We have an older home, and the basement is unfinished. The home is insulated, but not air tight. We have new double paned windows 2 years old. We live in Central Iowa with winters that have periods of sub zero degrees Fahrenheit. We have talked to a chimney sweep and 3 different people who work in heating and cooling, either with wood burning stoves, or typical propane type furnaces. DH wants to get a supplemental heat source in case the electricity goes out.

We live on a farm and lots of wood resources. This would only probably be run a monthly in the winter time, unless there is a power outage. We have a concrete floor, unfinished basement, with access to the hold chimney that is partially lined with double walled stainless steel duct without packing. The old brick chimney was taken partially down and terminates in the attic just below the rafters at the peak of the roof. The most recent duct was installed in the 70's I believe, when my in-laws remodeled and put a wood burning furnace attached to the propane gas furnace for supplemental heat. We moved in 31 years ago and had it taken out and abandoned the chimney.

1 Chimney sweep and 2 Heating and Cooling people actually looked at the chimney on site, and thought it was in good shape, though the chimney sweep thought it needed to be lined all the way to the stove connection. But when pressed by my DH the sweep thought it would be ok as is. The heating and cooling people thought the chimney looked in good shape as is, because the bricks are intact and the mortar is intact. The history of using the chimney has always been good. My DH is the 3rd generation in the house, so knows much of the mechanical history.

We are looking at a small wood stove option, one that will put out 40,000 to 50,000 btu peak. Our house is 1200 sf on the main floor, the basement is about the same size divided into 2 larger rooms, 2 smaller rooms, and 2 crawl spaces. The "old" part of the basement, under the older 780sf part of the house is where the stove would be placed, in a 400sf room. My DH's goal is to just heat the basement, to warm the basement ceiling and warm the main floor living area. Also some heat to come up the stairwell.

The wood stove salesman thought if we went to a slightly larger stove, we could allow the furnace fan to circulate the warmed basement air to the rest of the house. But DH doesn't want to make daily fires a practice in the winter, he just wants emergency heating source. We are in our late 60's. He still cut wood for his stock tank heater until last year when the concrete tank finally has become too leaky to bother with any longer. Point being is that he is used to stoking a fire. Also DH thinks he will be cleaning the chimney every year, as he did growing up and into his 30's until the old stove was abandoned.

This is some long winded post, I hope it makes sense. Any thoughts would be welcomed. BTW, I want the chimney totally lined! I don't want CO leaks or risk of heat and creosote impacting the integrity of the mortar and brick, causing fire risks.

These are the stoves I've been looking at:

Small stove https://www.drolet.ca/en/products/stoves/spark/

Medium stove https://www.drolet.ca/en/products/stoves/columbia-ii-wood-stove/

Medium stove https://www.quadrafire.com/products/discovery-i-wood-stove

Medium Stove https://www.quadrafire.com/products/2100-millennium-wood-stove

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