I <3 Wood Stoves

First, let me give you a little background on my love for burning wood (although, really — who doesn’t like burning stuff?). I grew up in a 200 year old house that had 6 fireplaces (for a modestly sized 4 bedroom house). Two of those were large cooking fireplaces, like this (although ours were nicer, in my opinion):

Cooking fireplace

Even though most of our fireplaces were usually not in use, I still have a soft spot for a nice wood-burning fireplace.

Alex and I don’t have any fireplaces in our house. I guess it makes sense — the house was built in 1900 so it came into existence when central heating was around in the form of radiators and furnaces. But we do have two chimneys, for venting the original furnace and/or water boiler. One of those chimneys is currently used for our oil-fired forced-air heating system (as well as for our neighbors’, as it’s a shared chimney). The other chimney was ruined by an idiot and some concrete, as I mentioned before.

I was never crazy enough to think about tapping into one of those chimneys for a fireplace (the logistics of where to put it being the biggest issue), but I was [am?] crazy enough to want to use one for a wood stove: All of the awesomeness of a fireplace, none of the hassle of actually installing a fireplace.

How great are these:

 

Jotul wood stove

 

And I’m crazy about this one, but sadly it’s a Danish company (I’ve found that most of my favorite style stoves come from the Danish — they must know what they’re doing when it comes to wood stoves). I don’t think I could convince anyone to ship it to me in the US:

Westfire Uniq 5 Wood Stove

I think this one is available in the US, and it’s got a  similar clean & contemporary shape:

Morso 3440 Wood Burning Stove

But all of this daydreaming is probably for nothing. While the stoves themselves are pricey (and I’d be willing to pay for one), the cost to install it is insane.

Since the discovery of our “dormant” chimney (the contractor’s polite way of referring to our ruined chimney), here are the only stove choices we have:

1. Wood Stove — would require the installation of a full metal chimney outside of the house, which must reach several feet above the top of the roof line. Since we have a three story house, we’re talking about 30+ feet of chimney, and in the neighborhood of $3,000 – $5,000 to have it installed (on top of the $1,000 to $4,000 cost of the stove itself). Ouch. Although the stove guy did say we could technically install this ourselves if we wanted, code requirements and the sheer cost of materials, which aren’t really marked up that much, make that a not feasible option. (Although I do appreciate his faith in my chimney-installing abilities)
2. Pellet Stove — only requires a direct vent to outside, which must be at least 7 feet above any place where a person would walk. Since our first floor is about a half-story above ground level, we can pretty much vent a pellet stove straight outside if it’s on the first floor. Plus, this would only cost about $600 – $800 to have installed (on top of the cost of the stove). But while I recognize the eco-friendly-ness of pellet stoves, and appreciate the cost savings of installation, I’m just not into this idea. Yes, you can still watch a “fire”, but you’re limited to only one fuel (pellets), and it’s really more of a furnace than a fireplace, requiring electricity to run (not very useful for heat in a power outage)
3. Gas fireplace/stove — We have a gas line into the house already, so we’re set. It’s clean, it’s cheap fuel, it doesn’t require electricity to run, etc – all very real plus sides. But no way. The stove-store guy was a little taken aback by my vehement reaction to his gas stove suggestion — if I’m going to pay for gas heat in my house, it’s going to be in the form of a new gas-fired forced air furnace, not a stupid, fake gas fireplace. (I apologize if you like gas fireplaces, but I’m just not into them — too fake and sterile. I don’t like the idea of lighting a fire by pushing a remote.)

The bottom line is that I don’t have thousands of dollars lying around for this project (sadly), so it’s going to have to be tabled indefinitely. But at least I have a realistic idea of how much money I’d have to save up to do this. I would love to have an alternative heat source to the oil furnace (especially after we just got the $600 bill to top off the fuel tank, which will last us only a month or two), but realistically a stove of any kind won’t be enough to heat the entire house, since we’ve got three floors.

So while I want one, the rational part of me says “If it costs $5,000 for a wood stove which is really more for aesthetics than heat, you’re better off putting that money into a natural gas-fired furnace, which will go a lot further to reducing heating costs”. And this is a true statement. But I don’t like putting my money into things I can’t see (I don’t often go into the basement to gaze lovingly at my furnace). And, to reiterate — I don’t have that kind of money lying around anyway.

Which means this is just a pipe dream, at least for now …

Update on the “Mold” aka efflorescence situation

I don’t have any photos or exciting updates lately, although that doesn’t mean that nothing has been going on with the house …

So way back in the day, we discovered mold in our 3rd floor bedroom. And then shortly thereafter, we discovered that it was not, in fact, mold. It was efflorescence. Which seems like a win, until you piece together the obvious conclusion — this means water infiltration.

We had several contractors come through to take a look at it — at least one roofer and two masons. And the responses we got back said, generally speaking — there’s nothing wrong with the masonry, and our roof probably isn’t leaking.

But we noticed the efflorescence popping up on the bottom floor of the house, directly underneath the probably-not-leaking-but-must-be-leaking spot on the third floor. And decided it was finally time to address the issue (it only took us a year to get around to it … not bad. I’ll give myself a pat on the back for this one).

To take care of this work, we (fortunately) found a great mason. After checking out a few contractors, we settled on one we trusted, was straightforward with us, and (hallelujah!) was honest about what parts we could DIY / address ourselves to save money (such as patching the hole in the 3rd floor bedroom, a job that most others wanted to do for us, and charge us for). His name is Kyle and his company is LB Masonry, in case you’re in the market for masonry in the greater Philadelphia area.

The good news was that, on the whole, the brickwork on our house was in great condition (especially great as it’s 112 years old). According to Kyle’s survey, there were a few places that needed to be re-pointed, and the chimney on the probably-actually-leaking side of the house needed to have the flashing correctly installed. So that’s what we contracted for.

But of course things don’t always go according to plan.

The bad news is what he found while up there: first, the roof on the front side of the house is at it’s need-to-be-replaced stage. There was also a section above one of the dormers that was just flat-out missing some shingles. I want to believe that this was a result of the recent hurricane that hit the East Coast, but I suspect that it’s been an issue for longer, given obvious signs of water infiltration on the inside of the house. Which aggravates me because we’ve had others up on the roof recently, and they just apparently didn’t notice the issue. And I would like to take a moment to point something out — the back half of our house has a slate roof which is original to the house (i.e. 112 years old). The front side has an asphalt shingle roof that is maybe a decade or two old. One of those sides needs to be replaced, and I’ll give you a hint — it’s not the 112-year-old side. So if you have an awesome slate roof, do the right thing and replace the one or two broken pieces each year (for only ~$100) instead of letting it get bad and then tearing it all out to put asphalt in. It makes me sad that someone did that to our house.

The second bit of bad news regards the chimney. We have two chimneys; one is used to vent our oil furnace (as well as the attached house’s furnace), the other is, as far as we could tell, not being used. We’ve been eyeing it for the installation of a wood stove. But those hopes were dashed when Kyle came down (with photos, which I appreciate, ’cause I am not ready to climb up on my own roof) to tell me that some idiot (er… former occupant) poured concrete in the chimney. Yes. Concrete. Into the chimney. For no discernible reason (if you just wanted to seal it off, it is both cheaper and more effective to just put a steel plate on top).  There’s no way to know if the whole chimney is filled or if the concrete is only a few inches/feet thick without tearing it to pieces (since we don’t have any fireplaces to poke around in). No matter what, to reverse it would cost big bucks, and would require the complete removal and re-installation of the chimney. Which doesn’t really fit into my master plan or budget. But beyond the irreversibility of this “fix”, it also made a nice little swimming pool in my roof — water just collected there and sat on top of the concrete, eventually absorbing through the brickwork. Ah — I think we finally found the actual source of the water infiltration in my probably-not-leaking roof (I guess we could honestly say that the roof was not technically leaking, because it was actually the chimney-turned-cistern). To fix this, we (or actually Kyle and his partner) sealed off the chimney with a metal plate, just like the concrete-wielding former owner should have done to begin with.

So while I’m still clearly steaming a little bit about the chimney situation (but seriously – what kind of jackass would do that? it makes no sense!), I am happy to report that we’re leak-free. Which means we can start patching up the various cracks and holes caused by water damage and our mold-hunting-escapade.

Update on the "Mold" aka efflorescence situation

I don’t have any photos or exciting updates lately, although that doesn’t mean that nothing has been going on with the house …

So way back in the day, we discovered mold in our 3rd floor bedroom. And then shortly thereafter, we discovered that it was not, in fact, mold. It was efflorescence. Which seems like a win, until you piece together the obvious conclusion — this means water infiltration.

We had several contractors come through to take a look at it — at least one roofer and two masons. And the responses we got back said, generally speaking — there’s nothing wrong with the masonry, and our roof probably isn’t leaking.

But we noticed the efflorescence popping up on the bottom floor of the house, directly underneath the probably-not-leaking-but-must-be-leaking spot on the third floor. And decided it was finally time to address the issue (it only took us a year to get around to it … not bad. I’ll give myself a pat on the back for this one).

To take care of this work, we (fortunately) found a great mason. After checking out a few contractors, we settled on one we trusted, was straightforward with us, and (hallelujah!) was honest about what parts we could DIY / address ourselves to save money (such as patching the hole in the 3rd floor bedroom, a job that most others wanted to do for us, and charge us for). His name is Kyle and his company is LB Masonry, in case you’re in the market for masonry in the greater Philadelphia area.

The good news was that, on the whole, the brickwork on our house was in great condition (especially great as it’s 112 years old). According to Kyle’s survey, there were a few places that needed to be re-pointed, and the chimney on the probably-actually-leaking side of the house needed to have the flashing correctly installed. So that’s what we contracted for.

But of course things don’t always go according to plan.

The bad news is what he found while up there: first, the roof on the front side of the house is at it’s need-to-be-replaced stage. There was also a section above one of the dormers that was just flat-out missing some shingles. I want to believe that this was a result of the recent hurricane that hit the East Coast, but I suspect that it’s been an issue for longer, given obvious signs of water infiltration on the inside of the house. Which aggravates me because we’ve had others up on the roof recently, and they just apparently didn’t notice the issue. And I would like to take a moment to point something out — the back half of our house has a slate roof which is original to the house (i.e. 112 years old). The front side has an asphalt shingle roof that is maybe a decade or two old. One of those sides needs to be replaced, and I’ll give you a hint — it’s not the 112-year-old side. So if you have an awesome slate roof, do the right thing and replace the one or two broken pieces each year (for only ~$100) instead of letting it get bad and then tearing it all out to put asphalt in. It makes me sad that someone did that to our house.

The second bit of bad news regards the chimney. We have two chimneys; one is used to vent our oil furnace (as well as the attached house’s furnace), the other is, as far as we could tell, not being used. We’ve been eyeing it for the installation of a wood stove. But those hopes were dashed when Kyle came down (with photos, which I appreciate, ’cause I am not ready to climb up on my own roof) to tell me that some idiot (er… former occupant) poured concrete in the chimney. Yes. Concrete. Into the chimney. For no discernible reason (if you just wanted to seal it off, it is both cheaper and more effective to just put a steel plate on top).  There’s no way to know if the whole chimney is filled or if the concrete is only a few inches/feet thick without tearing it to pieces (since we don’t have any fireplaces to poke around in). No matter what, to reverse it would cost big bucks, and would require the complete removal and re-installation of the chimney. Which doesn’t really fit into my master plan or budget. But beyond the irreversibility of this “fix”, it also made a nice little swimming pool in my roof — water just collected there and sat on top of the concrete, eventually absorbing through the brickwork. Ah — I think we finally found the actual source of the water infiltration in my probably-not-leaking roof (I guess we could honestly say that the roof was not technically leaking, because it was actually the chimney-turned-cistern). To fix this, we (or actually Kyle and his partner) sealed off the chimney with a metal plate, just like the concrete-wielding former owner should have done to begin with.

So while I’m still clearly steaming a little bit about the chimney situation (but seriously – what kind of jackass would do that? it makes no sense!), I am happy to report that we’re leak-free. Which means we can start patching up the various cracks and holes caused by water damage and our mold-hunting-escapade.