Open fires in your home?
Talk about a clash of technologies: In a house that is to be
tightly-constructed and well-insulated so it will be cozy and easy to
heat, but with a gapping chimney in the middle of the house to let the heat out? Homeowners want to have a traditional open fireplace, with real flames and a heat source. Most modern houses built within the last 10 years or so won't have a traditional type of chimney (class 1) due to the main factor THE COST. To build a new house with a class 1 chimney costs a lot of money and most developers thing that the money can be spent on more modern functions of the new house ie, bathroom , kitchen etc. As the average home owner does not want the traditional type of solid fuel open fire. The trend is GAS and ELECTRIC fires, which don't need this type of chimney, a shame as like most things go in and out of action , it wont be long before people start realizing that a traditional solid fuel open fire is cheep to run and you are not relying on the gas and electric services to supply you with the energy required. When I say cheap, I mean FREE if you know where to look. But this takes time and effort, finding and receiving permission to collect the wood from landowners. It may be free but it is hard work. I allocate time and make it a game with the family, to see who can find the new treasure of wood to collect for the winter, The hole family get out there and help cut collect and stack the wood (no need for gym membership as I will tel you this is hard but very satisfying work and gives all the family a sense of achievement after the afternoon collecting.
There is nothing better than sitting in front of your open fire gazing at the flames and drinking a good glass of wine, warming your feet.
Declaring my bias, I freely admit my enthusiasm for fireplaces and
think that every house needs a open fire to be complete. A fire burns on my
hearth all winter and I never tire of watching the flames and being within
range of their warmth. It is such a relaxing pass time.
That said, I also think the traditional open fireplace is headed for
extinction and I, for one, won't shed a tear at its passing. The end will
come because the open fireplace is an antique technology that is
incompatible with modern housing. It is wasteful by temperament, and
through its gluttonous appetite for fuel and air, it scoffs at the ideas
of energy conservation and environmental correctness, but so is gas and electric.
Strong opinions, often colored by myth and misinformation, usually
surround discussions of fireplaces. So, to avoid any misunderstanding,
allow me to propose this basic principle: A fireplace should work well all
the time and never screw up in a big way; should not belch acridly during
a party, should not set off the smoke detectors at 2:30 in the morning,
and should not stink and gush cold air when no fire burns. And further,
given the advanced state of construction and fireplace technology, a
builder should be able to confidently guarantee to the homeowner that the
fireplace will perform properly.
It is not much to ask, really, that a fireplace work properly, no more
than we ask of most other building components. Yet, complaints about
nuisance fireplaces are among the most common call-backs in the building
industry. Despite the voodoo preached by proponents of certain variations
on the theme, there is nothing magical about fireplace design. For
example, here is a pretty reliable rule of thumb: the more air the
fireplace demands for normal operation, the more susceptible it is to
spillage and back drafting.
If you place the fire on the room side of a flow restriction, like a
throat damper, you need strong draft and high flow up the chimney to keep
smoke from spilling into the room. An open fireplace consumes between 200
and 600 cubic feet per minute (cfm) of room air—more if it is a big
fireplace with a big, big fire. Tightly built houses cannot tolerate a 200
cfm exhaust flow without getting meaningfully depressurized, so there's a
problem right away.
If a home buyer rigidly demanded an open fireplace, it could be made to
work if you threw enough money and horsepower at the problem. A chimney
top fan could be installed at considerable cost, but it could severely
depressurize the house in its attempt to flow enough air to prevent smoke
spillage from the fireplace, and would likely back draft a conventional gas
furnace or water heater. Alternatively, a high-volume, fan forced,
pre-heated outdoor make-up air system could be designed and installed.
Just before lighting the fireplace, the user would turn on the make-up air
fan, pressurizing the house and forcing the necessary flow through the
fireplace and up the chimney. This large-capacity make-up air system would
be complicated because the incoming air would need tempering by a
thermostatically-controlled electric duct heater of substantial output.
Distributing the air effectively could also be a challenge. Both
options—the chimney top fan and large make-up air system—are expensive and
both have drawbacks.
There are easier ways to tame the fireplace. When you place the fire
behind the main flow restriction, say a glass door assembly, you can get
away with lower flow rates and draft levels without smoke spillage. With
doors, even a set of leaky bi-fold doors, the flow rate drops by
three-quarters to 50 to 150 cfm, depending on flue size, fire size and
door leakage. The barrier between the fire and the room formed by the
doors makes the fireplace more spillage-resistant by a huge margin. The
doors don't make this fire place an efficient heater, just less of a
nuisance.
Some people claim that glass doors spoil a fireplace. (Do they mean in
the same way electric lights spoiled the pleasure of reading by candle
light? Or the way shock absorbers on cars took away the feel of the road?)
In reality, at least a spark screen is needed to prevent damage to rugs,
floors and furniture when the characteristic crackle of the fire spits
glowing bits from the hearth. True, glass doors do block out most of the
sound of the fire, which is just fine for those of us who find the crackle
only makes them apprehensive about those glowing bits. Given the choice of
looking through a wire mesh screen or clear glass, I'll take the
glass.
Not incidentally, a fireplace's consumption of room air directly
affects its efficiency, that is, how much of the energy contained in the
logs is transferred as cozy warmth to the room. Because they suck up
so much room air, open fireplaces deliver between zero and 20 per cent net
efficiency. The low efficiency results from the house furnace
working so hard to heat up the outside air that must come in to replace
air exhausted by the fireplace. The colder the weather, the lower
the delivered efficiency from an open fireplace. A fireplace with
doors can deliver between 30 and 50 per cent efficiency, depending on
whether it has a heat exchanger that works, but this is still lousy
efficiency by modern standards. A fireplace that uses current
technology, will
deliver between 60 and 70 per cent efficiency. This means a modern
wood burning fireplace is competitive with any other form of home heating
in terms of energy efficiency.
Some housing technologists recommend that builders avoid using any
heating or hearth appliance that vents through a chimney and operates on
natural draft. This caution would apply to all wood burning fireplaces
because, with current technology, they must be vented through a vertical
chimney. While I'm sure such advice is well-intentioned, if adopted, it
would mean the elimination the natural fireplace from every new house. You could not enjoy the comfort and quality of a well-built modern home
while sitting in their favorite chair in front of a real wood burning
fireplace. They could not stay cozy and comfortable during an electrical
power failure by burning wood in the fireplace. They would be unable to
use this renewable energy source as one route to environmental
responsibility, but would be forced to heat with fossil fuels and be
locked into a one-sided relationship with a large energy utility. If they
wanted a open fire, their only option would be a virtual fireplace burning
gas or propane with its designer flame and mind-numbing sameness. Of
course, gas fireplaces are fine for urban houses and apartments, but one
of the great pleasures of living on the urban fringe and beyond is to
build a real fire on a beautiful open fire and sit back to enjoy it.
A future of houses without real fireplaces is not particularly
appealing. Luckily, it's not necessary either. By matching technologies,
it is possible to combine a modern house with a real fireplace. In
specifying a spillage-resistant fireplace for a well-built house, the
first line of defense is a set of glass doors. YES you will need to have a stove, the most cost effective heat source in the home you will find. With a wood burning stove you will have the option to adjust the heat up and down to suite and if you burn the correct type of wood you will be able to set it to low and in the morning the fire will still be alight for you to top up as required.
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bellows on offer today.
The fireplace
In many places, coal, wood or peat burning fires are being
replaced by cleaner and often safer natural gas and electric
systems. Some governmental agencies have placed a partial ban
on solid fuel burning fireplaces based upon air pollution
concerns. Gas fireplaces very often burn off a small amount of
their fuel in a flickering display meant to recall that of a
wood fire. Alternatively, flame-shaped paper streamers wave
vertically in the air, held up by the updraft produced by a
heating element.
Wood-burning fireplace with burning log. Some other
logs are drying and heating up around the fire so they'll burn
better.Many lower priced new homes are not equipped with a
fireplace at all, its heating function long since taken over
by central heating and its social function by the home
entertainment center. Some fireplaces have been closed off not
allowing them to be used, either the top of the chimney has a
concrete slab installed over it or the bottom has had a board
nailed to it. This is so the fireplace doesn't suck out warm
air. Prefab fireplaces have become popular because of their
lower construction cost but offer a limited range of sizes and
styles. Brick or stone fireplaces have greater durability and
can be designed to meet exact specifications for opening size,
depth, and facing material. They also cost significantly more
to construct.
A fireplace may consist of some or all of the following
elements: foundation, hearth, firebox, facing, ash dump door,
chimney crane, cleanouts door, grate or iron bars, lintel,
lintel bar, over mantle, breast, damper, smoke chamber, throat,
flue, chimney chase, crown, cap or shroud, and spark
arrestor.
Types of fireplaces include:
Masonry (brick or stone fireplaces and chimneys) with or
without tile lined flue. Tiles are used to line the flue to
keep the corrosive combustion products from eating away the
chimney flue lining. Un reinforced masonry chimney do not stand
up to earthquakes well.
Reinforced Concrete Chimneys: Popular during the 1970s to
1980s. Fundamental flaws (the difference in thermal expansion
rates between steel rebar and concrete which caused the
chimney flues to crack when heated) bankrupted the US
manufacturers and obsolete the technique. This type of
chimney often shows vertical cracks on the exterior of the
chimney which worsen as the internal rebar rusts.
Manufactured or 'Prefab' fireplace with sheet metal fire
box and double or triple walled metal pipe running up inside a
wood framed chase with a chase cover and cap/spark arrestor at
the top to keep birds out and sparks in. Within about one
hundred meters from salt water this type of chimney is subject
to rusting. Otherwise it's competitive to the masonry
chimney.
Fireplace tools and Accessories
Fireplace with grate .There are a range of accessories used
with fireplaces. For the interior fire pit, the most common are
grates, log boxes, and irons and firedogs, all of which are
used to cradle the fuel and accelerate burning. For the
exterior adornment and fireplace tending function, there are
fireplace tools including poker, bellows,
tongs, shovel, brush and tool stand. Current versions of all
these devices are available, but there are extant accessories
manufactured in Europe which date at least as early as 1550
AD.
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