I recently bought a house up in Maine that was built in 1826, and there's a set of three fireplaces on the ground floor that used to all be connected/feed into the same flue/chimney. I'll be getting a wood stove for supplemental heat and in case the power goes out, but I'm not entirely sure how a chimney like this might work? the cupboard looking thing next to the left fireplace is a beehive where you can (or could, I guess) bake, if that matters?
I've got a masonry guy coming to do up some supports under the chimney, since the former owners or their predecessors at some point took out two dry-stacked walls in the crawlspace to update the chimney and just...didn't put them back or add new supports? Anyway, he's not available to swing by and have a look at the chimney proper until after he finishes that work since the house isn't at risk of falling in or settling any significant margin in the next few weeks that it hasn't in the past three or four decades this has been an issue, but he said he didn't want to get up on the roof and go poking at it before he started or in the middle of the process, which will start on Wednesday and run about 2 weeks. In the meantime, I was wondering if anyone has any familiarity with this setup and any thoughts on feasibility, of course pending the official opinion, so I can percolate on some soft plans now to be actionable more quickly instead of waiting 3 weeks before I can even get to the planning phase
- Perfect world, I'm able to open all three back up so the passive heat can radiate out, which would do the whole ground floor without any worry about fans or anything, and there are already little vents with the airflow levers on the ceilings to open or close if different rooms upstairs are in use for even more distribution. Please feel free to tell me if this is moronic even if it's possible.
- Slightly less perfect but still awesome world, the one off on its own (on the top) stays closed up but I get an open-through/double-sided fireplace where I can set my stove
- Definitely acceptable but might need more work to make distribution efficient, I only get the one on the right side opened up. That's my living room, so definitely where I need the most heat
- If this is the most likely scenario, would I need to put the full combustible distance between the back of the stove and the brick behind it (at the entrance of the other fireplace) since there's drywall around the fireplace, or would it be okay as long as the distance from the stove to the drywall meets the combustible distance? I lean toward 'it's okay' since brick isn't combustible as long as the distance between the stove and the combustible material threshold is cleared, but I do worry about a fire hazard since the brick would get warmer -- which is the point if I can't open through -- if it's less than the full clearance away
- Most disappointing option, I can't open anything up because it would take far too much work to support the house without the fully bricked fireplaces and I just have it out in the room using the existing attachment points
My family have wood stoves, but they all have the very standard stone stack that's up about a foot and then blocked around the sides another foot on top of that with the stove sat in the middle, plus all stones up the back wall to where the stovepipe either goes out the ceiling or into the chimney, and they think I'm Very Out There for not just leaving the stove in the room and building up a natural heat shield that way, so any input is welcome!