My wife and I are freezing our asses off in our own home unless I crank the furnace up to 68 degrees which is crazy to think.  I remember as a kid we were never cold in the house but we always had a wood burner in the home (most of the homes it was in the basement).  It would get some warm in the house that windows had to be opened in the home in the middle of winter to let out some of the hot and let in some of the cool weather.

So now I'm a grown up and freezing my ass off in this home that was built in the 60's I thought of applying the same thought process that worked when I was a kid.  Get a wood burner in the basement.

I originally wanted to replace the wood stove upstairs that came with the home since it doesn't put out a lot (or really any) heat.  Especially since we spend most of our time in the living room upstairs but when they came out to look at what we have they pointed out that we should stop using it Immediately.

Apparently whoever put the wood insert in trimmed the outside of it with wood trim which is charred on the back from burning from the heat of the wood stove.  So in short, its about to start on fire like charcoal.  To correct the hearth that is too short, all the wood trim, wood mantle, etc I'm looking close to $10,000 so probably not going to happen.  My thought was to pull it out and put a gas stove/insert in its place so I don't have to do as much work.  The company I talked to said they could pull the stove out for $400 but some serious cost to fix everything.  That will have to be maybe next year.

Since upstairs is a bust, concentrating on the downstairs which uses the same chimney so its directly below the living room. 

My thought is it would at least warm the wood floors in the winter and give the impression its warmer.  And we do know that warm air rises so there is a good chance it could heat most of the 1800 sq ft 1960 home on half basement and half crawl (the crawl space is below all the bedrooms)

I was bouncing back and forth between a Lopi and a Blaze King for manufacturers of wood stove.  My parents has a Lopi wood stove and it was there favorite of all the brands they had but that was a long time ago before they started getting strict with emissions.

Researching burn times and warranty information the Blaze King on paper is the clear winner so I chose a Blaze King Princess Insert which will get installed on the 23rd of January 2018 (brochure is attached along with manual)

OM-PI1010A-E.pdf

BlazeKingInserts_Broch.pdf