So I can't find a fireplace insert that fits into this fireplace. Also I realize that every fireplace insert sits on the hearth as opposed to sitting 5 inches above the hearth such as my fireplace does. Am I just fricked? The house is all electric and it's a heat pump and it's an awful system.
What's a hearth?
I've got a similar situation here in my fireplace.
According to some anons here in the other fireplace thread, fireplaces aren't even that efficient and you are better of installing an insert. Although the gains are so small that maybe you don't even need the insert on the first place. So as you can see, no definite conclusion.
But lets say I want to install something here. What are my options? Insert? Stove? Or rather just leave everything as it is? Can I even do something or I also need to check the "hearth" anon b***hes about?
the hearth is what the fireplace is sitting on that sticks out 16 inches. The fireplace is raised about 5 inches in that picture on some type of air draft grates.
I should mention that the front height is ~18in and ~16 inches in the back which limits my selection to none. I'd have to start breaking out the floor to increase the height. Is that really my only option here?
all that shit in the floor comes out moron, all fireplaces you have to remove everything down to the bricks to put the insert in
but why bother with an insert, I dont see any cracked bricks in the pic and the shit looks fine
based on what a wood insert is, you simply place it into mason fireplace i.e its already to the brick floor. with that said the one in the picture is a prefab fireplace and it will not properly accept an insert without removing the prefab and rebuilding.
a fireplace puts out almost no heat into the home. i.e. the purpose of using an insert.
>a fireplace puts out almost no heat into the home
thats precisely where you're wrong, kiddo.
they are just inefficient and do not circulate heat well.
if they did not work they would not have caught on some 1,400 years ago.
I think you need to be a man and change your lifestyle to accommodate the fireplace instead of changing the fireplace to accommodate your woman like life
Oh look fireplace homosexual is off his meds again.
they are just inefficient and do not circulate heat well. So they're just not heating the house well? Ok
If its your only source of heat its inefficient
If its a secondary source of heat its anti efficient and will make your house colder and use more fuel to heat it
>If its a secondary source of heat its anti efficient and will make your house colder and use more fuel to heat it
...?
If your fireplace is right next to your thermostat, yeah maybe. Doesn't have anything to do with efficiency though, just that it's going to trick your thermostat into thinking the house doesn't need heat.
Some of you guys need to stop living on the net and get out in the real world and actually familiarizing yourself with it. A fireplace isn't a great source of heat in modern times, no, but it does fricking work.
An insert is incredibly expensive, and it's only going to increase your efficiency by a pretty small amount, so it's not really worth it unless there's something wrong with the fireplace as it is, or i dunno, if you're living in alaska and wood is your primary heat, and you're burning 24/7.
3 paragraphs later and you are still wrong
An empty can rattles the loudest
Fireplace
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Oh look its captain fireplace homosexual off his meds trying to convince people that its 1643 again.
Why don't you stop regurgitating reddit comments and instead use your brain for a change?
Many ways to improve efficiency of fireplaces and inserts exist even if you are unaware of them. Stoves slightly outboard of the fireplace radiate more heat but inserts with blowers can be quite effective. Insulation matters too.
My bro had a steel pole barn built over his single wide trailer that's about 60x60 feet, then foamed the inner walls. One medium wood stove heats it easily and uses very little wood.
>a fireplace puts out almost no heat into the home. i.e. the purpose of using an insert.
why do morons say things like this? Go actually use a fireplace sometime, man.
Op, as long as the fireplace is in good working order, i'd just stick with it. An insert is "better" yeah, but it's also incredibly expensive, isn't THAT much better, and requires quite a bit of labor to install.
Measure it out, have some 1/4” plate cut and weld up your own damn insert. Its a fricking box…sheez
That's what those big ugly metal panels are for.
The installers use a smaller insert that fits in your fireplace an then they cover the extra space with one of those big black iron borders.
Probably a dumb question, but what would an efficient fireplace actually look like? I'm thinking something akin to a wood stove, centrally located in a building, with lots of fins and possibly a blower to aid in radiating/convecting heat, with a counter-current air intake that pulls air from outside while heating it with exhaust gasses so that the exhaust is basically cooled by the time it leaves and the incoming air is warmed with that otherwise wasted heat. Might cause problems with creosote buildup though as stuff condenses out of the exhaust.
There's kind of growing notion on the internet that unless you have the absolute highest tech, most perfectly designed anything, then whatever you have is just flat out useless.
It would look like a stove with an imsulated pipe
An open fireplace with a chimney is essentially a giant open window if that helps you visualize why theyre not great for keeping your house warm
except that it's a small window with a massive heat source inside of it that radiates heat into your house and the smoke and a small amount of heat escapes up said window.
Exactly the same otherwise though.
Put an infared heater on during a cold night in front of a wide open window to prove how stupid you are
I do it all the time. I'm stealing my electric from my neighbor and no fricks are given. Suck it, homo.
same moronic gay
I don't think so . I posted all three of those.
If the heat going in is greater than the heat going out, yeah, exactly.
I'd be more like putting a infrared heater in front of a window that is in your ceiling, which itself is like 20 feet long and its entire surface is heated in itself.
Simple, the chimney pipes need to be long enough to give out most of the heat the fire creates. Regarding a bigger fireplace a lot of stone also reserves a lot of heat, so firing it up once a day or once in 2 days will do just fine. The taller the chimney, the better the draft, the longer the chimney, the worse the draft. Too big draft for the fireplace and heat is lost out the chimney, too low draft and incomplete burning loses heat through carbon monoxide and creosote is condensed to chimney. Optimal burning could be automatized with a lamda sensor in the chimney to sense complete burning and a step motor controlling the damper, but even with just a proper fireplace and correct usage pretty much 80% of the heat is absorbed by the stone in the fireplace.
Oh yeah and the moronic american way of building your chimney half outside the house is fricking moronic and wastes pretty much all of the heat created by the fire, on top of seriously predisposing it to heat cracking, since the temperature differences get high really fast.
Well for one, most chimneys being built like this are mostly just for having recreational fires, not as a full time dedicated heat source. The only other reason is if somebody is like dirt poor and has no other option, like in a log cabin house or something. Even in a shitty log cabin though, it does work surprisingly well, just requires quite a bit of wood, which generally isn't a problem on the frontier in the middle of nowhere.
After having an open fireplace in a 100+ year old uninsulated victorian 3-story home, and a reburning insert, the difference is 3 logs can burn all night, and it puts out much more heat.
If I remember (because I forgot the exact model, it was in the 80's), it was well-insulated to get the burn temp up. It had some kind of baffle plate above the primary burn chamber, and the blower could pump in additional air to the burn chamber.
Once you got a basic fire going, you would close the doors, adjust the flue, and turn on the blower. It would heat most of the ground floor, before the house walls were insulated.
Later on, the house got properly insulated. I can only imagine that helped to push more heat upstairs. The insert is now 40 years old.
Another advantage is when you use the reburn, the exhaust is cool and clean. Meaning little or no creosote buildup. And less wood hauling for 3x the heat.
Have you ever seen anyone so determined to prove how stupid they are
If you go with a standalone wood burner, I would advise having a few fires in it outside first. I just put an Ashley wood heater in my mancave and apparently they don't cure the paint prior to assembling. It put out some nasty as fumes for several hours
I built this fireplace insert for my place. Just make your own and make sure the chimney is up to snuff.
Looks like shit anon, hope you gas yourself to death.
>Looks like shit anon, hope you gas yourself to death.
Thanks. That means a lot to me coming from some random internet loser.