a natural gas solution. Whatever we get, it needs the ability to make heat without electricity. I have started looking into the vented, non-vented, b-vented fireplaces but I don't know which would best serve our use. I'm open to any idea, all suggestions are welcome. |
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I'm not sure what you are willing to spend. Personally I would install a wood stove insert, and just run a flu up the chimney.
Something like:http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200442426_200442426 |
| drop a stainless steel flue liner in your chimney and push a wood burning stove insert into your fire box, preferably one with a heatilator so you can use it as primary source of heat with power and still use it without power. the cast iron will retain a lot of heat and you could even find one with a cooktop!!!! |
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Quoted:
I have been thinking about the same exact thing. I live in NY and it can get cold. I also have a natural gas furnace but I do not have a fire place. I'm leaning towards a pellet or wood stove as a backup heat source. Keep in mind that the pellet stove will need electricity to run. Our primary heat is a coal stoker stove, similar to a pellet stove. I stuck a Kill-A-Watt on it when sizing for a genset and it pulls a pretty steady 200W when running. An inverter and battery or a genset would run it for a while, but if you want true backup heat, a woodstove is the way to go. |
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We will keep our NG forced air furnace for our primary source of heat because it is efficient, clean, and will heat our house evenly. So the current fireplace is for emergency back up and for aesthetics.
I'm open to the idea of a wood burning insert but would that be cheaper to run than gas logs? Our natural gas bill isn't cheap by any means but since I don't have land, chainsaw, spliter, or pickup I would have to pay someone to deliver us wood. I'm thinking that the gas logs might be cheaper to run in my situation. I figure you can get a lot more heat out of the woodburning stove so if I wanted to keep the entire house warm, but that will not be a need for us. We can block off rooms and the like for emergency heating situations. Just something to keep us warm until our primary source comes back online. In the event of a really prolonged situation we have family not too far away that does have huge stockpiles of wood and a stove that we could retreat to. |