Come on Baby, Light My Fire

[doctorcoug]

I figured it would be nice to have a thread devoted to all things hot and heavy.

I have recently moved to a home with a nice wood burning fireplace insert in the middle of the home (chimney in the middle of the home as well). We also have a gas burner in the master and a faux wood burning gas stove in the basement (flue exits in the basement, not the 1st or 2nd floor unfortunately). I'm trying to find the most efficient way to heat the home this winter.

I lit up the wood burner today, first time in my adult life that I've had a fire in the house. I totally loved it. I turned on the blower and then turned on our two ceiling fans. I need to reverse the fans, but as we have 25 foot ceilings in the living room it is quite difficult to get to them. In any event, it is about 30 outside and we are still cooking at 73 throughout the house without the HVAC running. Very nice!

Questions:

Are the gas fireplace and the gas stove worth anything other than just looks? Maybe the basement stove, since we rarely go down there so we don't run the basement HVAC at all, which means it gets chilly down there (the TV is located there). This is a question from an efficiency standpoint. My master is about 800 square feet in size and we have a separate thermostat just for our room, so we have some flexibility there. The gas fireplace takes quite a while to really get thinks cooking in the master because of how big it is. The master bath is just enormous, so my wife really hates showering in there in the morning because of how cold it is. It would be nice if the fireplace would automatically turn on about an hour before we get up in the morning to heat the room and bath.

Do you partially close your damper once the fire is done smoking, trying to balance efficiency without smoking the house?

Do you keep your glass doors of your insert closed during the burn? Tonight I'd open them for about 20 seconds at a time to get some draft going on the embers to stoke the fire. What about breaking the tempered glass; I seemed to read that somewhere?

Four of my HVAC cold air intakes are in the ceiling of the high ceiling living room (actually, right next to the chimney in a loft), should I run my HVAC fan at night with the heat off to circulate the air (if you don't recall, my home is very long, so simply radiating from the chimney isn't going to warm some of the rooms on the periphery). I've got one fan for the master, one for the other main floor bedrooms, one for the basement, and one for the upstairs bedrooms (which aren't in use at this time). Is this cost effective?

Do you build your fire top down?

How often are you throwing logs onto the fire (meaning, what is normal for a fireplace)? I'm trying to decide how much wood I need to split (I'm going to split it myself, as I feel a great sense of pleasure with an ax.

If you don't build top down, how do you build?

Any thoughts or recommendations?

Should I replace the gas stove in the basement with a wood burning stove?

I look forward to learning

[Donuthole]

lol. One of the best threads on CUF already.

[Lost Student]

I figured it would be nice to have a thread devoted to all things hot and heavy.

I have recently moved to a home with a nice wood burning fireplace insert in the middle of the home (chimney in the middle of the home as well). We also have a gas burner in the master and a faux wood burning gas stove in the basement (flue exits in the basement, not the 1st or 2nd floor unfortunately). I'm trying to find the most efficient way to heat the home this winter.

I lit up the wood burner today, first time in my adult life that I've had a fire in the house. I totally loved it. I turned on the blower and then turned on our two ceiling fans. I need to reverse the fans, but as we have 25 foot ceilings in the living room it is quite difficult to get to them. In any event, it is about 30 outside and we are still cooking at 73 throughout the house without the HVAC running. Very nice!

Questions:

Are the gas fireplace and the gas stove worth anything other than just looks? Maybe the basement stove, since we rarely go down there so we don't run the basement HVAC at all, which means it gets chilly down there (the TV is located there). This is a question from an efficiency standpoint. My master is about 800 square feet in size and we have a separate thermostat just for our room, so we have some flexibility there. The gas fireplace takes quite a while to really get thinks cooking in the master because of how big it is. The master bath is just enormous, so my wife really hates showering in there in the morning because of how cold it is. It would be nice if the fireplace would automatically turn on about an hour before we get up in the morning to heat the room and bath.

Do you partially close your damper once the fire is done smoking, trying to balance efficiency without smoking the house?

Do you keep your glass doors of your insert closed during the burn? Tonight I'd open them for about 20 seconds at a time to get some draft going on the embers to stoke the fire. What about breaking the tempered glass; I seemed to read that somewhere?

Four of my HVAC cold air intakes are in the ceiling of the high ceiling living room (actually, right next to the chimney in a loft), should I run my HVAC fan at night with the heat off to circulate the air (if you don't recall, my home is very long, so simply radiating from the chimney isn't going to warm some of the rooms on the periphery). I've got one fan for the master, one for the other main floor bedrooms, one for the basement, and one for the upstairs bedrooms (which aren't in use at this time). Is this cost effective?

Do you build your fire top down?

How often are you throwing logs onto the fire (meaning, what is normal for a fireplace)? I'm trying to decide how much wood I need to split (I'm going to split it myself, as I feel a great sense of pleasure with an ax.

If you don't build top down, how do you build?

Any thoughts or recommendations?

Should I replace the gas stove in the basement with a wood burning stove?

I look forward to learning

I just let my manservants take care of details like that. Sorry.

Edit: I forgot to mention, I believe that the caretakers of my pool house and guest house keeps the dampers open on the fireplaces.

[Donuthole]

I just let my manservants take care of details like that. Sorry.

Edit: I forgot to mention, I believe that the caretakers of my pool house and guest house keeps the dampers open on the fireplaces.

[doctorcoug]

I just let my manservants take care of details like that. Sorry.

Edit: I forgot to mention, I believe that the caretakers of my pool house and guest house keeps the dampers open on the fireplaces.

By the way...this home cost not much more than the average home price in America. I was exceedingly lucky. Enough of ripping on the humble brag, I wanna talk about fires!

[Lost Student]

Yes, that's a nice shot of my guest house. It looks longer in person, though.
Sorry, Doc. In real life I push a button and the fire magically starts. Not as fun as wood-burning but not as much work, either.

[Donuthole]

By the way...this home cost not much more than the average home price in America. I was exceedingly lucky. Enough of ripping on the humble brag, I wanna talk about fires!

[clackamascoug]

Should I replace the gas stove in the basement with a wood burning stove?

I look forward to learning

This is the most important thing you will read on CUF this week. NO! HELL NO!

[Babs]

No, thanks.

[FN Phat]

We have a gas f/p in the living room that warms up the LR, DR, part of the kitchen and the hallway. But all of the above can fit into your master bedroom.

Sometimes it pays to live in a double-wide!

[old_gregg]

We have a gas f/p in the living room that warms up the LR, DR, part of the kitchen and the hallway. But all of the above can fit into your master bedroom.

Sometimes it pays to live in a double-wide!

my parents have a moderately sized home and their gas fireplace with electric motor does a great job of heating the area it's in. it might even be more efficient for heating a small area than turning up the furnace would be, but i'm not sure.

[mtnbiker]

Questions:

Are the gas fireplace and the gas stove worth anything other than just looks? Maybe the basement stove, since we rarely go down there so we don't run the basement HVAC at all, which means it gets chilly down there (the TV is located there). This is a question from an efficiency standpoint. My master is about 800 square feet in size and we have a separate thermostat just for our room, so we have some flexibility there. The gas fireplace takes quite a while to really get thinks cooking in the master because of how big it is. The master bath is just enormous, so my wife really hates showering in there in the morning because of how cold it is. It would be nice if the fireplace would automatically turn on about an hour before we get up in the morning to heat the room and bath.

Do you partially close your damper once the fire is done smoking, trying to balance efficiency without smoking the house?

Do you keep your glass doors of your insert closed during the burn? Tonight I'd open them for about 20 seconds at a time to get some draft going on the embers to stoke the fire. What about breaking the tempered glass; I seemed to read that somewhere?

Four of my HVAC cold air intakes are in the ceiling of the high ceiling living room (actually, right next to the chimney in a loft), should I run my HVAC fan at night with the heat off to circulate the air (if you don't recall, my home is very long, so simply radiating from the chimney isn't going to warm some of the rooms on the periphery). I've got one fan for the master, one for the other main floor bedrooms, one for the basement, and one for the upstairs bedrooms (which aren't in use at this time). Is this cost effective?

Do you build your fire top down?

How often are you throwing logs onto the fire (meaning, what is normal for a fireplace)? I'm trying to decide how much wood I need to split (I'm going to split it myself, as I feel a great sense of pleasure with an ax.

If you don't build top down, how do you build?

Any thoughts or recommendations?

Should I replace the gas stove in the basement with a wood burning stove?

I look forward to learning

The gas fireplace can really heat up a room, especially if it has a fan built into it. If yours doesn't, you may be able to get an add-on blower that will pull in cooler air from beneath the fireplace and blow it into the room from above the firebox, thus heating the air as it circulates. The fan could be either turned on manually or have a thermostat so it'll cycle on once the fire's hot.

Why is your fire smoking? It shouldn't smoke at all, and you can control that. When I start a fire in my basement wood stove, I first get the flue venting correctly by holding a lit piece of newspaper inside the stove up by the flue vent. Once the air is moving up the flue instead of down, I light the wood in the firebox.

I don't have a damper with my current configuration. I used to, but always left it wide open when a fire was burning. I control the burn rate by opening or closing the doors of the fireplace. With the doors open, the fire burns pretty slowly, but heats the room better. The doors also have some vents in them, and with the doors closed and the vents most of the way open, it really burns through the wood. Which is bad if you want the wood to last, but good if you want to get the fire burning quickly down to coals for s'mores.

I'm not sure what you mean by a top-down fire build. I usually put a couple of medium-sized logs onto the grate, put a couple of wadded-up newspaper pages between, and top with kindling. It seldom takes more than one match to light.

As for how many logs you might use, that depends on a lot of factors. What kind of wood are you using? Pine burns fast, while hardwoods (I have cherry from my trees) burns a lot slower. How hot is the fire burning? How big is the room you're trying to warm up? How cold is it outside?

I hope those thoughts help a little....

[wuapinmon]

I grew up in a house with no heat other than a wood-burning stove. It has an insert with blowers and it would make our house so hot that it would run you out of there, especially if we let my mom control the air intake, damper, and firewood used.

You want to make sure that there are two andirons in the bottom about 5-7" apart, good solid ones that are part of a frame that doesn't slide around. They should be almost fixed in place. Crumple up newspaper into balls, fill the space between the andirons and a row on the outside of each them. Add kindling above it (pine cones, split pieces, bark, dryer lint) or get some of those kindling sticks from Wal-Mart. Place two split pieces in a wide X pattern over the kindling and paper. Then put two more pieces in a = pattern on top of the X. Open the damper. Light a match and light the paper across the front. Close the doors, open the air intakes all the way and close the damper. After an hour or so, you should have a solid fire with the automatic blowers pushing warm air into the space. Once the bottom X logs break into coals, toss another large piece in on top of the pile, and repeat as needed.

If you don't have an insert, you're actually sucking heat out of your house with a fireplace, so don't do it unless you get an insert. And don't get one of those pellet or corn-burning ones.

[mtnbiker]

If you don't have an insert, you're actually sucking heat out of your house with a fireplace, so don't do it unless you get an insert.

Well, typically you're right, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. The fireplace needs air for combustion, and will pull that air from the room and send it up the flue. Since the house is not totally airtight, it will pull outside air from all the openings it can find. One solution is to crack open a window near the fireplace so the combustion air will come from that source and not create a draft through the entire house. Another solution is to do what the old Alpine fireplace commercials used to urge you to do: get one of their fireplaces that have their own plumbing to pull in outside air for combustion and not mix it with internal air. Internal air is routed around the firebox and blown back into the room, all warm and toasty. (But I guess that is an 'insert', just as you said.)

[wuapinmon]

Well, typically you're right, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. The fireplace needs air for combustion, and will pull that air from the room and send it up the flue. Since the house is not totally airtight, it will pull outside air from all the openings it can find. One solution is to crack open a window near the fireplace so the combustion air will come from that source and not create a draft through the entire house. Another solution is to do what the old Alpine fireplace commercials used to urge you to do: get one of their fireplaces that have their own plumbing to pull in outside air for combustion and not mix it with internal air. Internal air is routed around the firebox and blown back into the room, all warm and toasty. (But I guess that is an 'insert', just as you said.)

You're right. I should've noted that my grandpa had flues put in that dump outside air next to the main firebox. They had vents we could close in the Summer. Since they were below the house, they didn't let in cold air unless there was a fire burning, but it was channeled into the firebox. My grandpa had the chimney and fireplace built in 1957 from cobblestones he bought from downtown Atlanta when they tore them up. It was three stories tall, had six flues, and is over 12 feet wide. It's the magnificent centerpiece of an otherwise shitty house.