Comparing Vent-Free Gas Stoves
I kinda had my heart set on adding a gas fire to make our antique mantel look like a real old fireplace. But it’s just not working. Anything that will fit doesn’t put out much heat. With the clearances it says we need, they won’t fit in our mantel.
The guy at Etowah Fireplace suggested something like a Jotul. So it would look like a blocked up fireplace with a stove in front of it.
These heating stoves come in vented or ventless, too. They also come as cast iron or painted metal. The cast iron can have a painted finish or an enameled porcelain finish, like the finish on a bath tub.
I looked at a lot of options and then put them into Excel to find a way to compare them.
Vent-Free Stoves
The easiest and least expensive thing we could do is a vent free stove. They look nice, are 99% efficient and can heat up to 1700 square feet.
Different websites said that the exact same stove heats different size rooms. So, for consistency, I am using the 20 BTUs per square foot calculation.
| Stove | Wide | High | Deep | BTU/20 | BTU | Price | $/Ft |
| Ashley Hearth Black Enameled Cast Iron AGC500VFBN | 27.00 | 29.00 | 20.00 | 1550 | 31,000 | $1,736.72 | $1.12 |
| Ashley Hearth Brown Enameled Porcelain Cast Iron AGC500VFMN | 27.00 | 29.00 | 20.00 | 1550 | 31,000 | $1,835.24 | $1.18 |
| Ashley Hearth Red Enameled Porcelain Cast Iron AGC500VFRN | 27.00 | 29.00 | 20.00 | 1550 | 31,000 | $2,078.98 | $1.34 |
| Pleasant Hearth Metal VFS2-PH20DT | 23.50 | 25.47 | 12.99 | 1000 | 20,000 | $348.24 | $0.35 |
| Pleasant Hearth Metal VFS2-L30DT | 31.93 | 28.27 | 14.37 | 1500 | 30,000 | $549.00 | $0.37 |
| Ashley Hearth AGVF340N | 38.00 | 23.75 | 16.50 | 1700 | 34,000 | $928.03 | $0.55 |
| Buck Stove T-33 NG | 26.50 | 23.25 | 14.50 | 1600 | 32,000 | $1,238.99 | $0.77 |
| Buck Stove 384 NG | 32.00 | 23.50 | 14.25 | 1650 | 33,000 | $1,499.99 | $0.91 |
NG and LG
Ventless Fireplaces are marked NG and LG. NG is for natural gas, the gas that the city pipes in. LG is for propane, like your barbecue grill. A lot of fireplaces can use either. We ran city gas, so these numbers are all for natural gas.
This is a quick mockup of how the Pleasant Hearth VFS2-PH20DT would look. I am so not loving it.
The Ashley Hearth AGVF340N is everything I was originally looking for. But it is 38″ wide. I’d have to cut the legs off my mantel and that’s not going to happen. And the mantel would stick out over it too close and too far and catch fire. It seems that my original idea defies the laws of thermodynamics.
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