Stripping paint off the brick

I started to strip the paint off the brick fire place yesterday. It is taking a bit longer than I thought but the grinder with the wire wheel is doing a pretty good job. It is also making a big mess. I hope to finish up between today and tomorrow. I also ran by the stove store. The guy seems nice but his prices are a lot more than what I want to spend. The Jotul f-100 is $1299 from him. I can drive about 30 minutes out by my parents house and pick up the stove for $90 cheaper. His chimney liner is about 400 more than what I can get it for online too. I am debating on asking him if he will match that price on the stove or just go pick it up from the other guy.

Chimney Thoughts

I have posted on hearth.com and emailed chimneylinerinc.com about my liner options. I took a few measurements last night. Here are a few pics of what I have going on and my options for the liner termination. I am afraid the T option at the top may angel up. More research I guess and more measuring.

UPDATE: looks like the T is the way to go. chimneylinerinc.com has a smaller T and a long snout I can use if I need it. I will get the stove here and then work on the chimney.

Damper Removal

I finished getting the damper cut out today. I ran into a small problem with my grinder and the cutting wheel, but I got the part I needed and got it cut out of there. I definitely looked like the guys in Marry Poppins . I also found out my shop vac bag was the not fitting right and blew dust all over the house. So I still have a HUGE mess to clean up. The damper flap cracked in half while I was trying to cut it with a sawzall. Then I used the grinder with a cutting wheel to take care of the rest. I got the paint can out though so I think I should be pretty close to the width I need to get the chimney liner routed through there. I will get some final measurements once the shop vac is working and I can get everything cleaned up. I will get some more pics up after that.

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.

The Setup

This is a basic floor plan of the area we plan to heat with this stove. The total area is just under 650 square feet. Most stove manufactures over estimate the heating ability of their stoves, but as long as the Jøtul F 100 Nordic can do 65% of the stated 1000 feet we should be fine.

The Idea

My wife and I have lived in this little old house for about 3 years now. The house has a floor furnace right now for its primary source of heat. It actually does a pretty good job but it costs a fortune to run it since its gas. Our last utility bill was $76 for everything. In the dead of winter last year we got them up to $198. We even use a programmable thermostat. The temperature of the house is setting at around 55 from 11pm to 11am and then again from 1pm to 4pm. When it is running we leave it set at 68, but with our drafty old house the other side of the room is probably setting at about 65 or less. We have decided that a wood stove should be able to take care of both these problems. A warmer house (witch also means a happier wife) and also a cheaper utility bill. I am hoping to save a minimum of $200 a winter, or roughly $50 for the 4 coldest months. Living in the ozarks gives us access to plenty of good hard oak to burn. All it costs is some manual labor on our part.