My wife and I are preparing to build a house and are trying to decide between a gas log fire place or a wood burning fireplace. The only reason I like gas is the convenience. I dont mind splitting wood and I like the smell of wood smoke.

Looking for thoughts and opinions?

Nothing beats a real wood fire :yes: But what do you want it for ?Heat or ambieance(sp) if you are going for heat go with a wood burner with as big a opening as you can get. If for ambieance go with a fireplace. I wouldn't go gas, not enough heat for the gas used if heating a big room. Just my 02.

Nothing beats a real wood fire :yes: But what do you want it for ?Heat or ambieance(sp) if you are going for heat go with a wood burner with as big a opening as you can get. If for ambieance go with a fireplace. I wouldn't go gas, not enough heat for the gas used if heating a big room. Just my 02.

I am looking for heat AND ambiance (crackling fire, glowing coals, etc...). If it was one or the other, I would say heat. The wife says wood stoves are out otherwise I would put one of those in (have to do that in my future garage)

Personally, I love the look, sound and smell of a real wood fire. I'd never change to a gas fireplace, especially with the cost of natural gas and propane.

my only heads up is to ask your home insurer if they have any issues with a wood stove, your garage too... insurers around here frown on wood... might be better to buy a 60" plasma and put on the 'firelog' dvd, and when you are bored with it, you can put in the 'aquarium' dvd... cheaper than a fireplace! and you can watch speed on it!hahaha!

ak

I live in a log cabin with a rather big moss rock fireplace. The cabin was built in 1971, and the original owner installed a wood burning heatolater when he built the house. Accordingly, several rocks and lots of mortar immediately above the stove were intentionally omitted during construction so the warm air could travel through 4" or so diameter round ducts/tubing and be blown into the livingroom via fans.

The heatolator eventually crapped out and the owner got lazy. Instead of replacing it he gutted the heatolator and installed a pellet stove insert in front of the housing. He never bothered to "fix" the mortar/rock issue. Instead, he stuffed the gaps with steel wool- LOTS of steel wool. :thumbsup:

I decided to redo the fireplace a few years ago. I chucked the pellet stove in favor of a Vermont Castings wood stove insert. Now I can heat my house even if the power goes out, I'm not depending on any type of fossil fuel or a delivery truck, and the "coolness" factor is way above any other option I could find. Nothing beats a real fire in the dead of winter: the smell, the sounds, and knowing that you've got heat no matter what. Plus, my electric bill is cut by about 40% versus using my electric heat.

My house is small, only about 1,300 sqft. But, the insert will keep it pretty warm, even when the temperature drops to -20 or -30. The only draw back is that sometimes I don't want to clean it, but that only needs to be done once a week or so with steady use, and it takes less than 30 minutes to do a comlete job- little Sunday morning project.

When my furnace crapped out on me i slept in front of the sealed gas fireplace. I had to keep turning over in the night to keep one side of me from getting too cold. The living room was about 50, and the rest of the house was around 40. mind you it was in the 20's outside.

When the house furnace is working, the gas adds a nice feeling to the living room, but i often find myself wishing the previous owner had not converted the fireplace to a gas insert.


go with the wood burning fireplace.

The way the world is "going green" (lord I hate hearing that over and over and over....) I think EVENTUALLY most areas will follow what many counties and cities are enforcing - no wood burning fireplaces.

Something to consider. Lots of places out this way where its prohibited and you can be fined for it. Just something to consider. Few years down the line, depending on where you live, you may end up redoing it anyway. I'd see where your county or state stands on this before dishing out coin for something you may not be "allowed" to use.

I see you're from California....you really need to get away from there...

Kidding..!

I understand what you are saying though. I'll counter that with to points:

1. I live in Oklahoma. The "wild west" when it comes to "green enforcement"

2. Easier to convert from wood to gas than gas to wood. (I assume)

I see you're from California....you really need to get away from there...

Kidding..!

I understand what you are saying though. I'll counter that with to points:

1. I live in Oklahoma. The "wild west" when it comes to "green enforcement"

2. Easier to convert from wood to gas than gas to wood. (I assume)

No need to kid, you are 110% correct. :D

Just something to consider. Everyone always says "only in cali" but we arent called the "bell weather state" for nothing - what starts here usually spreads like disease and ends up everywhere in one form or another (like vehicle emisssion and MPG standards). Not sure of the conversion costs from one to another though but guessing you are correct.

My uncle has a pellet stove and that thing rocks. Heats the hole house very effectively but doesnt really give you that sound and crackle your looking for.

"Green" huh?! Wood burning is better than petroleum products, decreases dependency on foreign oil. Also, argueably wood burning is carbon neutral. I won't go into the details or debate, you can research yourself.

Kevin. Take a look at the Pellet inserts. I used to work on them. You get the look, smell and feel of a "real" fireplace. They are very efficient. 95% of the heat goes into your house instead of up the chimney. They are easy to load and maintain, You can get them with a thermostat so they will turn on and off as needed and you can get them with battery backup so they will work even with a power outage.
http://www.inglenookenergy.com/Stoves/Pellet_Insert/Quad_MtVernon/MtVernon_Pellet_Insert.jpg
http://www.alternativeheat.net/graph2002.gif
http://www.epa.gov/airprogm/oar/woodstoves/art/regraph.gif

"Green" huh?! Wood burning is better than petroleum products, decreases dependency on foreign oil. Also, argueably wood burning is carbon neutral. I won't go into the details or debate, you can research yourself.

wasnt my intention to debate "going green" and all that carbon neutral, carbon credits, carbon footprint Al Gore term BS but rather that the folks that pass laws and legislation are simply doing this whether it has merit or not.

talk to all the govt agencies that are banning wood burning stoves and fireplaces at home - smog, pullutants, irritation on folks lungs, all that crap. I dont care much, i'd drink oil and piss carbon if I could just to irritate hippies.

Kevin. Take a look at the Pellet inserts. I used to work on them. You get the look, smell and feel of a "real" fireplace. They are very efficient. 95% of the heat goes into your house instead of up the chimney. They are easy to load and maintain, You can get them with a thermostat so they will turn on and off as needed and you can get them with battery backup so they will work even with a power outage.
http://www.inglenookenergy.com/Stoves/Pellet_Insert/Quad_MtVernon/MtVernon_Pellet_Insert.jpg
http://www.alternativeheat.net/graph2002.gif
http://www.epa.gov/airprogm/oar/woodstoves/art/regraph.gif

I will have to research those although it kind of takes away from the open fire thing...can you burn wood in them?

I am looking at this for my fireplace. I have a heatalator that has a cracked tile just above it, would cost me more to replace the tile than to have fireplace insert put in and it will be more efficent. http://pacificenergy.net/product_insert_summit.php

Check with your insurance agent first. You will be surprised what you can't do without paying extra premiums! Wood stove in a garage, with cars? forget about it!

If you have storage space, get a pellet stove and buy a pallet.
Works much better than any gas "insert" or gas "stove" I have seen.

The pellet stove my uncle had almost, but not quite..
rivaled the big, cast iron, 2 small glass door, wood burning stove that you could stoke like a train engine if you wanted to. Thing would darn near glow, but the ashes and such were a pain (no glowing ashes, but still extra work, plus to keep it going you needed to tend to it).
(edit: the heat from the plain wood stove was radiant only.. no fan/blower.. the pellet stoves and gas stoves I have seen have blowers on them, and in one case, the blower was very noisy).

My vote goes to pellet stove..
Gas "inserts" are for looks.
Gas stoves.. IMO use huge amounts of gas and get little done until they are on for hours.

We had a vermont castings gas stove and IMO it was junk(!) compared to the wood stove, and fell far below my uncles' pellet stove. He would get a pallet of pellets and then just toss a tarp over them, and heat most of the house with it for the winter. (New england, so decent winters).

Plus no need to mess with wood, who is selling a cord for what, is it dry, where to store it, are the cuts too long to fit into the stove.. whatever...

matt

I will have to research those although it kind of takes away from the open fire thing...can you burn wood in them?

Kevin. It has a real flame because it is burning wood pellets. You can't throw a log in it though.
Heres a couple Vids.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNgecZ154JM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POS5P2sPhn8&feature=related

When we built our house in '75 we built a fireplace in the rec room and the living room. Both had the heatalator units with fans. In cold weather they couldn't heat the room they were in never mind the whole house. We had a gas fireplace installed in the rec room and it can heat the whole house except in the colder weather. No regrets at all. We'll probably do the living room one some time too, but right now the opening is filled with an LCD tv and we can have flames whenever we want. ;)

Get a wood stove, we installed a Quadrafire in our living room. Cold nights are no problem. A different flame pattern every time. With gas you get the same pattern. Before all we had was a heat pump, the power company loved it.

If you are set on just a fireplace then there is no question, GO GAS. You are not going to get any kind of additional heat from a traditional fireplace without some kind of insert. With wood you have bugs,dirt and have to clean it up when you are all done, plus at the very least you have to haul the wood into your nice new CLEAN family room. With gas all you have to do is flick a switch, nothing to clean up afterwards. If you are like 95% of other fireplace owners the novelty will soon wear off and will wear off even quicker if you are cutting and splitting wood.

My Vermont Castings insert is called a Winter Warm. Like others have mentioned, some cities or states are enacting laws that limit emissions, ones like you'd get from a traditional wood stove. The insert I have has a catalytic converter and emits almost no emissions once it is warmed up.

You get the fire started and it takes maybe 3/4 an hour before it is ready. Then you shut the flue. Yeah, I had a tough time believing that too until I tried it. The catalytic converter actually burns up practically all of the smoke, as smoke is essentially unburnt fuel. The first winter I used it I would walk outside to my front yard and watch the chimney. I could see just a tiny wisp of smoke, practically nothing compared to my neighbor's traditional wood stove that smokes like a train.

The stove has 2 fans that blow warm air out into the livingroom. The fans really help the fireplace heat the house, but they aren't absolutely necessary. The insert can still be used with the power out, and since the insert has a glass front it doesn't pull a ton of warm air out of the house to provide oxygen to the fire. There is a small intake on the side of the stove that is controlled by a lever that regulates the amount of oxygen given to the fire. I've used the fireplace with the power off and it will keep the house heated in the lower 60s with outside temperatures in the lower double digits, even with the flue open.

Others have mentioned pellet stoves. The one I replaced was an older model that had to run wide open to keep the house warm. I liked it. It was kind of neat, especially since a 40 lb bag of pellets would last 8-10 hours. The wood stove will only run 6-7 hours before it needs to be refilled. However, it was useless when the power was out.

When I redid my fireplace I almost went back with a pellet stove except for two things. No one locally would agree to service them and, as I mentioned, they don't work when the power goes off. I haven't seen one with a battery back-up, but that sounds like a really cool innovation.

Wood stoves/inserts do have a messy side to them, but I can live with it. I know it sounds strange coming from a car guy, but I just hated the idea of depending natural gas to heat my house. I wanted a way to get through the winters without emptying my wallet courtersy of Amerigas. Moreover, I didn't want a big white fuel tank sitting out in my yard somewhere. Wood is plentiful where I live. I spent $165 on an 18" chainsaw 4 years ago, and I go out and grab a cord or more of wood every fall wherever I can find it. I can buy a cord of wood in the summer for $180 delivered, split, and cut to the length I want.

No regrets thus far.