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One of the most frequent comments we hear is “Every time I burn my fireplace, the house gets colder. How can I stop loosing heat?”
Everytime you start a fire, it consumes oxygen. As the fire burns, oxygen is pulled into the fireplace from the room and that room air is replaced by outside air through cracks in doors and windows. If air was not comming in from outside, the fire would quickly consume all of the air in the home, suffocating the occupants and the fire would go out. It’s this “infiltration” of outside air that actually creates “negative gain” or heat loss in most homes. The home actually gets colder the longer you burn the fire.
There are several positive heat gain solutions. The most common is an “insert”. A very heavy and expensive “new fireplace” is inserted into the old one. The insert is a brick lined fire chamber that you burn wood in, with a double steel wall, heavy door and fan. Room air is pulled into the space between the walls, heated and sent back into the room by the fan inside the unit. This is called “Heat Recovery” and is the principal by which all of these type units operate. Cool room air comes in, toasty warm air comes out.
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