The snap and pop of wood burning in the fireplace warms Robert Hender’s heart. He loves everything about a wood fire.
The smell.
The sound.
The family pulling up close to get toasty warm, then scooting back when their faces glow rosy red from the heat.
“I even like going out to get the wood and bringing it home, stacking it, because that means winter has come, and it’s snuggle time,” said Hender, whose family lives in an older house in Lexington, Ky.
Granted, burning wood can be messy. Wood bits and ashes drop on the rug and need to be swept up from the hearth.
And it’s not the most efficient way to heat.
“But I don’t ever worry about that because of all the pluses,” Hender said.
That’s how wood-burning devotees feel about a real fire, whether in an open fireplace or a fireplace insert.
“So it’s messy,” said Shelly Johnson, a stay-at-home mom in Powell County, Ky. “I’m home every day, so I’m able to keep it swept up.”
Shelly’s husband, Jason, a quality engineer in Mt. Sterling, uses a chainsaw to cut up fallen trees and limbs from their yard and their neighbors’ yards.
With an ax, he splits the logs into chunks that fit easily into the fireplace.
The Johnsons recently installed a new gas furnace, but they plan to continue using their fireplace.”Our house is kind of large,” she said. “So we use it not just for ambience, but it’s supplemental heat.”
Gas logs are no mess, no fuss and can be lit with a match or the turn of a key. They also outsell wood-burning fireplace inserts 10 to 1 these days.
But many people who prefer burning wood share Kathy Hummer’s opinion of gas logs.
“You can have them,” Hummer said.
She had gas logs removed and the gas line capped in the living room fireplace in her 1950s-era house.
“Matter of fact, I did that as soon as I moved in. That was 1988,” she said. The wood “makes the whole house smell good,” said Hummer, a postal clerk.
Despite the ambience, an open fireplace is not the most efficient way to heat a room because, with the damper open, “you’re sucking about 4,000 square feet of air [per hour] right up your chimney,” said Scott Farmer, owner of Aurora Wood Stoves, Pools & Spas.
A fireplace insert in a double-wall steel unit equipped with a thermostat and a blower that fits into an existing fireplace is more efficient.
Most inserts sold today have catalytic combusters that burn the gases that are produced before they escape out the back of the insert. “It gives you back more heat because you get a secondary burn,” Farmer said. The converter also reduces air pollution.
The price of quality inserts ranges from $900 to $1,500.
Farmer said the increasing cost of natural gas may dampen the popularity of gas logs over fireplace inserts.
For example, Columbia Gas of Kentucky customers will pay 42 percent more for natural gas over last year.
“I think everyone is panicking, thinking, `Oh, I better burn wood,”‘ said Gina Mattingly, secretary at ArborCare of Kentucky tree service, which sells wood from limbs and trees they cut for customers.
Mattingly hasn’t even had to run an ad this fall about firewood for sale. “I’ve had plenty of customers call,” Mattingly said. “A lot is repeat business and word-of-mouth.”
Farmer’s store has been selling fireplace inserts at a brisk pace, and every customer has expressed concern about rising gas costs.
“They were all looking for supplemental heat,” he said, “so they wouldn’t be using their furnace as much.”
