Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

So, I am seriously looking at gutting my living room, removing the fireplace and replacing with a wood burning stove.

Question one.
Have I lost my marbles? We don’t use the fire place. It’s never been serviced and to be frank, it would just be for the “look and feel” of a fire. It’s totally inefficient.

Question Bee
What does this do to the resell value of the house? I expect to get a very nice model. Not just something that will heat but something that adds to the overall attractiveness/value of the home.

Question next
WHAT DO I LOOK AT????????

I want efficiency because I want to use it a lot to heat the house instead of using electricity. I don’t want to spend scads of money on wood, and in the end, end up with a bigger bill because of it.


I will be heating about 1000 sq feet (bed rooms are on the other side of the house and not likely to benefit, but kitchen, dining room and living room are all pretty open and the largest part of the house.

Re: Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

WELL, I'm not the chimney Sweep, but from experience, my husband and I bought an older house, years ago, and the chimney stuck out in the room, (not a fireplace) and we decided it had to go, so we tore it out.

There might be a better way to go about it, but we just took sledge hammers and went at it. That was the dirtiest job I ever seen. Good thing that we were going to replace the floors and just about everything, because everything was black as coal. It's a good thing the we weren't living there.

If I had an unusable fireplace, I believe that I would buy one of those real nice fireplace insert stoves. And if you decided to sell your house, someone might want to renovate the fireplace.

Re: Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

Is it a masonry fireplace or a prefabricated metal one?

Re: Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

I currently have a masonry fireplace. it is about to meet my sledge hammer.

my living room is basically a rectangle and the entire fireplace is built into the space, not just built on a wall of the space.

It takes up a good bit of room, its awkward and my intention is to remove it, and rearange the room in a more fitting manner.

Re: Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

If the fireplace is in good condition one option would be to put in a fireplace insert. Lopi and Jotul are good choices. You can research them on the internet. You would probably want a dealer to come and look at your fireplace to determine which models fit. They are very efficient and put out a lot of heat. I prefer free standing wood stoves though to the inserts. They have much more radiant surface to heat the room and therefore don't require circulating fans to disperse the heat. Fireplace inserts require fans to circulate the heat. Also some stoves have ash drawers to make removing ashes easy. Fireplace inserts don't have ash drawers. Hope that helps.

Re: Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

See a big part of my reasoning is the fireplace itself is just not attractive and is more of a inconvienience than it is a part of the space.

it was almost an afterthought. kind of "oh no, we forgot the fireplace so lets just build it into the room" kind of thing.

I am pretty much set on the idea of knocking the whole thing down and putting in a stove.

so for stoves, what do you like? nice, attractive and value adding while being a useful item to heat the house?

Re: Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

My FIL had a wood burning stove. I felt it warmed the house much more than the fireplace we had.

Re: Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

My previous house had a Hearthstone stove which I installed and was really my primary heat source in the winter. I loved it and miss it. My current house has a very nice fireplace which my wife and I like a lot and use often. But for heating purposes it's pretty useless. I am considering putting in an insert.
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It will add value to the house if a perspective buyer appreciates it. As far as heating the house they certainly have enough heat output to do so. One question to ask would be is the layout of your house such that the heat from a stove can circulate throughout.

Good stoves out there from Hearthstone, Jotul, Vermont Castings, Lopi. I recommend staying away from stoves with catalytic converters.

Re: Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

Never a chimney sweep around when ya need on.

Re: Questions for the resident chimney sweep
 

Please tell me you've got video! That must have been something to see! :loo