Unfortunately FPX will not work in my case due to clearances and such. My hearth would have to be a lot wider and my mantel would have to be a lot taller and farther away from the fireplace. Its funny (no, its not), but I found all of my old notes from when we had the fireplace built. I got a headache just reading them and remembering what a pain in the butt the whole process was because even though the company said they were a fireplace and chimney company, they really didnt know fully what they were doing. Simple things like leaving all the booklets, manuals and instructions built in with the fireplace and no way to access it. (Yeah it had to be torn down and opened back up.) Not building it right so that my hearth didnt fit and I had to go out and buy a new one that would fit. They didnt do the insert right, so when it came time to order the fancy doors, well, because of what they did, we couldnt have that either. And forget about returning calls...... yeah long list of pages with numbers called, the amount of calls that day, etcc.. and it took several weeks to get a return phone call back from the lead guy, and things were going wrong on this end.
So on these other energy efficient fireplaces, I wonder if I would have thte same clearance problems with them? Just checking what all of my options are.
So I went to get 3 guys out here, the last guy blew my mind. Tells me I didnt have a fire and that I should be good to go and start lighting fires in my fireplace. Now mind you I have creosote there. Told me that if I had had a fire that there would be no creosote and that my chimney would be either completely clean or purple and that I would have heard a freight train. When I asked about the fact that I saw flames coming out of the chimney, he said Oh well then you had a little fire up there, maybe a birds nest, and whatever it was burnt off and you should be fine now. Just a little fire? Now, I had called this guy for a price quote on replacing my fireplace.......... after he tells me there was No Fire, he then gives me a bill for $65 for a LEVEL I Inspection.............. What on earth???? He NEVER said anything about that...... I thought I was getting a free estimate. On my form he wrote the wrong first name, but better yet....... he wrote the type of fireplace is MASONRY........... And its companies like that that give me a heart attack. I'm sure he is a good guy, but I that fee on the end that was never discussed, was kind of a D move and I dont think he is seeing the whole picture. I did see a fire, no matter how much he wants to downplay it.
I must say that I have experienced now a number of different chimney sweeps in cleaning my chimney and the disparity between them is amazing and scary at the same time. One company started to clean and then saw the creosote and immediately stopped and said we cant do this, you need to do the rotary cleaning, I mean that company was only starting to clean 2 minutes when they bailed? Other companies say they dont recommend rotary cleaning on my type of system because it is really hard on the flue. Somewhere in the middle here is the truth, but I dont know what it is.
So, back to looking for options on the fireplace......... the FX doesnt work, what else do I have? Oh yeah, I have to take the stones down to get the fireplace out. Sign me confused and frustrated.