Burning lot's of wood

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p238shooter

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I'll have to look into the steel idea. We have the typical cityslicker brick fireplace in our 1980 built house in the Moore area. It doesn't put out much for heat.

Most likely you have something similar to what I had, more warm air from the house going up the pipe than heat being produced out in the room.

I put a piece of 1/2 steel plate against the back wall of my almost unusable fireplace. Welded a couple 2x2 inch tabs out from the bottom to serve as feet to keep it from tilting forward. It made an amazing difference. I installed a slanted grate from Grate-Wall-of-Fire shortly after. The combination of the two caused us to have to re-arrange furniture because some of it we had used to "sit by the fire" was getting way too hot to the touch.

I have posted this in other threads, and most likely sound like a broken record, but in this day and age I am usually not overly impressed by items that just do what they are supposed to do. After 10 years of not being able to build a fire when the outside temp was below 50' because it would cool the rest of the house down so much the furnace could hardly keep up in the background, now we use the same fireplace to actually heat a large portion of our house. I am still very impressed after 3 years of using it.

I would like to provide a fresh air inlet for combustion rather than just using the normal leaks throughout the house for combustion air but I have not figured out how to terminate a pipe at the bottom of the firebox. The bottom has a built in circulation blower assembly that blows air up around the inner metal box and exits at the top under the mantel. I most likely will not get that fresh air inlet done.

Getting warm in here, need to slow down feeding the wood. 23' outside. Good luck to you.
 
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1krr

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Biggest thing to help with the cooling of the rest of the house is to get an outside fresh air source. The problem with traditional fireplaces is that it doesn't have it's own dedicated fresh air which means it pulls in air from the house, heats it and sends it right out the chimney through convection. This creates a low pressure inside the house and the conditioned air is then replaced with unconditioned air from outside that gets pulled in around windows/doors, through walls, etc. Get it a fresh air source and it will make a world of difference. If you have an ash box, to scoop the ashes down into with an outside cleanout, that's a great place to pull fresh air.
 

p238shooter

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I wish I did have an ash box to work with to use as a freash air inlet. Right now a pipe up through the floor seemes to be my only option, but I can not figure an easy way to provide into the fire box. I have rock sidewals and a rock ledge in front of the opening.
 

1krr

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I saw a deal where a guy built wooden surrounds and brought in fresh air from his soffet and dumped it out in front of the air grill on the fireplace. I don't know how well it worked or not but seemed like a good idea. As an experiment, run some dryer duct from a nearby window and seal it up best you can and see if it pulls any air through. Tell any better half's that it is all in the name of science (and let us know how that works)!!
 

swampratt

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Talking with old timers and their wood heated homes there was a thing that most of them would do to fix the situation of needing air.

They would crack open the window closest to the fireplace.
They stated that is the hottest room and let it get the air from it rather than from the far end of the house.

Logical and simple
 

Jeff405

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I have an ash cleanout, maybe I can figure something out with that. If my fire is close to burning out, I just close the glass and leave about a 2inch gap open. It will blow the fire back to life with air rushing into the fireplace from the room.
 

Dozermonkey

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Talking with old timers and their wood heated homes there was a thing that most of them would do to fix the situation of needing air.

They would crack open the window closest to the fireplace.
They stated that is the hottest room and let it get the air from it rather than from the far end of the house.

Logical and simple
That's what I grew up doing. From what I understand you are supposed to crack a window to get the proper draft any way. Ours has a damper / automatic temp control and circulating fan. According to the owners manual this is what's recommended.
 

Jon3830

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I have seen the catalyst stoves in action...Really funky the way the flames are.
Super efficient.

I really want the regency f5100 I just cant spend that kind of money on it at this time but I think it would be way better than the old night watch wood stove I have now that is almost 30 years old.
 

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