I got the wood stove in the fire place with out modifying the fireplace at all. I was able to accomplish this by shoving a stove pipe up the chimney flue. Then I will pack fiber glass insulation around the gaps. But I bet it's still sending a bunch of heat up the chimney. So I was considering running at least one 4 inch metal duct up the chimney to interact with the exhaust. Or a large U shaped loop up and back down, but that may block too much chimney. Use forced air via a bathroom fan and try to keep it mostly hiden. Any one ever seen anything like this or done it?
Nope, but thought about shoving a 5 foot stainless coil of 1/4" tubing up the flue and running water through it for hot water. The heat exchange through two adjacent pipes (air to air) may not give you much benefit.
Good way to burn down the house. Smoke consists of hot air, water vapor, and various unburned wood components. If the chimney is hot enough, they go up the hot chimney, draw more air into the stove to continue combustion, and exit to the outside. If you cool the chimney below about 230 to 250 degrees, the water and solids condense on the chimney walls, it either runs down into stove as a stinking mess or it leaves a highly combustible solid called creosote etc on the chimney walls or both. When, not if, it will either catch fire and burn as a chimney fire, one of most common ways to lose your house in New Hampshire, or it will plug solid and either your stove will not burn or it will fill the house with smoke and possible kill you. With complete combustion, perfect stove, burning propane, pellets, etc, you can safely reduce the heat lost, but do it under the rules that come with the stove or furnace as to what is a proper chimney. My limited experience is to get the best stove you can afford or build, use an insulated chimney, triple wall stainless steel, or lined insulated one, etc, and bring in the required combustion air from outside the house to minimize the heat loss caused be drawing cold air into the living part of the house. If there ever is a SHTF event in New England in winter, many people will not have to worry about long term food supplies, they probably will die in the house fires, the carbon monoxide etc fumes of improper burning stoves or of exposure. If you live in a rural area and have the responsibility for your own heat, water, sewer, protection, etc, you had better put heat in winter and ventilation in summer right up there in the top of your priorities. Then you had better figure out someway to keep them as there are going to be a lot of desperate people trying to keep themselves and children alive and warm. Don't mean to preach, but a lot of ideas on saving heat can be dangerous, the old acceptable way of doing it, used by the Finns, Russians, Chinese, early people in US was to build a massive chimney in the living area, floor, center of house, etc, get the center of the flue up to 350 degrees or so, shut down combustion completely when chimney is hot and likewise air flow thru chimney, and use the heat of the chimney mass to warm the house. Have friends that heat that way and it works very well with one wall between the kitchen and living room made up of several tons of brick holding a temp from about 70 to 85 degrees over 24 hours and radiating the heat into the rooms. The other and more common way is to keep chimney warm and clean it at least 1 time a year and in some older houses, I know people who do it once a month in winter. Haven't even touched the other major problems with wood heat, proper seasoning of wood, burning rate of stove to give complete combustion, radiated heat of stove and chimney setting fire to surrounding surfaces, children burning themselves on hot stove, cold air being drawn into house to furnish air for combustion creating drafts and cold spots, stove surfaces and stove pipes corroding out and either set fire to things or filling the house with smoke. If you are going to stay or bug out, if in a cold climate, I would put a good heat source in the place where you expect to end up as one of my top priorities, and bite the bullet and spend the money. I paid $2,000 for a good air tight stove, $1,000 for a good lined chimney, and $300 for outside air system for stove, am getting old, so last tank of fuel oil used for supplemental heat only lasted 3 years, the one before that lasted 7 years.
Could you add any thing to the top of the stove like some cast iron stuff? The idea is to create more surface area that in turn heats more square feet of air! Even better if you can place a small low speed fan close by to move the air through! We have a bunch of old cast iron irons ( like for pressing your nice shirts) and several other small iron "Thingies" that we stack all over the top surface of the stove, we can really increase the heat with out any complexities! Might be something to play around with! Another is the old convexion pipes around your stove ( depending on the config of the stove) not as good as a fireplace set, but something is better then nothing, and they do work if fitted closely!
Some one paid a lot of money for this brick and stone chimney and it is on an outside wall. My wife isn't going to let me build a chimney up through the middle of the house. These are not going to be backup systems. I will know if there is a problem well before anything happens. Plus any small air leaks in the heat exchanger will be outward leaks into the chimney the heat exchanger will work under positive pressure. My target temperature for the chimney out let is about 300 degrees F. I lived in maine for 4 years using wood stoves and pellet burners so this isn't my first rodeo.
Don't mean to sound critical, a lot of good heating systems out there now for wood. A lot of excellent stoves and chimney's, but there are a lot of people out their making stupid mistakes. Had a grand father and grand son die about 5 miles away due to a minor fire caused by a wood stove. They were using a fan and duct work to pull heat from above the stove, no heat exchanger, and the fan pushed the smoke into their bed room and they died of smoke inhalation. Book say's not to do it, but a lot of people do and get away with it, they didn't.
