The Fireplace

Here is the little fire place we have to work with.

width: 26”
height:27”
depth: 18”
hearth level with floor 15”

The first problem that we will have to address is the short hearth. A hearth should be at least 16-18 inches in front of the glass of the stove. The back of our Jotul f100 is going to sit basically even with the front of the fireplace. The f 100 is about 13 inches deep so our new hearth is going to have to extend at least 31". We will probably just make it 34-36" though to be safe. The next problem we are going to run into is the fireplace damper. The opening is roughly 4-5 inches. This jotul stove requires a 6 inch vent pipe so I am going to have to come up with a couple more inches to make it work. That means I am going to have to get out the sawzall and the grinder and start hacking away at the damper. I should be pretty close at that point. I hope to be able to start on that tonight. After that I have a straight shot up a short unlined chimney. I will take care of the unlined part with a stainless steel flex liner and an insulation wrap. The short part could get complicated. The chimney is what makes a stove work properly. A short or cold chimney can make a great stove worthless. Right now I am guessing I have about 12 feet of chimney. I wont know for sure until I get the damper out though. That is definitely on the short side of things but I might just be able to pull it off since the liner will be wrapped all the way up. That should keep the chimney nice and warm so hopefully it will work. If not I will have to come up with some sort of hack job to increase height of the chimney.