I have two fireplaces. The one in the living room has an ugly cast iron stove in it. My friend I bought the house from said it would cost $1,200 to get a new liner and to extend the chimney two and a half feet (which is apparently necessary for proper… something – even though the house was built 72 years ago). He decided to spend $1,400 for a propane heater instead.
The other fireplace is in the big bedroom, which is empty. The chimney has a brick core, and round river rocks have been cemented over it. Previous owners had let it go, and a thick cover of ivy grew on it. My friend cut down as much of the ivy as he could, but it’s in there. One stalk is at least three inches thick. The top of the chimney looks as if an eagle has built a nest there, so thick are the dead ivy stalks. From time to time, a river rock falls with a thump onto the roof. The fireplace looks as if it would be at home in a public lavatory. It’s faced with brick-sized white glazed tiles. It’s hideous.
Well, I got to thinking: Why not move my bedroom from the middle-sized room to the big one? It’s a bit cold in that room, as the propane heater is most effective at heating the living room. (Propane being expensive, I keep the thermostat at 65ºF when I’m home and awake.) A new fireplace would allow me to heat the room. The fire would be dry heat in this damp environment. It would allow me to burn things such as papers and boxes, which are not allowed to be burnt outdoors. (Yard waste only.) It would increase the value of my house.
So I went to the fireplace store. They have some nice ones. They have fans in them to circulate the heat in the room. I can see how a proper fireplace can replace the cast iron thing rather nicely. A guy is going to come out sometime to have a look. I’ll see about replacing the bedroom fireplace first, since it’s in the poorer condition and will add the most value to the house. But I’ll ask about how much it will cost to do the one in the living room too, and deal with that later.
I sometimes wonder if you should post a photo of your house. It sounds way interesting. If you’re gonna burn paper in your fireplace, please remember to install a spark arrestor up on the top of the chimbley
Are you thinking of yanking the entire river rock structure & re-bricking? And are you thinking about an airtight insert or just an open (and highly romantic) masonry firebox with a (faux) bearskin rug?
I might do one day, after I make some improvements. When I move bedrooms I want to tear out the closet in my current bedroom, add drywall where the closet was, get double-paned windows (the current single-pane ones wrap round the corner), paint, and put down wood flooring. In place of the closet, I’ll get a wardrobe from Ikea. I’ll do the same to the small bedroom. That’s going to be a little strange, since the water heater is in it.
Airtight. I think it would be more efficient and cleaner. And I don’t really need a romantic lair.
My first question is do you have a reasonable source of firewood?
I use wood as the primary source of heating the house in the winter. (Woodburning stove rather than a fireplace)
For me, it’s very economical. I’ve already got a truck, chainsaws, tractor, wood-splitter and several hundred acres of timberland to salvage undesirable trees for firewood.
If I had to purchase firewood, I’m not sure I’d save very much money at all, with the going rate around here being about $60 per pickup truck load of wood. I’d think you would need about 2 & 1/2 to three cords of wood, at a minimum, if you are going to use wood as a primary source of winter heat.
I have some trees out back that would look good chopped up and put in a fireplace!
I keep my bedroom door closed so I don’t have to heat it. I have an electric blanket and two quilts, so I don’t actually need to use the fireplace to heat the room. I have one of those oil-filled radiator heaters that heats the big bedroom very nicely anyway. (‘Big’ is relative, of course. It’s a little over 11’ wide and a bit more than 17’ long, plus the closet and a 4’ wide x 3’ deep niche.) The fireplace would just be supplementary. And again, it will increase the value of the house.
Oh, and there’s some lumber and stumps under the deck that I could (and should) burn.
I have a fireplace in the living room. I thought for sure I’d use it during my first winter in this house, for the cozy effect if nothing else (the chimney sweep told me that the kind of fireplace I have doesn’t give off much actual heat), but I didn’t. I never have. I probably never will. When I move on to my next rental, I will know better than to care about having a fireplace on the main floor (lots of townhouses around here have fireplaces, but most are in the basement family room).
I kind of like having a mantel, though, and the whole shebang looks pretty nice when decorated for Christmas.
We’ve got an old insert in the family room fireplace. It’s got a recirc fan that is soo loud, we don’t use it, but we do turn on the ceiling fan and it keeps the space quite cozy. The basement fireplace for now is blocked off because it’s just a conduit for cold air. But some day, maybe in a year or 2, we’ll take the family room insert to the basement and put a new one in here. I was thinking a pellet stove might be a good choice for the family room, but it’s way too soon to decide about that.
My mom has an insert in her living room fireplace and it has a less noisy fan. When Dad was alive, they used to keep it going and bank it overnight so that it really helped heat the house. In fact, it would be almost too hot to stay in the living room when it was going. Now she just keeps the house really cool and wears sweaters. She’s almost 72 and past her log-hauling prime…
I heated with wood for about 10 years. And we get cold winters in the Rockies. Had the biggest, best Vermont Castings wood stove made.
I finally gave up. I’ve put a plow on my truck which lowers the ground clearance to much to really be able to get to much of the wood around here. And it’s all pine.
I started buying it. 6 cords a year. About half of that hard wood. Bahhh. It’s really messy when you have to burn constantly. Wood chips, dust, soot. Always cold when I came home from work
We have a freestanding propane stove now. It’s really, really nice to be able to set a thermostat.
I grew up in cities. Until I moved up here I always had piped-in gas for heating.
My grandparents lived in rural Southern Oregon. They had a wood-fired heater (also useful for keeping the coffee hot) in their living room/dining room. The kitchen had a wood stove for cooking. (They also had a propane stove and two or three propane-powered refrigerators in the pantry.) As a kid I liked going up there and chopping wood.
Wood and propane seem really old-fashioned to me. People in cities had piped-in gas (for their lights) in the 19th Century! I really like useful technology. If I could, I’d have an energy-efficient house with solar panels and a windmill (iffy propositions this far north, but still…), double-glazed windows all round, piped-in gas running efficient appliances, lots more insulation, and so on.
When I lived in Lancaster, CA we had a fireplace. Dad liked to use the gas in it to keep the logs burning. Seemed inefficient to me. And dirty, since the wood would leave ashes that had to be cleaned out. It was just there for looks, anyway.
So if fireplaces are old-fashioned and inefficient, why am I considering rebuilding one and refurbishing another? Well, given that my house is not a 21st Century Smart Home they can be used for dry supplemental heat. Though messy, they are pretty. And if I ever decide to sell the house they will increase its value. That, and I hate having non-functional things. Better to make them work, even if they’re functional decorations.
Our home is passive solar. Lot’s of big big windows facing south. When the sun is out during the day, reflecting off the snow on the ground it easily gets up to 80-90f in here. Even if the outside temp is in the 20’s and the heat is off. Our house sits on a concrete slab, so much of that heat is stored.
I had a splitter, big muther. 16hp, 20 ton ram. That is something that I’m glad I don’t need to keep running. Replaced the engine and pump once.
I need better windows and window coverings to help keep the heat in during the night, but that’s a big job. We’ll get there, as soon as I get the addition done.
I do like wood heat, and the astetics are great, but after a while it becomes a lot of work. My wife and I would spend a good 3 weekends just stacking and moving wood every ‘summer’. That’s purchased, split wood, and we have a tractor to move it.
Then, we would bring in a pile (about the size of a small desk) of wood into the house every week or so to keep things going. At this altitude, we had to burn about 9-10 months out of the year. And we like our bedroom cold.
Sweeping the flue is not somthing that I miss either. That was an all day job. To do it right we had to take all the flue down and take it outside (We have very high ceilings and had about 12 feet of exposed 8" flue in the house). I still had to get on top of the chimey chase and brush out the other 12 feet or so. It was the only way we felt that we really got it clean and would not have a fire.
But then, I’m just going on aren’t I.
I think It’s great to have a fireplace and or wood stove. Even with all the work it entailed, it was hard to convince me to get rid of ours and go propane. Good luck on your renovation.
We have two fireplaces; one in the “fireplace room” (good place for it, eh?) and one gas fireplace in the upstairs bedroom (which we don’t use…evah). I love our fireplace, but it isn’t very economical. It doesn’t actually heat the room and we actually lose heat because it isn’t a modern, recirculating kind. Thinking about getting one.
So, as it stands, we only use it when it’s not really cold out. And for atmosphere when i have parties. At the moment it’s filthy and I should really get off my butt and clean it. I’ve hired chimney sweeps to do the really hard part. That ain’t my bag.
Make sure you get a professional chimney sweep to clean that chimney out. It’s bound to have been neglected for decades. Lots of home-destroying fires start in the chimney!
