Wood buring inserts and prefab fireplace: OK to install?

Our Answer

In my experience you absolutely cannot install a wood burning fireplace into a pre fab home.  A pre fabricated home fireplace would more than likely be a zero clearance fireplace, which are desgined to be self sustaning, wood-burning units carefully engineered to burn safely.  You simply cannot merge a wood burning unit to pre-fab unit the same way you can with a masonry fireplace.

What you CAN do is replace the fireplace with a more efficient one that is ALSO zero clearance, and that includes a distribution system to bring heat back to the unit. 

Any fireplace needs to supply its own combustion air, so you won't use up heated air from inside your house to draft the fireplace.