If you have a fireplace or wood-burning stove in your home but still need a way of making the living space more comfortable in the wintertime while not paying the high cost of energy, we have a viable solution. A common misconception is that having a fireplace or wood-burning stove automatically means that efficient heat is being produced. The truth is that unless the right features are included in the design of the fireplace or wood-burning stove, the only room that would stay warm is the room where they are located.
To make your home’s fireplace or wood-burning stove more efficient, from both a heating and financial perspective, it needs to be designed with a blower or a blower needs to be added on. Although most fireplaces and wood-burning stoves on the market today are designed with blowers, if your units are older, chances are good that it could be fitted with a blower.
Keep in mind that without using a blower, heat produced often rises. Because of that, heat goes up instead of out so the room is not efficiently heated. However, with a blower, heat is literally blown out gently into the room, thereby heating the space much better and with better heat distribution.
For a fireplace or wood-burning to work with a blower, special heat-resistant tubing is required. Then, a fire would actually be built directly on top of the tubing, heating the air inside, which can easily reach temperatures of 500 degrees. Once the fire has been built and the tubing air heated, when the blower has been turned on, a device known as an air intake draws cold air from the room, pumping it into the pipes on which the fire has been started. As the pipes fill with the cold air, the system heats it very quickly.
With the air heated, the exhaust fan kicks in, pushing the heated air out from the pipes and into the room. Because it takes only a small amount of electricity for this process to occur and the room now benefits from heat coming from the fireplace, as well as the blower, you end up with a comfortable environment to enjoy. However, a quality blower for a fireplace or wood-burning stove is even more beneficial since the air is forced deep into the room, the warmth typically reaches beyond that one room so more areas of the home are comfortably heated.
Now, while fireplace and wood-burning stove blowers are an essential element of these units, it is important to choose a well-known brand, the right size for the intended unit, and one designed to activate automatically. The reason is that if the wrong choices were made, you could end up with a room that is simply too hot. At that point, you went from being miserable in a cold room to be miserable in a hot room. The easiest way to eliminate this problem is with a blower that has an automatic shut-off feature.
For this, you would simply set the desired room temperature. When the room’s temperature drops two degrees below that number or when the room becomes too cool, the heating unit with blower would kick on and off accordingly. Along with blowers, a number of other fireplace and wood-burning stove features would make your home more comfortable while saving money.
For instance, innovative damper designs called “top sealing dampers” are installed at the top of the chimney instead of in the firebox, thereby providing a better seal. Additionally, a fireback, which is a cast iron plate installed in the back of the firebox absorbs heat and radiates it back into the room and new glass door designs provide a more efficient barrier between the chimney and room, reducing space needing to be heated.
