This, by far, has been the largest single item project that I've done. Months in planning and execution, a ridiculous amount of learning, and, as you'll read later, a ridiculous amount of itching.
I wanted to heat with wood, mostly because I'm cheap - I've already proven that wood can be come by for free. I hate using oil, with all the environmental aspects, the dependence on the middle east, the fact that our boiler is horribly inefficient. Combine this with my love of fire (pyro), and our experience during the four days without power after the ice storm when we only had the wood insert for heat, pretty much meant that the first time I walked in this house I had already decided where the wood burning device was going.
We spent hours debating wood insert, free standing stove, looks, chimney facing, stove type, liner, hearth type. I spent hours soliciting help from the forums at hearth.com, and hours of help from friends and family during the collection of the stove, moving it, installing the liner, and tiling.
One of the biggest issues we faced was the install of the liner. It came in rigid sections that you pop rivet together as you drop it down the chimney. Due to poor engineering and the way that I held each of the completed sections as I riveted a new one on, I managed to drop three sections fifteen feet into the lounge. Luckily it was survivable as we had a rope to pull it back up and re-rivet. As I had already planned on supporting it from the bottom I had no real worries about any damage I may have caused to existing rivets - the pipe looked perfect still inside.
The final piece of the puzzle was the mosiac tile we had chosen - we wanted the stove back further than we were allowed if using any combustible material nearby - therefore we used metal studs, special insulation, etc. However, the mosaic tile comes in sheets 12 inches by 12 embedded on a glue and mesh - a quick propane torch test determined its (in)flammability. Easy solution: embed it back to front, wait 'till the thinset dries, peel off the mesh, quick sand, bob's your aunt, etc.etc.
At least, that's how the test strip went. Turns out they use different amounts of glue so some mesh was impossible to remove. Hours and hours of pulling on the mesh with pincers was required, only to then discover the mesh was fiber glass... Eventually we had to give up and resort to sanding, coating the entirety of the downstairs in fine fibers...
Eventually though, we are very happy with the result. Some more work to do, but we're ready to go with FIRE:
