If you`re considering adding a fireplace in hopes of lowering your home heating bills, guess again.
While nothing may feel as warming as sitting in front of a glowing hearth, fireplaces are basically energy-losers, sending much of your home`s heat up the chimney.
Even with proper precautions, about the best you can do is keep your heating bills constant.
”A fireplace in 1990 is simply not a heat device; it`s an aesthetic attraction,” said David Jones, an energy specialist with the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources. ”You gain some radiant heat, but you`re losing much more furnace heat that goes right up the chimney. A chimney with an open damper is like leaving a window open and putting a fan in that window.”
Now for the good news: Thanks to technological gains, fireplaces have become much more energy-efficient in recent years and in some cases may actually produce a slight heat gain in your home.
And even better news is that fireplaces are a terrific investment-often doubling what you paid when it comes time to sell your home. (Beware, though: They may also raise your property taxes by a few dollars after a four-year grace period.)
”If you spend $3,000 installing a fireplace in your home, you can literally raise the price of the house by $6,000,” said Laura Devlin, manager of the Fireplace In Shoppes in Lansing and Willowbrook. ”Having a fireplace also puts you in a certain real estate category through the various
(computerized) multiple listings services. When buyers request to see homes with fireplaces, your home will come up.”
A bit of romance
And home buyers are seeking fireplaces.
”As home prices get nearer $200,000, buyers expect the amenity of a fireplace,” said Don Kepler of the Fireplace Builders Group in Chicago. ”In fact, many owners of more expensive homes find it necessary to install a fireplace because buyers expect it.”
Hence, fireplaces are basically a romantic addition to a home, not a functional one. But they needn`t be a luxury item that wastes energy.
To minimize or prevent any heat loss, Jones and the fireplace experts recommended the following:
– Install a fireplace with a vent to draw in cold outside air for combustion. This vent is basically a flexible pipe from the fireplace to an outside wall grill.
”The fire will draw air from the easiest place possible,” said Devlin.
”With an outside air combustion pipe, it will draw from the cold air outside instead of from the warm air your furnace heated inside the house.”
– Have a glass door fire screen installed and keep it closed to minimize the amount of indoor air that is drawn into the fireplace.
– Purchase a fireplace that features a heat circulator to maximize radiant heat. ”The heat circulator will suck air from the room, bring it around the back of the firebox and then kick it out the top of the fireplace with a fan,” Devlin said.
There are numerous other decisions you need to make when purchasing a fireplace. Here are the various options available.
Wood-burning fireplaces
Wood-burning fireplaces offer aesthetic values that others do not, the experts agreed.
Wood fires never burn the same, with a constantly changing variety of color and intensity from roaring flames to glowing embers. You can also poke the logs, watch the sparks fly and enjoy the soothing aroma.
The disadvantages are that firewood is very expensive in urban areas and has to be hauled home, chopped and stored. Wood also burns unevenly, so your furnace can find it difficult to keep up with temperature fluctuations, Devlin said. But keeping the fireplace doors closed will cut down on this problem, she added.
Wood-burning fireplaces also should be cleaned out after each use to keep a burnt smell from permeating your home.
Gas-burning fireplaces
The major advantage of natural gas-burning fireplaces is that you can turn them off and on as you please. And, in urban areas, natural gas is a cheaper fuel to burn than firewood. Gas-burning hearths also tend to cause less heat loss, the experts said.
”With a gas-burning fireplace, you open the damper before you turn the fire on and close the damper as soon as you turn the fire off,” said Devlin. ”If a wood-burning fire is still smoldering when you`re ready to go to bed, you have to leave the damper open so the smoke can escape. But that`s like leaving a window open. When you get up the next morning, it`s freezing in the house.”
Gas-burning fireplaces also burn cleaner than wood, don`t require cleaning and won`t throw sparks on your carpet.
The disadvantages are mostly aesthetic. The logs in a gas fireplace are ceramic replicas, which, of course, don`t really burn. And the gas flames, which come from a burner behind the logs, just don`t have the charm of burning wood. They`re a little more blue in nature, like the burners on your gas stove, and their intensity doesn`t change unless you turn the valve.
There also is very little radiant heat with a gas fireplace. ”The gas flame is poorly mixed with air so that it burns yellow,” said Kepler, ”so the heat value is low and it doesn`t radiate as much into the room.”
Structurally, there is little difference between a gas and wood fireplace, the experts said. In fact, even if you order a wood-burning fireplace, a gas line often will be installed along with it.
Portable fireplaces
An increasingly popular option-especially for condominium and apartment dwellers-are the so-called portable fireplaces that burn cans of alcohol-based gel.
Like the gas fireplaces, the portable fireplaces use fake ceramic logs, and three gel cans fit behind them.
The advantage of a portable fireplace is that it is truly portable. It needs no ventilation (chimney pipes) and can be moved from room to room or even from house to house.
”They are basically pieces of furniture with a firebox in them,” said Barbara Fulgear of the Firebox Co. in Rolling Meadows. ”The key is that when the alcohol gel burns, there are no toxic fumes. So you don`t need ventilation.”
Although they`re portable, these fireplaces are made to look like the real thing, with oak mantels and brick veneers. And, if you like, they can be permanently installed on a wall anywhere in your home. You can also purchase just the firebox and adorn it with an antique mantel and your own choice of tile, said Rose Marie Vaughan of American Hearth and Home, which has stores in the south suburbs and in the Merchandise Mart.
And if the people who buy your home don`t care about fireplaces, you can easily remove it and pack it off to your next home.
Like a gas fireplace, portable fireplaces are also completely controllable. You can just snuff out the flames with the can lids when you`re ready to go to bed.
And because there is no ventilation, there is no heat loss with a portable fireplace. In fact, there is a notable heat gain. These fireplaces can produce about 9,000 BTUs in an hour, enough to raise the temperature in a medium-sized room by as much as 10 degrees, according to Vaughan and Fulgear. The disadvantages are, again, aesthetics. Portable fireplaces create a fire similar to that in a gas fireplace. And Devlin said they also produce a slight odor, which many of her customers alleviate with a wood-burning scented incense that is popular with the gas fireplace crowd as well.
And, at about $2 per can of fuel-three of which burn for about three hours-they are a bit more expensive to operate than natural gas or wood fireplaces.
Installation
Installing a fireplace in an existing home or room addition is not as limiting as you might think. According to the experts, fireplaces have been installed in nearly every room of a home, including bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens.
Most fireplaces are installed flush to a wall, so they take up a few feet of living space. ”What you need is an area about two feet in depth and six feet in width,” said Devlin. ”If you want to do it without losing any living space, we can put a big hole in your wall and virtually push the fireplace outside- making it sort of an addition to your home. But that will also cost you more money.”
Most are installed in the center of an outside wall but many are also installed in corners and even in the center of a room.
Except for custom-built fireplaces, which may be built brick-by-brick by company`s like Kepler`s, many of today`s fireplaces are ”pre-fab” and mostly involve a carpentry job.
Don`t forget the chimney
Installation begins by securing a metal firebox to a wall and then attaching a chimney or exhaust pipe.
The chimney has a diameter of about 12 inches and usually runs up through the ceiling-through existing attics or crawlspaces-and out through the roof. Of course, if there is a second floor, the installation of the exhaust pipe becomes a bit more tricky-it can be installed on the outside of the house or masked upstairs with drywall.
The fireplace and chimney is then framed and drywalled, and a finish and/ or a mantel is applied. A hearth, which usually extends between 16 and 20 inches, is then constructed around the fireplace opening.
Installation of a fireplace will usually take three to five days and will require some messy work.
”These are great fireplaces for condominiums and townhouses because they don`t require a chimney,” she said. ”They use an exhaust vent similar to a dryer vent. But they don`t burn as realistically as the other gas fireplaces; they have more of a blue flame and they`re enclosed units. You can`t open the doors of the fireplace.”
The cost of a modern fireplace depends mostly on the exterior touches.
A standard wood- or gas-burning fireplace for a one-story home can start at about $3,000 installed. Add upgraded marble, wood-surround mantels, fancy tiles, bookshelves, track lighting, etc., and you can easily hit $10,000-plus. The portable, which comes in a number of finishes, costs about $300 to $2,000. And if you want it permanently installed, that will cost extra.
If you`re an adept do-it-yourselfer, you can save money by installing the fireplace completely or partially.
”You can buy the fireplace components for as low as $600, plus framing and drywall costs,” said Devlin. ”We can also install the fireplace and run the pipe and put the hole in the roof-the rough installation. And then you can do the fireplace`s finish and also save money.”
