Gas Stoves thefireplace?

Had a wood burning fireplace insert for years and finally burned it out.

Now have a pellet insert.

Both heats the house for less than $400 bucks for the year. Sweetie likes it very warm, so this is the only way for our house hold. She's melted candles (they bent over) from leaving the thermostat set too high during the early days with the pellet stove.

Down side is that it makes noise when it's firing.

If/when the pellet stove goes, I'm going to put in a gas fired insert.

Installed both above myself, so don't have a recommendation either way for you, other than to say: ask questions of many dealers and read up.

There used to be more dealers, but they have been weeded out. So assuming only the "better" ones left.

Venting is very important. Venting as in the intake air for the furnance burner. If you vent interior air, you'll be wasting heated air. Mine is vented from the chimmney flue. The flue top has a 1/4" thick plate of aluminum that has two holes bored. One is for the exhuast gases from the pellet stove and the other is for intake to the burner. That intake air is also pre-heated by the exhaust pipe that runs the whole length up to the vent.

The European makes have it over the domestic products, but the service and time to get parts killed that option for me.

The other downside of pellet inserts or anything burning a wood product, is ruining the lungs of your neighbors. Hubby has asthsma which is well controlled and does not ever flair up unless we make the mistake of going for an evening walk during the winter - then it is chokesville for both of us. I am shocked that this is even legal in today's more health conscious environment. We used to walk every night after dinner, and now can only do so during the warmer weather.

True, there is no free lunch. Extracting the natural gas and getting it to homes also uses resources, but at least your neighbors will be able to breathe during the winter. Now if only we could get our neighbors to stop burning their trash during the summer! It can be 100 degrees outside and even then, several homes have full fires going and smoke billowing out of their chimneys almost all day long. What in the world are they burning anyway?

I am off the soapbox now.

We have never used our fireplace, but are considering running a gas line in, just for the ambiance. Does little in terms of generating heat unless you get one of the power assisted units designed for that purpose. As you can see, I am no expert on fireplace inserts...

Cathye

Bay area/Central Valley locales-I notice that in new home construction-there are no woodburning fireplaces only gas logs even in the most high end homes. Only place I see woodburning fireplaces is in Yuba and Shasta county and higher elevations in Fresno county.

Key is EPA certification for the stove, whether burning wood, pellets, gas, etc.

A non-conforming gas burner will polute as much, if not more than an EPA certified alternative fuel burner.

"Natural gas" comes from an oil well, so not much difference from a gasoline burner, or heavy oil burner (used motor oil, diesel, etc). The difference is "internal combustion" of an automotive engine vs "open combustion" of a furnance.

My wood burning fireplace insert was EPA certified and allowed to burn on SMOG alert days.

My pellet burning fireplace insert is EPA certified and allowed to burn on SMOG alert days.

Have wondered if the ban is for certified pellet stove too. Guessing yes, and a backlash of sorts from folks not knowing the engineering and specifications of pellet stoves.

If your naighborhood has "smoke" or pollutants from insert exhuast above the specification, then their inserts are not in tune or in compliance.

Too many folks don't know HOW2 fire their fireplace insert wood burning stoves. They need to go into the secondary and tertiary burn cycle (burns the smoke in secondary/tertiary chambers, or uses a CAT like whats in cars, in the smoke stack foodchain). In order for these stoves to go into that burn phase, they need to be ****HOT**** and most won't fire theirs hot enough.

Or it could be that Cathye's neighbors ARE burning trash, as she speculates. Which is really irksome, as it could be plastic or other carcinogens. Perhaps I should sit inside when I dine at Aqui?

We have a fireplace insert that came with the house. We've never used it, and I'd love to get rid of it. Free to anyone who cares to uninstall it from our West San Jose home.

Robert

Sorry, sometimes a bit Pollyannish and "assumed" folks know not to burn garbage in their fireplace... :(

Now that you mention it, got'a give this advice: ***DO NOT*** burn pressure treated wood of any kind. The preservatives used is poisonious (..aka green is arsenic is one ingredient and has be outlawed).

Not the heat or flames that kill the most folks from fires, but the smoke. Which is laced with plastic smoke, one of the most deadly forms of smoke.

Agreed. I cannot think of any other reason why smoke would be billowing out of chimneys at 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon when it is 100+ degrees outside. Can anyone else?

Perhaps (optimistically), they are only burning financial records to avoid having to go the shredder routine, but even there, I believe that the chemicals used to treat the paper, as well as the ink when burned, can't be good to inhale and again - this is a huge negative externality with economic consequences to 3rd parties not involved in the transaction. And it sure feels terrible on the lungs to breathe this stuff. Where is code enforcement when we need them??

PS-I am not just referring to Eichler owners in this tale - it involves a varied selection of homes and locations in our beautiful Willow Glen neighborhood.

Now, if only we could get that corner house on the next street over to get the non-operational autos out of the backyard! No, I am not a peeping tom - but you cannot help but notice, given all the fences that are falling down. Sometimes inheriting mommy's and daddy's home can be a bad thing for the neighborhood.

- How's that for a digression?

Cathye

Just for the record, any chimney repair contractor should be able to remove your fireplace insert and replace the damper. We just got rid of ours a couple months ago. Prices were $250-$400 for removal, disposal, and chimney cleaning. The big question is whether the damper's still there and whether it's usable; in our case, they didn't remove the damper when installing our insert (actually, it was a "hearth stove" because it sat in front ofthe fireplace. The damper did get warped from the extra heat, but it mostly closes.

We're just happy not to have this huge lump of metal sitting in front of our very nice fireplace.

One other complication: replacing the original damper can be troublesome because it may involve some brick work to remove the old one or install the new one; I heard quotes of from a couple hundred to $800 (usually just over the phone). Spring-loaded chimney cap dampers are the usual retrofit since they're easy to install.