LESLIE: Tim in New Hampshire, you’ve got The Money Pit. What can we do for you today?
TIM: Oh, hi. Well, I have a possibility of recycling a wood stove …
TOM: OK.
TIM: … from my sister’s house and I want to know if – it’s a smaller stove than my opening. I have an existing fireplace – a brick chimney.
TOM: OK.
TIM: OK. It was part of my mud room but frankly, we only have a few fires a year because it’s just not that efficient to have the fireplace running. I think most of my heat is going up the chimney. So I have the dimensions of a wood stove which, again, is being recycled. I just want to know if this would work or would you highly recommend getting another wood stove?
TOM: So, Tim, what you want to know is whether or not the insert that was in your sister’s house could be used in your house and the answer to that is, it depends. It depends on the size of your fireplace. One of the things that you might want to do is compare the hearth of her fireplace to yours and see how closely it matches in height, in width and in depth.
The next thing is that you want to make sure that your chimney is safe. You need to make sure that that chimney is lined before you put a wood stove into it. If you have some questions about this, you may want to subcontract out the installation to, perhaps, your local wood stove store installer/expert type of person that does this all the time. And I also would recommend that you get a permit before you put it in because this way the fire marshal can come in and take a look and make sure it’s nice and safe. Wood stoves are fantastic; inserts are great but you have to be very careful with the installation. If you get it wrong, it could be very, very unsafe.
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