Comments regarding modern fireplaces - by one of our readers,
I suppose I am somewhat skilled at building a roaring fire in our upstairs decorative fireplace in about a half hour or so, but I'm sure that you know too that these permanent features were built into the house for show, and not for heating. Have you ever noticed in the colonial homes how sharply the back of the firebox slopes inward toward you to the flue opening? And how shallow the depth of the firebox is? They understood (and depended) on radiant heat. I'll bet their wood fuel was split (and dried) in relatively small pieces with grates high enough off the hearth to accomodate a layer of ash deep enough to support glowing coals for hours. Need bellows! And shaved dry wood! Every household had a "set" of bellows and emergency dry wood. Your fire was like your lifeblood in those times. But I think those homes were stinky! With the combination of woodsmoke feedback from undampered wind gusts, the use of tallow candles (smells like burning bacon) and the social acceptance of only bathe-when-you-smell-yourself surely made for some nasty odors. But they were warm and surived, for the most part.
Anyway, the old style design of an open fireplace ADDED heat to a room, though perhaps somewhat smokey (another factor was the absence of smooth walled flue liners like we have now-terracotta pipe sure beats stone and or brick and mortar, because of the easier aerodynamic flow. But, our decorative fireplaces SUBTRACT heat from a room (or the house) from their design. Our house's central temperature and relative humidy plummet with a roaring fire.
Real efficiency calls for a properly designed fireplace such as the Rumford Models detailed at http://www.rumford.com or the many stoves and/or fireplace inserts detailed here on HearthNet.
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