Fireplace Tips

All my life, I have lived in a home where the heat was supplemented by a fireplace. Typically, fireplaces have a bad rap of letting more heat out than they produce, but there are a few ways to offset that.

First, safety. Make sure your fireplace has been recently cleaned and checked out by a chimney sweep. Each year, fireplaces are the cause of numerous house fires. Keep the area around your fireplace clear of papers, toys and such. Also make sure you have a screen in front of the fire.

Make sure your damper is open to the proper position. If it is not open, you will smoke up your room. If it is open too far, you may cause your fire to burn faster and use your wood faster. It will take a few fires for you to figure out when click of the damper handle is right for your fire. When your fire is finished and completely cooled off, remember to close your damper.

Burn good seasoned wood. Rotten wood burns quickly, and green wood either won't burn or sends out numerous sparks. A well seasoned wood is around a year old. Keep your wood dry. We keep ours in a barn stall, where it is off the ground, and always kept dry. From the barn it goes to the front porch, then from the porch into the house.

Every time you bring wood into the house, you lose some heat. Develop a system to get it in quickly and have a place where you can store wood inside so you are not going out each time you need to add another log. We keep wood on the porch right outside a window that is beside the fireplace.

Several years ago, I discovered that by removing the window screen for that window, we could turn it into a pass through for the wood during the winter. It works well, and we don't feel a chill like we used to when we went out the door each time for wood. We simply slide open the bottom pane about 12 inches and reach outside and get the wood. I bet if you check around, you could set up a similar set up in your home.