The Doors or...The Cult?

Which comes to mind when you are trying to title a blog post about Fire?

So when we came up with these plans with Res4 we didn't really know where to put the woodburning stove. The living space isn't that big to begin with, and there were drawbacks to all the spots we considered. We worried about it being in the flow of traffic (kids running past it), about how furniture would work, about heat distribution, etc. We thought about whether we were trying too hard to cram it in, but I do like my fires...

So we settled on this:


Not ideal - blocks the slider - but it allows a couch on one side and two chairs on the other. When I actually investigated the stove Res4 had spec'd, I realized that the footprint was not immodest - the smallest floorplate you can get is 43"x31", and you need 16" clearance off the front for any combustibles. And when the stove actually arrived yesterday, it was clear our chosen location wasn't gonna work real well:


The plate was going to be floating in what seemed like the middle of the floor, and jutting way out into the middle of the room. I think the stove by itself would have worked fine there, but the floor plate really changed the dynamic. The first alternate location was against the middle of the halfwall, so that chairs could be placed on either side (where the stepladder sits on the cardboard in the pic above). But that felt really tight too - not a lot of room for a chair on either side. So I made an executive decision and placed it in the corner:


That works really well for a lot of practical reasons, foremost among them the fact that it isn't in the way of anything. The big downside, of course, is that now we can't put a chair there. But there will be plenty of seating all around this space (bar stools, dining chairs, etc.) so hopefully this will work. We'll see what Res4 has to say about it...

Here's the stove in detail:


Installation was pretty easy. Bart and Matt from Advanced Chimney Technology knocked it out in half a day. Watching them do it made me think that of all the DIY stuff that seemed un-doable (galvalume flashing, HVAC, rough-in electric), this was probably the one that I could have taken a shot at. They literally cut a hole in the roof and slip-jointed everything in place. $1600. (And that was half as much as the DC folks recommended by the stove retailers.) The roof interface and the chimney cap were pretty straight forward; I'll take a pic next time I'm up on the roof.

I had the sliders in the basement open while I was sanding the drywall, and Bart said that when he punched the hole through the roof the debris shot up in the air. So drafting won't be a problem...