Hi Rhonda,

I just had my Quadra-Fire 2700i wood insert installed. The total package, wood insert and installation, cost me $2,700. I've run two fires through it and it has performed flawlessly.

My Quadra-Fire was installed in a 30 year old masonry fireplace. Just prior to installation, I had the masonry chimney repaired. The top two course of the old chimney formed a drip line (bricks were extended out slightly). The bricks were very loose. These top two course were removed, bricks cleaned, and reset flush with the other bricks of the chimney. The crew poured a 4 inch cement cap with 2 inch drip line. Tuckpointed the entire chimney. Took off roof shingles around the chimney, reflashed and reshingled everything (2nd story roof and 1st story garage roof both butted against chimney). Then the chimney was cleaned. The total chimney repair cost was a small fortune, $4,200. They then recommended a double wall stainless steel liner be installed with thermal installation (thermix?) poured around it. This additional work would have cost me $3,100 more with no net gain on my heat production. I refused the optional work and went wood insert shopping.

The Quadra-Fire insert crew arrived the next week. The two man crew worked quickly, but encountered two snags. The damper had to be removed and this took almost an hour. Apparently there was cement (brick?) rubble dropped drow the flue by the original masons (30 years ago). None of the chimney sweeps that I hired over the past two decades ever said a word. The Quadra-Fire Crew remove two 5 gallon buckets of rubble, then the damper came out. Who knew?

The second snag was the stainless steel liner. The liner was inserted down the chimney easy enough, but the battle was to connect it to the insert. Apparently the liner twists and locks on the insert. It took the two man crew two hours to get the liner to lock. I asked them if this install was overly difficult because it was a masonry fireplace rather then a prefab. They said that two man crew had installed about a thousand of these so far, and this was about normal. They claimed the prefabs were more difficult because it was a tighter fit. The two man crew was paid by the job, not by the hour, so they had no motivation to work slow on this. It took them a total of 6 hours to do everything, and they had all the tools and experience.

Sorry for the long story, but some of you might think about "doing this yourself". I wanted to warn you about the difficult work needed to do the job right. This didn't look like a job that a beginner should even consider attempting.

The other reason I tell this long story is because it was this thread that convinced me to look at Quadra-Fire inserts. I had looked at Regency, but the store didn't answer my questions to my satisfaction. So I bought a more expensive Quadra-Fire.

Hope this helps you with your wood insert research.

Tom