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Do not use wood burning fireplace for supplemental heating?

Honky Lips

Honky Lips

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Is this true? It was posted as a fact on the power company website. Thoughts?

Do not use a wood burning fireplace for supplemental heating. As it pulls hot air out of the home through the chimney to fuel the fire
 
Honky Lips said:
Is this true? It was posted as a fact on the power company website. Thoughts?

Do not use a wood burning fireplace for supplemental heating. As it pulls hot air out of the home through the chimney to fuel the fire
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Sounds like the sparkys need to stay in their lane. A fireplace isn't that efficient, but I imagine it will radiate more heat than it convects out.
 
Yes it’s true if you have an open old fashion fireplace.

Depends on the size of the house. Sometimes it will produce enough radiant heat to offset the heat loss due to using room air. If it’s a prefab it might have an outside air kit. If it’s masonry you can add one by drilling through the brick.

I have a freestanding stove for my main heat source. Has an outside air kit and heats up no problem.
 
I had one in my first house, it produced enough heat to keep the front room warm during power outages. We just shacked up on the couch, better than nothing. A woodstove insert is way more effective.
 
Fireplaces suck when everyone in the damn neighborhood does it. Inefficient as hell and kills my sinuses. Just when through a power outage here. Generators and fireplaces fucking the air up everywhere.

Can't wait for the rolling blackouts coming soon. They are on schedule to shut down all the coal plants with no Idea how to replace the energy they made.:homer:
 
Depends entirely on the fireplace and size of the fire, but generally true. You're much better off putting in a wood stove insert.

My old house, the room the fireplace in was built in the early 1800s and was the kitchen for the farm it was on, separate from the main house. Fireplace was fucking huge so it could fit a big cooking pot in it. Looked nice, but if you lit a fire in it you had to keep it fed and roaring it's ass off or it would drop the temp in that part of the house by quite a bit.
 
you do get a lot more heat outta stoves when you damp the flue down rather than doing vacuum damping on the air inlet to the firebox
dunno why, might just be that there's more flue gas leakage into the house?

if it is an open hearth, you should have a damper dittywhongus in there just outta view

there's just so many factors to it
do new houses with the PVC vent furnaces even have an outside air vent to the furnace room? Water heater'd still need it, right?
you will probably run into whatever room the outside air vent is plumbed into being cold, and you could get frozen pipes in there
the room the fireplace is in will be nicely warm though

basically, they're full of shit
 
Honky Lips said:
Is this true? It was posted as a fact on the power company website. Thoughts?

Do not use a wood burning fireplace for supplemental heating. As it pulls hot air out of the home through the chimney to fuel the fire
Click to expand...

Yes, that is true. The smaller the home, less it impacts it. A larger home can get downright chilly away from the fire, even with a furnace running. That fireplace will suck air through every draft you didn't know you had in order to keep itself fed, unless you have an outside vent kit.
 
We used ours growing up and Before my dad put glass doors on it the living room and kitchen would be warm and all the bedrooms at the other end of the house would be cold as fuck. After he glass doors it helped a lot but still very inefficient.

The way the settlers heated with fireplaces was they lived in either small homes that 1 fireplace could heat or they had fireplaces where they needed them if they had enough money. Also they wernt pussies and sleeping in a room below 65 degrees was normal, nowadays that probably on some made up uuman rights list to never have to sleep in a cold room.
 
Context needed. If power is out and no central heat, better than nothing—it may keep a room tolerable. I keep a Mr Heater and 15 lb propane tank for power out, heat a room. Far better than a fireplace.
 
My in-laws use fireplace heating as the main source of heat during the winter in Colorado, they have baseboard backup heaters. They have the fireplace insert that has a blower motor that blows the hot air off the hot metal surface back into the house. On high it can make you sweat if you have a good fire and coals rolling. The house is probably 800 sqft on the main floor and that fireplace will rock it if you let it.
 
Joez said:
Yes, that is true. The smaller the home, less it impacts it. A larger home can get downright chilly away from the fire, even with a furnace running. That fireplace will suck air through every draft you didn't know you had in order to keep itself fed, unless you have an outside vent kit.
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this

last big house i lived in with a fireplace heated nothing but 5ft directly in front of it, rest of the house frozen, and im in ca :laughing:
 
OLD fireplaces worked great because the chimney was stone and held/put off lots of heat, now days the chimney is a pipe inside of a fake "chimney" so all the heat goes right up and out
 
Our old apartment had an open hearth fireplace. It was all we used in the winter. Otherwise it was the electric baseboard heaters.

We lived downstairs so our upstairs neighbors loved that we heated with the fireplace. Every winter I would stack about 1 1/2 cords of wood on the back patio and we would use it all throughout the winter.
 
My parents burn about 8 cords a winter to heat their home. It's not their only source, but it's the only one they use....


Edit: I should clarify it's a wood stove not an open fireplace
 
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Open fireplaces suck... build yourself an insert!

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Hoss50 said:
My in-laws use fireplace heating as the main source of heat during the winter in Colorado, they have baseboard backup heaters. They have the fireplace insert that has a blower motor that blows the hot air off the hot metal surface back into the house. On high it can make you sweat if you have a good fire and coals rolling. The house is probably 800 sqft on the main floor and that fireplace will rock it if you let it.
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That's not a fireplace, it's an insert. The discussion is on a regular open fireplace.

Inserts are very efficient.
 
hmm, we used our fireplace all the time when I was a kid. It heated the living room and kitchen just fine. My current gas fireplace heats the front room, den and kitchen nicely...

I used the fireplace at my cabin in northern new mexico for years as the primary heat source... it worked great.. inefficient, sure, but it worked fine.
 
Drank a lot of adult beverages and ate fried venison and cheese curds around Christmas with some fatty ohioan who had a sweet brick hearth wall said they had to "always" keep a fire going or the brick just made the whole room cold. Former inlaws kept their fireplace blocked off most of the time and burned gas for baseboard in an old victorian with 30ish single pane windows only using the fireplace for special days, they had a tube setup like billybobs with a blower and it would roast the rooms near it.

I like direct outside air to feed fires so it doesn't pull outside air from everywhere. yet I'm sleeping on the second floor of a biggass building 40 ft away from the shitty woodstove "boiler" that's all burned out with a crappy damper and no pipedamper, the indoor wood boiler sits unused for the second winter cause :homer:. propane for primary. bonus is it's a commercial account so price is low. If I ever own dirt I'll have wood fired hydronic all over, too skinny to fight off the cold and there's no shortage of free wood to burn.
 
SLOWPOKE693 said:
I've heard that before and I call BS. How did the early settlers heat their homes???
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Fucking

Why do you think they all had 18 kids?



Also, if it hasn't been said, open fire places suck. Inserts suck a little less and a decent wood stove is the shit.

The house were in now has the fake hearth with a terrible insert. It will literally not do almost anything if the fan isn't running. With the fan it's OK if you keep it fed all day, but usually still needs the gas furnace to keep it warm. Nothing like it should be where you toss a few logs in a few times a day and it keeps the house toasty.
 
In today's world an outside air intake source is required here.
Look up Rumford fireplaces
One reason why old houses had a fireplace in almost every room, some were a central chimney with 4 fireplaces facing different rooms.
The "brick wall" that someone talked about here was most likely a Trombe wall which is basically a big heat sink. Warm in during the day and it will radiate heat off it at night.
A Russian fireplace is very efficient.
But the OG statement is mostly true. A lot depends on the design and who built the fireplace. The last house I lived in had a central chimney with a fireplace in the living room, that sum bitch would run you out of the house.
I would use an inefficient fireplace over freezing to death though :lmao:
 
Boss said:
Fireplaces suck when everyone in the damn neighborhood does it. Inefficient as hell and kills my sinuses. Just when through a power outage here. Generators and fireplaces fucking the air up everywhere.

Can't wait for the rolling blackouts coming soon. They are on schedule to shut down all the coal plants with no Idea how to replace the energy they made.:homer:
Click to expand...

Blackouts already in Texas, Texas depends on a lot of wind and the blackouts will keep coming.....one good hot summer.

I don't understand how they can keep shutting down coal fired power plants and yet everything plugs in and now the big push with electric cars...... what's going to replace the Megawatts??

This country has shut down over 200+ coal fired power plants, some needed it they were old etc. but take Jim Bridger in Rock Springs Wyoming, huge plant but it's on the chopping block to be cut by half 2025-6ish and then completely shut down and removed from mother Earth by 2030, 35

Please keep in mind Asia / China are in their industrial boom.... they're BUILDING coal fired power plants.

..... and our power grid is shit I don't think we've touched it in the last 3 Presidencies "Infrastructure Bullshit Propaganda Shit Talk"
 
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