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The Dangers of Fireplaces
The high cost of heating fuel and the fear of ballooning utility bills may temp you to use your home’s built-in fireplace as a supplementary heat source for your home.
There can be many problems with primarily ornamental type fireplaces that can put your home and family at risk. For occasional use these fireplaces may be safe enough, but continual heavy use can cause design and material problems to put your safety on the line.
Building functional, relatively safe masonry fireplaces or to a lesser degree, installing factory made fireboxes and stacks has become a lost art. Not every mason knows how to do it properly or for other reasons it is just not done properly.
Most experts agree that a fireplace wastes more energy that it supplies. A roaring fire can draw three to four hundred cubic feet of air per minute; this air has to come from outside the home to feed the fire. It may be warm in front of the fire but cold air entering the home through cracks or around door seals will more than offset any gain produced by the heat from the fireplace.
Continual or even occasional use of a fireplace builds up creosote on the chimney liner. This is especially true with a chimney built with commonly used clay flue liner tiles. Creosote comes out of the burning wood as a gas and then condenses on the relatively cool flue tiles as a tar like substance.
Over a period of time, quite a bit of creosote can build up coating the inside of the chimney with a combustible material. This combustible material only has to reach ignition temperature to become a roaring un-controllable blowtorch. A pro-longed fire in a fireplace may bring the flue temperature up enough to cause ignition…and let me tell you…I speak from personal experience, that chimney fires are no fun and will scare the ever-loving daylights out of you and possibly burn your house down.
Many fireplace potential problems are not visible and can’t be found no matter who inspects it…So take my advice and consider your fireplace un-safe for prolonged use. It is just not worth the risk.
Outside Brick Fireplace News
Features give the Jasper a unique front facade - Evansville Courier-Press
Brick detailing, a covered porch, and an assortment of eye-catching windows combine to give the Jasper a unique front facade. All three rooms at the back are vaulted, with a high ceiling that slopes down toward the rear. Great room, nook and kitchen ...
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Rustic relic gets modern transformation - Santa Rosa Press Democrat
Bill Borden, creator of "High School Musical," and architect Melinda Gray take it easy on a daybed in front of the outdoor fireplace at their 1930s Santa Monica hacienda they converted into a Spanish Modern. There is no state-of-the-art media room ...
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Dining Out - New York Observer
Matsugen’s pared-down Japanese aesthetic is minimal bordering on grim. “Where’s the noodle man?” When my son was a boy, he loved to watch the noodle man at Honmura An, the only authentic soba restaurant in the city. The noodle man worked in a ...
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