Please provide your assessment of two fireplace concepts

Hello everyone,

we are currently building a city villa and are also planning a fireplace. To consider everything during the execution planning, we are now dealing with the fireplace planning. In the house, between the living and dining room (41 m²), there is a corner where the Schiedel chimney will go and where the fireplace should stand.

The planned fireplace should:
- fit into our corner (1.00 x 1.27 m including chimney)
- allow an optical fire through a 2-sided glass
- thereby emit gentle radiant heat
- store the heat as long as possible; >= 6-10h (my parents have a hypocaust system)
- preferably have a modern look, a step design over two levels and an overhang for the chimney so that it looks visually integrated # link removed by moderation; building expert

Now two fireplace builders have offered us two completely different concepts. One wants to sell us a warm air stove with storage (e.g. fireplace insert from the company Spartherm Varia 1 V-4S with magnetic storage, possibly fireplace insert also with storage). The other offered us a fireplace with double-chamber storage technology without warm air balancing (e.g. Rüegg Venus). Both are priced equally at around 8,000 EUR plus.

What do you say? Which concept stores heat longer and has better quality? The stove builder with the warm air stove said that we can’t manage with a closed system within space and budget and that his also stores heat for a very long time. The colleague with the storage fireplace says that the warm air stove alone can only store heat for 3 hours structurally, even if packed with storage.

Thanks and best regards, Redsonic

Hi,

I have a masonry stove that, once it's warm, retains heat for about 16-20 hours. Additionally, I have a water jacket in the stove so that I can support the heating system.

An acquaintance has a warm air stove. In principle, it is a steel combustion chamber surrounded by a storage layer (tiles in my acquaintance’s case) and has air vents where the warm air escapes. Once it’s really hot, it retains heat for about 4-6 hours. The advantage of the warm air system is that it releases heat relatively quickly. My stove takes about 2-3 hours until it’s really nicely warm. For that, I only need to stoke the fire twice a day (unless I switch to the water jacket and fill the buffer).

Personally, I don’t want to have a warm air stove; convective heat is not really my thing....

I can only agree. In my rented apartment I currently have a wood stove that heats the bedroom and the living room. In the evening it's quite hot in the living room, 25°C, and the air is quite dry. Also, the whole thing cools down quickly; after 2-3 hours the stove is only lukewarm and in the morning it's just 20°C, which is almost too cold again.

I would prefer a stove that retains heat longer and relies on radiant heat. My parents have a cook stove between the kitchen and the dining room and even that produces a more pleasant warmth and it also seems to me that it stays warm longer.

When I bake rolls, the oven is still warm hours later :D

Do you want to use the fireplace as a heat source or for the sake of coziness? If the latter doesn't prevail, I would leave it altogether.

Thank you for your answers. I am quite puzzled right now, after visiting the third stove builder and being offered the same concept: a heating insert, surrounded by Magnetherm (thereby heat-retentive), enclosed in a plastered shell with heat-retentive and permeable stones with a higher raw density than the usual Ytong. That means again a device with convection heat, upgraded with storage for radiant heat.

No one wants or can offer me a traditional masonry stove. Does anyone have an idea why that might be? Is my space too small? We have a maximum depth of 1.00 m and a width of 1.07 m including a 0.42 m chimney in the corner, although we would also go about +0.30 m into the room.

Now our architect wants information for the execution planning about the pipe diameter, the chimney foundation, and the position of the floor air supply. But no one wants to tell me that as long as I haven’t signed the chimney contract. Can I just have the foundation made with the dimensions 1.00 x 1.30 m and if the chimney is smaller, it’s not such a big deal?

Best regards, Redsonic

Hi,
so my masonry heater has a base area of 1.20m by 2m with 7 m of flue channels. The foundation is exactly cut out there. My combustion chamber holds 10kg. Wall penetration for the stove is a 180mm pipe and the air supply is a 150mm pipe. I also have a wood stove in the study (42sqm) with 6kw, which has an air supply of 120mm and a flue pipe of 150mm. I also searched for a long time until I found a stove maker who did what I wanted and did not want to sell some 'industrial piece'.

There are some online who offer nationwide in Germany. But they are about 10% more expensive than my local craftsman was.