Fireplaces

[ea56]

We have Spare the Air Days too in most of Sonoma Co. We also have two neighbors that consistently burn on the no burn days. For the first two years I let it slide. Then when it was freezing cold and we were always observing the no burn days and as a consequence had much higher PGE bills I finally reported them. They kept burning and I kept reporting. Finally, I called the Bay Area Air Quality Control Board and asked why there had been nothing done to stop the violations? The guys response was, "Do you get a ticket every time you speed?" To which I replied, "Then why even ask people to report violations if nothing was going to be done?" He said they would eventually get around to it. Oh well, And poeple are wise to it and on no burn days anywhere I walk in town there is always fire wood smoke in the air.
Eddie

 

[philr]

In a few weeks, I'll move in a house with wood fireplaces, they haven't been used for years and the one downstairs had a flat screen TV over it... The fire bricks inside that one should be replaced too.

I do not intend to use it but I'd like it to be safe to use in case there's a power outage. I'd like to put a gas insert in the one upstairs, it's an open fireplace without doors and I'd like to have something mostly decorative in it but I'd also like to have at least some of the heat staying in the house.

It won't be the number one project as there are quite a few things to fix and take care of and my budget for upgrades will be very limited!

One of the first things after I get an insurance coverage for the house (that's a lot more complicated than I thought it would be!) will be to try to fix the heating in the garage. The thermostat still works and the relay for the garage circulator clicks but there's a wire that's cut on it and I'm wondering why. It could be from normal wear or? I guess I'll find out soon enough. I got spare Honeywell relays today and I hope the trouble won't be too complicated to fix.

 

[tolivac]

Have a fireplace with a Fisher wood burner insert -but don't use it.Too much trouble and the insurance rate would go up if I did.Other folks around me use their wood burners and sometimes the outside is intolerable.Wood smoke IS harmful!Remember years ago flying into Denver Stapleton airport around Chirstmas.The plane flew thru a lot of smog-the pilots commented it was from woodburning appliances!Also at my place used to be a woodpile in the garage-got rid of it because it was a "condominium" for mice and snakes!

 

[vacerator]

After January

7th. Then we'll be ready, in zip code 85379.

 

[vacerator]

I mean,

get all the creosote off the fireplace interior so you don't have a chimney fire.

 

[panthera]

We live

in a state roughly the size of Germany.

With a population less than half-a-million.

And a 24x7 stiff breeze.

And the best air quality of any city in the US because of that stiff breeze.

I'm not the least worried that my fireplace is hurting anyone's health here.

 

Now, I can remember visits to Berlin before the wall fell which left me gasping for breath.

 

It's all about the concentration of fires in a given space - we couldn't do this in Munich. Actually, the last fireplace I had in Munich ran through a scrubber and a catalytic converter. 

 

 

[vacerator]

nothing worse for me

than a 2 cycle snow blower, not using the new lower smoke oil.

 

[foraloysius]

Keven

I'm not cocerned about the environment in your state but more about the air quality inside your home.

 

[perc-o-prince]

2 fireplaces here. One in the more-used living room downstairs and another in the more semi-formal living room. Both get used. There's a heat-o-later in the downstairs one, but it doesn't throw much heat. Each side of the fireplace has a lower vent for intake and an upper vent for heat exit. Odds are something was wrong with the installation or something happened in there years ago. Tried positioning a blower fan on one of the intakes but it didn't help.

We burn at every gathering, small or large, during the cold weather. For the larger ones, both fireplaces are going. When Rich's grandparents and uncle were alive, many was a time that the downstairs fireplace had a fire going most every weekend, all weekend long, in the winter.

After having a cap put on (after 40 years of trouble-free burning), the main floor fireplace draft wasn't what it used to be, and we'd get smoke in the downstairs if burning upstairs. Finally had a separator put between the flues under the cap, and voila, no more problem.

Chuck

 

[panthera]

Louis,

That's sweet of you. The closed combustion chamber means just that - outside air intake (forced when needed) and sealed Brennkammer with sealed exhaust, forced when needed. The blower's have zero contact with the combustion byproducts. There's a sophisticated temperature sensing sudden and an integrated CO monitor which not only sounds alarm, but cuts the blower's while forcing the draft. Never gone off, though.

 

[lordkenmore]

Well, Panthera, even with all those systems, there might be issues of something leaking out when the door is opened to toss in wood... Of course, how much of a problem wood burning with any given system raises depends heavily on how its used, and the people in the environment.

 

The other minus I see with all those systems is that they sound like they need power to work...and so if the electricity goes bye-bye, I assume the wood burner won't work. It seems to me I've heard this as a minus for some systems like wood pellet stoves--it requires power to run.

 

Outside air supply for combustion is not news to me. No idea when it came to be, but I remember having conversations with the guy who used to maintain the place where I live. He was fired up (ha!) to install a wood stove here--which I'd have liked--but the problem is I live in a mobile home  [Gag. Shudder.]  But a problem we hit: it would have to be a cheap installation, and one of the big stumbling blocks to that was that wood stove had to be a special one with combustion air intake from the outside, which poses problems when used stove shopping. But stoves like that apparently just have an unforced air connection (a pipe leading outside, no blower) or so I gathered. Meanwhile, you could get any stove used--even one sitting in a ditch, rusting away--and toss it into a real house, and (as far as combustion air supply was concerned) no one would care, or so I gathered. The fire department, however, might not approve of a rusted-out stove on other grounds...

 

 

 

[lordkenmore]

Gas logs

It seems like a lot of people in my area are using gas fireplaces or gas logs now. I tried to help give away some firewood a decade ago, and I found zero takers. People I knew with fireplaces said they'd converted.  Not everyone, of course--stores still have (the last I knew) those paper wrapped fireplace logs, and I see bundles of overpriced firewood outside Fred Meyer every winter. So someone must still use real wood fireplaces.

 

I have to admit to some  dislike of gas logs and also some changes of thought--or at least a growing tolerance. I think I positively hated the idea, once. When my childhood home was sold, the buyer talked openly about whether gas logs would work in the fireplace. My mother and I both cringed at the idea--even though we'd never had the resources to service the chimney, we were die-hard "real" fireplace fans. (The electric logs I mentioned using earlier were OK--they  made the fireplace usable again, and were obviously 100% reversible. Indeed, one could in theory alternate between real wood fires (on special occasions like Christmas) and use the electric logs the rest of the time.

 

But I'm getting more tolerant of the idea, and can even imagine myself using a gas fireplace if I had one. I like the traditional wood...but as I get older, I guess I see the practical advantages of gas more and more. Wood is either a lot of work to chop, or a lot of expense (to buy wood), for what is (with most fireplaces) nothing more than decoration. Add to that the pain of cleaning out ashes...

 

And past this (at least part of which was hinted at above), one thing that is nice about gas is that it lights fast, and seems more practical for regular use. It's nice to think about building a big fire on a cold Saturday night. But those evenings when one might only have an hour or less to sit, relaxing, gas seems a lot more practical.

 

[panthera]

Well, fortunately, the draft is so strong

Even when we open a door to reload, there's so much suction not even ash comes out.

The outside air doesn't have to be forced, so that's no problem and the fireplace is conventional in loading and burning so that's no problem and I have 12 v. backup blowers in case the power goes down so that's no problem. I guess I'm paranoid, but it did seem one major reason to have a fireplace designed as the main heat source for a medium sized house.

It's a Canadian design and, as the comments here (and from friends back home in Germany) show, it's not a concept with which most people in Europe are familiar. I love it - such pretty fires, such pleasant and cheap warmth and a backup for times when the power does fail.

 

[lordkenmore]

Sounds like a good design you have, Panthera!

 

As commented before, I like the idea of heating with wood, but having the ability to watch the fire would be important. When I lived with a wood stove one winter, as I think I mentioned above, one thing I did NOT like about it was that the doors were solid metal. (That stove was probably chosen based entirely on practical issues. The people who built that house heated with wood only for many years, apparently. They may well have only cared about "free heat" and not at all about "romance of flickering flames.")

 

I remember reading some reprints of floor plans and building ideas devised by Gustav Stickley (Arts & Crafts/Mission era), and one thing I recall was a fireplace idea of making a fireplace that a metal firebox IIRC that could circulate hot air. Presumably, this would get more heating out of a fireplace, although the efficiency would be less than other systems (e.g., more or less sealed stove). One could apparently order a premade fireplace firefox (again IIRC). Fireplaces were a major part of Stickley design, and one assumes the more efficient fireplace was an earlier attempt at getting better efficiency and allowing people to enjoy the fire.

 

[lordkenmore]

A couple of other memories... As mentioned, when I was growing up, we had a fireplace that we used. That era was also an era of energy consciousness (due to oil crisis of the late 70s). I remember glass doors being a big thing, and a move my father had on his "someday" list. I think some colleague of his swore by them, and I think efficiency was one point made. I was sort of glad "someday" never happened--I liked the regular screen. Actually, I'd have liked a setup where there was no screen (although admittedly this results in safety issues. In that house, the hearth wasn't big enough--50s "ledge" design--to have the fireplace screen open for much longer than it took to add wood.

 

The other memory I have from that era were special grates that would recover more heat by using air tubes that surrounded the fire. IIRC, some were passive designs (no blower), but others had a blower. (The ones with a blower, one assumes, would work better.)

 

[askolover]

My parents have a Franklin stove with doors on the front that can be opened for "fireplace" burning. I would love to have a gas fireplace here now but just don't have a place to install it with my baby grand taking up half the living room. I guess I'll just have to stick to the ultimate in low maintenance fireplaces....put this on the big screen and turn off the lights.



http://https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDfjXj5EGqI

 

[vacerator]

long narrow

chimney, tunnel, mind?

 

[panthera]

Mike,

You're a naughty boy. You'll have the Imperial Queens reaching for their Geritol if you're not careful.

'Fraid the November elections have me thinking along slightly different lines - the winning voters are in a long, dark, narrow tunnel. At the end they see a light! Our Salvation, our Führer! Nope, just an onrushing freight train. I did mention it was a very narrow tunnel with no place to go, didn't I?

 

I was thankful for the fireplace this morning. Flame sensor on the furnace was dirty. Again. never fails at three in the afternoon, nope - always in the middle of the night and always when we're cruising down toward minus 0°F. Got it cleaned and working - but ordered a new one just in case. That's the third cleaning in just a short time. I think it's coming to the end of the road. Or, it's always been marginal.

 

 

 

[vacerator]

I am naughty aren't I?

Oh well, Wyoming is a beautifull state indeed! I can tell you are a well traveled survivor, an I am the eldest of five, so I had to be also.
One winter when I was a teen, I dug out half the neighborhood from a 19 inch snow storm. Seniors needed help.
One winter my car broke down on me when it was well below zero. The cooling fan motor separated and the fan sliced into the radiator. I was living alone in an apartment, and my friends were either working, or unavailable to help.
I hiked to the local auto parts supply, got a new radiator, and fan, and put it back together on the kitchen floor. I had to get to work the next day.

 

[lordkenmore]

Of course the furnace never breaks at 3 PM. Evil gremlins sit in the basement, checking the watch to see if it's the middle of the night, and then checking the outside temperature to see if it's cold enough to be a huge inconvenience if the furnace breaks!

 

I think it's more than a little scary the thought of the furnace breaking suddenly. At night, when one is home, is inconvenient. But what if the part acts up on a chilly weekend when one is out of town?