Is a fireplace energy efficient?
Generally speaking, an open wood fireplace draws more heat out of the house than it contributes, because burning the wood draws oxygen out of your air for combustion and pulls much of the heat from the fire, as well as the warm air inside your house, up the chimney. (Remember, heat rises.) This in turn pulls cold air in through all the air leaks in your house (cracks in walls, doors and windows, attic opening, etc.). So while the heat from the fire may make you feel warmer in the room where the fireplace is located, overall you are cooling the house down. Not only will the fireplace cool the rest of your house down, it will also cause considerable air pollution, as open fires produce a lot of soot. You can save a lot of money on heating costs if you use a high-efficiency wood-burning fireplace insert. These inserts are sealed, so they do not allow large amounts of warm inside air to be sucked up the chimney. They can even be installed so that they draw their air from outside. They throw off a huge amount of heat and they burn much more cleanly than an open fireplace. If you're renting and looking for a cheap option you could look into a tin-can stove. We had one in our cottage about 30 years ago; it looks like an oblong oil drum with a round lid on the top near one end, and a round hole at the other end; you put a stovepipe up your chimney, slide the stove into the fireplace, drop the stovepipe onto the small round hole, and then put firewood in the large round lid. This stove kept us toasty warm on one of the coldest Decembers on record - it went down to about -57F!If you turn the temp down to the rest of the home and the fireplace keeps you warm and you like a fire then do it .A fireplace is not efficient,most the heat goes up the chimney and so does the heat from the room. by snowman
I think a lot of the heat goes up the chimney, but years ago I saw plans for sort of a passive heating coil you could make pretty cheaply. It was a set of pipes formed in the shape of a U lying with the ends of the U toward the room. The idea being cool air entered the bottom of the pipe and the heated air circulated out into the room through the top opening. Never had one, but the idea seemed to make sense. I think I saw it in an old Mother Earth News magazine. Checked quickly on their site and found this article, might be a start. Check out their other articles, they always were quite interesting. by Sheller
Abby, If you want to use a fireplace to save heat you have to go "pioneer" and just use the fireplace (no furnace) otherwise the fireplace flue will cause an air stack effect in your home and suck the furnace heat from the house causing your heating bill to go up, not down. I know it is surprising to hear this since it sounds counter intuitive that lighting a fireplace can make your heating bill go up, but it is a well documented fact that is circulated by the Us Department of Energy. So what do you do with the fireplace? Well you can go with an insert but that is only worth the investment if you have a steady supply of wood, and time to chop it to burn it. If you do decide to scrap using the fireplace you can plug it with a chimney balloon if it is drafty, and this will keep you from loosing heat up the flue while the fireplace is dormant. There are options to get efficient zone heat like direct vent fireplaces or tile space heaters, but a wood fireplace is not a good efficient way of getting zone heat. by HalfHandy2
No, it isn't. You get warm if you're near enough, by radiant heat from the fire, but a fireplace sends a lot of warm air up the chimney, including the warm air you paid to heat some other way. If you get free wood and turn off the other heat when the fireplace is on or close the door in the room where the fireplace is, maybe it isn't too bad, but if you pay for wood it probably won't save you any money. But a fireplace needs air to burn properly. If you shut everything tight, you can get very poor burning or even downdrafts from the chimney, which bring smoke into the house. by Karen L
Conventional fire-places waste energy by sucking heat up chimney. You need to get a highly efficient Franklin stove with a glass door, & put in a chimney liner to prevent heat-loss. by Robert S
Generally speaking, an open wood fireplace draws more heat out of the house than it contributes, because burning the wood draws oxygen out of your air for combustion and pulls much of the heat from the fire, as well as the warm air inside your house, up the chimney. (Remember, heat rises.) This in turn pulls cold air in through all the air leaks in your house (cracks in walls, doors and windows, attic opening, etc.). So while the heat from the fire may make you feel warmer in the room where the fireplace is located, overall you are cooling the house down. Not only will the fireplace cool the rest of your house down, it will also cause considerable air pollution, as open fires produce a lot of soot. You can save a lot of money on heating costs if you use a high-efficiency wood-burning fireplace insert. These inserts are sealed, so they do not allow large amounts of warm inside air to be sucked up the chimney. They can even be installed so that they draw their air from outside. They throw off a huge amount of heat and they burn much more cleanly than an open fireplace. If you're renting and looking for a cheap option you could look into a tin-can stove. We had one in our cottage about 30 years ago; it looks like an oblong oil drum with a round lid on the top near one end, and a round hole at the other end; you put a stovepipe up your chimney, slide the stove into the fireplace, drop the stovepipe onto the small round hole, and then put firewood in the large round lid. This stove kept us toasty warm on one of the coldest Decembers on record - it went down to about -57F! by Robin the energy saver
