I’m not even sure what an insert is or does. I have an ornamental fireplace. It burns wood. (or whatever you put in it, I suppose.) I am careful to burn clean stuff, and don’t get much soot, but I do get some smoke in the basement, which weirdly has a matching fireplace on the same chimney/flu. I don’t use the fireplace often, as it obviously sucks heat out of the house. But it’s fun on Christmas morning to gather around a fire.
Our fireplace has a vent to the garage, so it sucks heat out of the garage rather than the house. When I was a kid our fireplace had a vent to outside, which is ideal. That makes a big difference to how much it cools off the rest of the house.
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Also these two sentences seem contradictory to me. I think of an ornamental fireplace as one that is non-functioning and only exists to look nice.
Maybe @Lucy was saying that the ornamental fireplace itself is the one that going out and burning wood.
Well, it has a flu and it’s fireproof and all that, so I CAN burn wood in it. But it’s not well designed. A good wood fireplace adds heat, it doesn’t remove it. I assume it was put there mostly to look nice. Even when you use it, it’s just to look nice.
We do get the chimney swept regularly, and it meets code and all that.
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Are you sure it’s not Covid?
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A good fireplace is really nice to have. I had a gas fireplace in one home and when the furnace died on a Friday in the coldest part of winter it was super nice to have that thing going. It cranked out quite a bit of heat.
I used the self-cleaning feature on the oven, got all caught up on laundry and had the fireplace going during the day all weekend and kept the house in the upper 60s when it was below freezing out, so not too shabby. I probably could have left the fireplace going overnight but that seemed scary to me for some reason.
But really, I do love wood fires, even though they are a PITA.
Was it a ventless fireplace? Those can produce a lot of heat. I have one on my basement and it warms up the ~1000 sf in very little time.
The main downside is that it does create a bit of odor similar to running a gas stovetop hard in the kitchen without the food cooking smell to hide it.
You take an old brick fireplace, and stuff a square metal woodstove into it, then trim it out so it looks flush. So pretty much just an airtight woodstove with a wrapper.
I assume they also normally stuff a stainless chimney inside the old brick chimney (they did in the ones I used to own) making them basically a self-contained unit.
I guess so? I know basically nothing about gas fireplaces. Whatever they were putting in new cookie-cutter houses in 2000, which is the year that house was built. It had a light switch that turned it on and it was covered with glass which one time I figured out how to open and clean and it had a pilot light that was on 24/7/365. I contemplated trying to turn off the pilot light over the summer as it created some heat and the house wasn’t air conditioned so it contributed to the discomfort on the hottest days of summer. But my then-boyfriend advised me that once he had turned his off for the summer for the same reason and a spider moved in and plugged up the gas line and caused a big stinking problem and it was far easier to just leave the pilot on, so I did.
And I have now told you 100.00% of my knowledge of that gas fireplace, and really, gas fireplaces in general. I never did figure out how to turn the pilot off as I lost interest in figuring it out after hearing my then-boyfriend’s horror story.
I have a vented fireplace that has a glass screen and a ventless that does not. The vented came with my 2005 house and the ventless was a 2011 add. I am guessing vented.
A ventless is just as it sounds, fire from natural gas with all exhaust going directly into the room. The exhaust should be just water and co2 rather than co and ??. The additive that makes you notice gas leaks i assume is part of the fumes but smells less offensive.
The humidity from a ventless is nice to have in the winter.
The other thing that many inserts have is a fan, that draws air in from the room, runs it over the hot metal box, and blows it back into the room. We have an insert with a fan and it makes a crazy amount of heat. I have to be careful or our living room hits the low 80s when it’s like 20° outside.
Sorry, the living room is aboot 27° when it’s -7° outside, eh.
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80 degrees sounds perfect.
Another 10 degress and it would be just right!!!
Another ten degrees cooler! Amirite?!?!?!
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Merino wool update that you’re all dying to hear. Darn Tough socks: loving them. Smartwool base layer: I got confused on the description, they have changed their nomenclature and I ordered the lightweight long-sleeve base layer. I wore it yesterday with a light down jacket over it when I took a walk, it was 34° and it was almost enough but I got a bit cold. Went ahead and ordered one of the thicker ones. That should give me a pretty flexible set of base layers to work with, and if it’s really cold then I can just layer in one of my existing sweaters or whatever.
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Your rite!!!
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Yeah fans too.
When we heated with wood, i used to see how hot i could get it the tv room before my spouse noticed and opened a door or window. My record, 38-39C.
LOL. That’s about 100-101 freedom units for us ‘Mericans. Ours tends to top out around 85°F/29°C here, it’s a larger house with 9’ ceilings. And it’s old, so a bit drafty.
Ordered a pair of Darn Tough socks for the wife due to the reviews here. If they’re a winner, I’ll order more for Christmas.
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