Fireplace owners...

[remixedcat]

I also like em for ambience.

 

[Jayce]

I personally think fireplaces are overrated. Most of the time if you only have one it will only warm up a certain area of the house and if the chimney isn't properly taken care of it can be a safety hazard too.

I used to think the same thing, but it's amazing how warm you can get an entire house over a few logs. Several relatives of mine told me they spend so little on conventional heating methods and just rely on their fireplace to do the bulk of it. Granted, most of them also are burning wood pellets in a wood stove continuously. That said, I'd still rather do what we can with the fireplace, as it's far nicer than cranking up the heat knowing your furnace is eating more oil as a result. I wasn't running around looking for a house with a fireplace, but now that we got one, it's a pretty solid bonus.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Just wanted to say one thing about a fireplace/stove or any of that. I know a FEW regions allow people to hook the house ductwork upto the firebox if it was made for such a thing, you would have a manually controlled dampener for that, and could let the blower fan circulate the heat that's on the back of your firebricks to the rest of the house, would supply heat all over.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Fireplaces are great at heating up the house. I modded ours up a little, put some heatsinks on the top and a low RPM fan on the other side. We also put in some ducting near the top of the chimney, sucks heated air from the top and vents it to other parts of the house. Works nicely IMO

For wood, we just grab any old bits of timber we see. Someone pulling down their patio, redoing their decking, redoing their roofing, etc. If they dump it out the front verge or in a skip, we just drive past, load it in the car/trailer and bring it home. Chop it up with a drop saw, stack it on the side of the house. Do that all year round just whenever you happen to see good wood, and when winter comes you just grab the pre-chopped stuff from the side. Free and semi-easy!

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Don't burn any kind of building materials... They are treated with some very toxic things.

 

[Dauntae]

House hunting myself and many in my area have fireplaces or wood stove hookups and a insert for a fireplace would be the best bet other than ambiance, They are safer to use than just the fireplace and some are even self feeding and pretty much work like a good wood stove with good heat. Almost had a house a few months ago that had a setup for a wood stove (they took it with them DOH) but they had a room built in the basement with all the walls insulated (this is to keep from having to heat the whole basement before the heat rises to the upstairs) and air vents in the ceiling leading to the rest of the house. Got out bid but there nice to have for heat with lower cost.

Dauntae

 

[Trotter]

Don't burn any kind of building materials... They are treated with some very toxic things.

And most building lumber is made from pine (at least in the US), and you do not want the sap to build up in your chimney as it will burn.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Oh yeah we don't burn treated wood, just le untreated stuff. Pine we usually chop into kindling, splits well and it's easy to do with a little hatchet.

 

[overlord20]

We burn pine mostly because well, we have most of that!

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Pine is very very harsh on a modern fireplace that uses stainless steel... You really need to clean it VERY often at that point.