I tried to install a chimney last night.

December 27th, 2007, 8:19 am Josh Houghtelin Home, Projects

My dad gave Zippy and I a Zircon 34″ freestanding wood fireplace. My grandma Houghtelin actually bought it for his house 10+ years ago but he never put it to use. It looks great with a white hood and mat black base. I intend on having it around for a long time. The picture to the right differs slightly from the one we got. The one we have has mat black legs instead of that round base. Short of that they are virtually the same.

I tried to install a chimney for it last night and failed horribly. The carbon monoxide detector didn’t go off but the smoke detector, had we not removed the batteries, would have been freaking out for quite some time. We pretty much had to evacuate the house and air it out for a while. After messing with the fire we ended up being able to safely burn a very small kindling fire but that was about it.

I’m almost sure this big fireplace needs the whole 8″ chimney to go straight up. I put two bends in it and even *cring* downsized it. Now as I research more about it I notice these things actually come with six feet of straight pipe 8″ in diameter. When I purchased all the gear I needed for the chimney the store didn’t carry the adapter I needed to safely go through the wall/ceiling with 8″ chimney. Downsizing the chimney to 6″ in order to go through the wall was a big mistake that filled our house with smoke for a few hours.

Since I got this stove from my dad it didn’t come with the 3 sections of 24″ x 8″ stove pipe to get started so I will be ordering everything I need today to pipe this thing straight through my roof with 8″ pipe. In the mean time I get to patch a huge hole in the wall. This definitely isn’t the first time I’ve looked back and said “Damn, I’m glad I live in a temporary disposable home”. I think I will leave the piping in the wall & just buy the cover for it.

I’m still excited we now have a fireplace! I think I’m going to take it a part, clean it & see if I can take some pictures tonight since we won’t be using it until the new parts come in.