keep warm and cozy - fireplace efficiency

​Is your fireplace keeping you warm and cozy? - Advice for better heat generation.

Have an old boarded up fireplace in your home, or looking to breath new life into an existing fireplace? These rebuilt fireplaces and chimneys must be working properly in order to take advantage of the growing trend of reopening old fireplaces that have been bricked or boarded up. The hot exhaust gases and smoke must be expelled through a chimney if a fire using wood or coal is to burn properly. A hearth grate should also be used to keep the fuel from suffocating the flames by letting air and waste ash to pass through. It is impossible for the fire to function properly if the chimney or flue is insufficient if the air flow is insufficient.

Count Rumford stressed the relevance of the flue's size in relation to the fireplace's aperture in his thesis on fireplace design principles, which was published in 1799. He proposed that the flue's cross-sectional area should be around a tenth of the opening's size. However, after the mid-nineteenth century, fireplaces became smaller. One-to-seven is the preferred ratio among modern flue liner manufacturers; size charts produced to date outline current specifications.

Open a window and see if it helps if your fire is smoky or won't burn correctly. The room needs more ventilation if this happens. The installation of a window vent is one option, although it may result in an uncomfortable cross draft. Single or twin ducted vents installed into the floor in front of the fireplace or external walls on either side of a chimney breast are far more efficient ways to ventilate a room.

When wood or coal is burned, a variety of byproducts such as combustible gases, tar, acids, and fine particles are released into the air. As a result, not all of these chemicals are utilized since household stoves are inefficient. While some of them condense inside of the flue, they instead rise up the chimney and are expelled. Soot is formed when unburned carbon interacts with these tars and acids, diminishing the flue's diameter over time. Local trade directories are a good source of information for finding qualified and insured chimney sweeps who can clean your chimney at least twice a year, before, through, and at the conclusion of the heating season. Because the unburned components of the soot can ignite, resulting in a chimney fire that can reach high temperatures and damage the chimney, soot-laden flues are a fire hazard.

When a flue is overly large, a liner can be installed to lower its diameter and therefore increase its efficiency. Flexible stainless steel flue liners, ceramic flue liners, lightweight concrete sections, or concrete cast in situ are some of the processes and materials employed. It is also possible to reduce the fireplace aperture by raising the hearth or installing a baffle at the top of the entrance. It's worth asking a fireplace expert if a metal smoke hood or canopy is the best answer if raising the hearth level or putting in a baffle is impractical or unappealing.