Fireplace vents

[DBGenerator]

Attached are two picture of my fire place.  There are 4 vents on the front.  Two at the top and two at the bottom.  They are pretty effective.  I put a fan on one of the bottom vents to try to force more heat through.  It kind of works.  I think I need to put something around the fan to force the air through better.  I was thinking I should put some vents just the same on the other side of the fireplace to help heat up the hallway and the rest of the house?

[Birdmmjb]

Hi.  I'm no experte on the subject but my experince with a fire place with vents was that they will work you to death feeding them with very little heat gain except for the heat you generate cutting the wood.

After trying to heat my house with a fireplace like yours I put in a Buck stove.  What a difference it took less and 1/4 of the wood per day and heated the entire house (sometimes too well) where we were not even keeping the living room warm before.

Just an little bitty tippy.

Jan

[TomW]

Bird;

Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Fireplaces suck as heaters unless you like cutting wood and feeding the thing. Some improperly set up units are a net loss on heat from drafting out room air, too. I would at least go with an insert.

TomW

[Micheal]

I did the fireplace thing too. A woodstove insert would really be the way to go. and before you buy one. check the amount of R factor needed for the pad. that can get tricky. a R factor of 1 is about 5 sheets of wonderboard. the 5/8ths stuff. or is it 3/8th i dont remember the thicker of the two. Just my 2 bits. I love my stove, makes my house a home.

[scorman]

OK, I'll take the contrarian view here, since I heat my entire 2750sq ft ranch only with fireplaces and my consumption this season in upstate NY will be about 5 full cords...but they have to be efficient designs!

I have a heatilator masonry metal firebox similar to:

http://www.yourwayfireplaces.com/docs/Air%20Circulating%20Metal%20Fireplaces.pdf

I can heat 1/2 the house with this unit and bring the temp up to 75 degrees in no time.

If you were to place you hand in front of the top registers, you'd singe the hair off the back of your hand!

I was contributing to this thread:

http://www.fieldlines.com/comments/2007/11/20/122831/20/25#25

The one feature that you MUST have besides the glass firedoor, is an external damper control so you can shut down the burn rate and increase the heat in the box, and prevent more of the heat going up the chimney.

Without it, you have no means to open the closed damper when the fire is burning and keep smoke from filling the house when you first open the glass doors

You are on the right track as far as blowers....you need a means to extract more of the heat and there is a very simple implementation .....get two of the 115v 4 inch box mini fans similar to the 12v kind in a puter case. Place them just inside the bottom intake grates blowing in. If you can find surplus (or eBay) 220v units, hook them up to 115v and they run at 1/4 power and are noiseless.

There is no magic in a wood stove or insert ..they simply have the means to control the burn rate, limit the air intake ....my problem with them is that their capacity is too small ...I burn five 24 inch split logs at a time.

From your pics, it doesn't look like you can change very much ie add registers on back side towards hall, but if you heat up all that stone, it will radiate in all directions for many hours

Stew Corman from sunny Endicott

[DBGenerator]

I like my fireplace.  I don't want a stove in my livingroom.

Thanks.  

[TimV]

We used to have a fireplace. My dad worked at a sawmill and brought 2 pickup loads of firewood home daily.

After a few years of wasteing wood and effort trying to feed the smokey beast we put a Franklin Stove in front of the fireplace and bricked the front up and inserted the flue. Wood consumption dropped by 75% and heat output jumped 300% Now instead of sucking out all the heat it now produced warm radiant heat into the room. Granted the old fireplace was built in 1790 along with rest of the huge old colonial in northern New hampshire the stove is the way to go.

I cant imagine how big a woodpile teh ones who only had the 2 fireplaces to rely on

[Vermonter]

If you have children, please be very careful about polluting your indoor air. Some people like the smell of wood burning. In reality it's causing damage to their children's lungs. Both my GF and I grew up in small, insulated houses with wood stoves. We both have asthma.

[Nothing40]

Wow,After reading that last message,I sat and thought about it.

I think about 90% of the people that I know,with asthma,had a woodstove/fireplace in their house.

About about 90% of those who don't has asthma,don't have a woodstove/fireplace. (including myself.)

Curious.

[Tritium]

I have the same problem but it was caused by side stream cigarette smoke not wood stove smoke.

Thurmond