Fireplace

[Gamerfan81]

We have a normal fireplace..... who else burns with a normal fireplace? People say online a regular fireplace just a waste of heat..is that true?

 

[Xr650jkallen]

Depends on if the chimney was built correctly. If done correctly they can heat pretty efficiently.

 

[Homemade]

Yes. Just like anything. There are wood eating smoke stacks that cool your house more by drawing air from other rooms. And there are more efficiently made burners with fans built in and glass sliding doors that help control draft.


I am putting in a pioneer 2 by Quadrafire that has a combustion air intake and a sealed door and auto draft control. Pretty state of the art compared to just a masonry hole in the wall.

 

[67L36Driver]

We have two w/doors, fans and pipes for outside air.

But I can only burn wood during a prolonged power outage or furnace breakdown. [emoji22]

Wife has a sinus problem. [emoji849]

 

[Al Smith]

There was something about a crackling fire ,low lights soft music in the company of a young lady in the days I wore a younger mans clothes or lack there of without going into details .Nice ambiance but not real good as a heater .

 

[Larry B]

For every cubic foot of air that comes out the top of the chimney a cubic foot of air has to enter the house to replace it. When i was a kid we rented and old house with a fireplace. Great for ambiance but sucked for heating. Brother in law has an insert that uses external air. Heats the house like gangbusters. By contrast my house has 2 fireplaces and there has never been a fire in either of them, just candles.

 

[Lightning Performance]

Insert.
Slice and Dice heats his house with one. Loves it...glass doors with a blower.

 

[Nutball]

A normal fireplace might get the room hotter from better direct heat radiation off the coals and flames compared to a stove which traps that inside, but I think a stove will be much more efficient. Our stove is in the middle of a 100ft long house, and it makes the outer rooms colder unless it it burned really hot (too hot) constantly, then it will overcome the heat lost from cold air coming in. The fireplace room will be 100F and the outer rooms 65F when it is around 20-40F outside. The 200W fan running 24/7 isn't nice to the power bill though, but it can blow a good 450-500F air out of the stove running it on the hot side. We had to replace the damper recently because it warped severely during the past 2-3 years, and was crumbling away from 30 years of exposure to moisture coming down the chimney.

 

[Locust Cutter]

As has been mentioned earlier, *IF* you have an outside air supply, at least glass doors, but preferably an air-tight burn chamber, and a forced air blower, they are pretty darn good heaters, and relatively efficient. If it's just chain-mail, or crappy doors, draining intake air from the room it's heating, then you're going to have nice ambiance, a net decrease of temperature and a voracious appetite for wood, while not holding coals well...

 

[Al Smith]

Another old story .Brother in law,brother ,dad,myself all burned wood .Dad had a cast iron insert ,brother had a barrel stove I built,I had a down draft stove I built using the same design as a Vermont down drafter ,BIL had a "heatilator " fire place .He burned more wood than the other 3 of us combined .

 

[srb08]

For the past 20 years, I've been heating two floors (2,800 sq ft) of my house with this. It has dual external air feeds. It has a blower that pulls air from the room, heats it and blows it back out. I run several ceiling fans and the blower on the furnace to distribute the warm air. It provides all the heat I need, down to around 10*. Below 10*, I supplement with a propane furnace.
Putting it in was the best decision I made, when building the house.


My last two houses had standard masonry fireplaces.
The were both ineffective as a heat source.

 

[Xr650jkallen]

La Scala's

 

[srb08]

La Scala's

Yes Sir.

 

[Xr650jkallen]

Absolutely gorgeous setup!!!

 

[Hinerman]

For the past 20 years, I've been heating two floors (2,800 sq ft) of my house with this. It has dual external air feeds. It has a blower that pulls air from the room, heats it and blows it back out. I run several ceiling fans and the blower on the furnace to distribute the warm air. It provides all the heat I need, down to around 10*. Below 10*, I supplement with a propane furnace.
Putting it in was the best decision I made, when building the house.

View attachment 211558
My last two houses had standard masonry fireplaces.
The were both ineffective as a heat source.

So your fireplace is not ducted through the house, correct?

I knew a guy that bought a house with a fireplace that was ducted through the house. I never heard of it before.

 

[srb08]

So your fireplace is not ducted through the house, correct?

I knew a guy that bought a house with a fireplace that was ducted through the house. I never heard of it before.

Correct, mine is not connected to the duct work.

 

[srb08]

Absolutely gorgeous setup!!!

Thanks.
The LaScalas are driven by a McIntosh Amp and Pre-Amp.
The Bowers & Wilkins, on top, are connected to a Hafler Amp and Amber Pre-Amp.

 

[Wood Chopper]

This is a similar set up to above. When it gets really cold, close to zero, I turn the fan on to the Forced hot air furnace just to get the air moving also line @srb08 they did Sell kits were you could duct off. And he other rooms but the consensus was they didn’t work that well although I did duct one down into the basement I don’t have it hooked up yet as the basements not finished yet. The other option I had with this was to either Pull fresh air in from outside to pressurize the house or run a return duct far away from the fireplace to pull in the cold air from the other side of the house I chose the latter and I plumbed into my duct work. In hopes to get the air moving more. It works great until we get those below zero nights the furnace will kick on upstairs a little bit


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[Wood Chopper]

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[Hinerman]

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That makes more sense in Oklahoma than an outdoor wood boiler. The problem....finding someone to install it on a new construction