Fun with Wood Stoves

So we've run into a little problem with the wood stove. Not the old wood cook stove, but the new wood stove. We expected problems with the old cook stove - there's just no way it meets modern standards and stuff, but we can work around that since it meets all the criteria for "antique". But we didn't expect any trouble from the new, modern wood stove. Here's the deal: When we drew up the design, we alotted space for a stove such as this one: which, as you can see, has the door on the narrow end. The stove will go more or less in the center of the house, which places it at one end of the living/dining area. To the right of the stove is the "hall" (really just a small open space) which connects the bathroom and office doors to this main space, and to the left is the wider opening into the kitchen. So far so good.

BUT! It turns out that the state of Washington forbids the use of this type of stove in new construction. If we were remodelling an existing home, we could have one. They carry them in the showrooms and show them at home shows, giving us the mistaken idea that we could have one like this in our house. It has something to do with the fact that this style of stove, the open-on-the-short-side stoves, can't be equiped with an outside air supply. They just use the air out of the room. The state is worried that we will burn up all the air in the house and die. Or something like that. I guess they don't concern themselves about the fate of all those asphixiated remodellers, just the owners of newly constructed homes. It's touching.

So, we have to get a stove like this one, which opens on the long side of the rectangle. Stylistically, I'm unconcerned - it's still a very attractive and efficient wood stove. However, the change in dimensions is causing some headaches: we can't very well just let it stick out extra-far into the hallway in front of the bathroom door, so we have to move it over to the left, which means the stove pipe doesn't line up with the chase that they framed into the closet of the upstairs bedroom. So we'll have to bump the chase out into the bedroom a ways - probably 6" to a foot. (Sorry future second child, for making your bedroom even smaller compared to your older sibling's!). There are also some questions about exactly WHERE the outside air supply will come into the house, and the route it will take to get to the stove. And there might need to be some extra elbows in the stove pipe to line it all up with where it needs to exit the roof. Whew!

Mark, Robin, and the guys from Barron Heating are working up a solution, and I have every confidence that they'll come up with one in no time. Probably a very elegant and beautiful solution, such that once it's all built and in place no one will ever guess that we had any problem at all with this stuff. :)