Making a fireplace work

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We live in a house built in the 70's. In the main living area, there is a 2-sided wood fireplace( dining room on one side, living on the other), with glass doors on both sides. We do not use it much, due to amount of heat loss. It is in disrepair, but chimney is good. We have talked of fixing it, replacing with a wood stove or ??? Do any of you have ideas? Gas not an option-we want to stay with wood. Who do we contact to do the work? A mason? We would love it if this could be the source of heat for that half of the house. This is a cold area of country in the winter(teens and zeros common)

I have looked at some fireplace inserts, but they look as if much of the heat still goes up the chimney. Any personal experience? Would love a voice of experience BEFORE we make choices. :)Thanks!

-- JJ in NE Iowa (menzel@netins.net), October 13, 2001

Answers

I'd contact a mason to check things out first. If what you have is sound I'd sure consider a fireplace insert. I had one years ago made by a company call 'Earth Stove' and it did a fine job. I'm sure they've gotten nothing but better since that time, too.

I found that 'Earth Stove' is now owned by Lennox, of all people. They should know something about energy efficiency. ;o)

Here's a link for you;

http://www.lennoxhearthproducts.com/products/LennoxHP_products.html

I hope this helps.

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), October 13, 2001.


Hi JJ,

I believe an insert is the best for making an inefficient fireplace into something that heats. We just moved from a rental farm house onto our new farm and at the rental we heated the house entirely with a fireplace insert. It had a fan that circulated room air around the steel firebox. This thing worked great. We live in Missouri where we are nearly as cold as you and that's all we had for heat. We lived there 3 years while we built our farm homestead for retirement. We now heat with wood at our own place but use a wood burning water heater and radiant heat (hot water pipes) in the floor. It's the best we have ever had. It is even gentle heat and the system holds the heat for about 3 days; so if the fire goes out it's not cold in the morning. Good luck, John

-- John Hayes (jehayes54@hotmail.com), January 17, 2002.


This is an old thread but, a great site for wood burning is www.woodheat.org

-- Thumper (slrldr@yahoo.com), January 18, 2002.

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