fireplaces

[gena]

we are buying a solitaire mh and it has a fireplace in the greatroom. I am not at all familiar with fireplaces. We live in Texas so it's not like we have cold winters but I'm wondering if a fireplace can heat an entire house. It's 2026 sf.

[Mac]

If you bought an insert for it, you could heat most of your house. If you wanted to heat with wood, it would be better to delete the fireplace and have a wood stove installed instead. It would need to be approved for manufactured homes - which means that it would get its combustion air through a pipe into the crawl space. This is because the building envelope is so tight that outside air has a tough time getting in.

If you plan to heat with the fireplace, go to a stove dealer with the dimensions of the fireplace - and the manufacturer, if you can get that - and ask about an insert for it.

We heat 2000 SF with a wood stove in NW Oregon, where the temps get into the teens occasionally, but are usually in the 30s with 98% humidity.

[gena]

so mainly the fireplaces that come with the homes are just for standing by and warming up that way?

[Mac]

Yes, that's correct. Some have a fan that will extract some of the heat, but they generally aren't used for heating. We went with a woodstove because we live on five forested acres and get the fuel essentially for free.

[gena]

do the woodstoves go in the fireplace spot or somewhere else? I really never knew there was a difference.

[Mac]

You can put a woodstove almost anywhere you like - there needs to be some minimum clearance from walls, but it isn't much. Ours is in the corner of the great room where the original fireplace would have been (we deleted it). You will need a fireproof pad for the stove to sit on - we have one that is a steel frame, with a thin plywood base, with flagstone and mortar atop that. The stove is bolted to it, a hole cut in it and the floor, and a pipe is passed through into the crawl space (for combustion air). I don't remember exactly what we paid for it, but we did pay $500 for the installation (including stovepipe and chimney). We bought our stove from a local dealer and they contracted the installation. In our county, the installation required a permit ($35, I believe) and we notified our insurance company. Stoves range from relatively inexpensive steel plate ($600 at Lowe's) to mid-range cast iron (we have a Quadra-Fire cast stove) to expensive and beautiful soapstone. There are many good sites about woodstoves. If you go the woodstove route, get one without a catalytic converter. When the EPA first issued emissions restrictions, stovemakers who didn't want to redesign slapped converters on their stoves. Newer designs don't need one and burn more efficiently.