Your fireplace

[dennishoddy]

A recent thread has talked about a fireplace.
Its that time of year.
How many have them?
How much wood do you burn?
Do you have a standard open fireplace, or an insert?

Most important of all.......... does your fireplace use make-up air from inside the house or do you have one that uses outside air?

We have an insert with dual fans that can make the front room into a toaster but the bedrooms icy as it has to use the inside air to make up the flow up the chimmney.
The rule of air flow, is that for every cubic foot of air that goes up the chimmney, there has to be a cubic foot of air come into the house.
This is the way ours is.
It sucks in cold air through the doors, doggy door, etc.
I'm thinking we need to get a stone mason in here to get us some outside air for make-up and the inside air would be a lot warmer.

How about you folks? Does your fireplace just make your house colder or warmer?

 

[338Shooter]

We have a ventless gas unit. The future holds a pellet insert.

 

[twocan]

I have had a older bet to hell wonder wood stove for years. This year i bought a nice fancy Ben franklin style wood stove/insert. I had my doubts about its heating ability untill tonight. I loaded that sucker up full of ash and had to open all the doors in the house.

 

[dennishoddy]

We have a ventless gas unit. The future holds a pellet insert.

My wife has looked at the pellet stoves a lot as she doesn't like to carry in wood.
I'm OK with them, but the same rule applies. For every cubic foot of combustion air, a cubic foot of air has to be made up from somewhere.

We went to some of the home shows in OKC, Tulsa, and Witchita this spring, and not one of them could accept the make-up air concept

 

[Cedar Creek]

We have a fireplace, but seldom use it because it doesn't draw very well - especially on windy days. The north part of our house is taller than the southpart where the chimney is and the chimney needs to be at least one flue tile taller.

Dennis - you are correct about how a fireplace works. About all they do is heat the driveway for you.

I have used different wood heaters over the years and my favorite was a firebrick lined double door Fisher stove. The only thing I would have changed would have been to run the pipe vertical a few feet before running it into the brick flue so I could have put a damper in the pipe.

Cedar Creek

 

[JB Books]

I have several. All are gas logs, except the one in the out door living area and it has gas jets to cheat getting it started.

 

[gsarg]

All this fireplace talk - man, I love this time of year

 

[cowmugger]

I grew up with a big fireplace we that heated the entire house. I think we burned about a rick a week. We cut wood every Saturday. It had ducts running to other rooms and intakes on either side. As far as combustion air, our house must have been porous enough to provide it and the duct work compensated for the infiltration.

You might try cracking a window in the room with the fireplace so the rest of the house does not have the draw and putting your central air fan in the "ON" position to move some of your warm air through the rest of the house.

My current home has a fireplace with built in fresh/outside air damper. I have gas logs which do not get turned on very often because of the young kids.

 

[Danny Tanner]

We have a gas fireplace with a stupid faux log setup.

Wife was just using it tonight while reading a book.

 

[JB Books]

We have a gas fireplace with a stupid faux log setup.

Wife was just using it tonight while reading a book.

Danny, the faux log set up is a lot easier on your back than cleaning out ashes.