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Old 11-11-10, 11:55 AM   #11
Ryland
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There are alot of good ideas there, but I do agree that you can't just make short blanket statements like he does in that very short piece, there are entire books on the topic that only do an ok job of covering everything.
I think that the idea of a fire place on the 2nd floor is referring to the basement as being the first floor, really all heaters should be as close to area to be heated as possible but forced air furnaces tend to make noise, are heavy at times and take up space.
I don't know of any reason not to have close to a 3 foot roof overhang in the US, a 3 foot over hang on every side of the house will make the whole house last longer, keep it cooler in the summer and let full light in in the winter.

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Old 11-17-10, 03:53 PM   #12
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I'm a little lost when it comes to the idea of a fireplace cooling a house. I suppose if its a bad design that would be the case but I grew up in a house and we used a fireplace quite a bit.

Normally the furnace would be running if we didn't have a fire but on the weekends or whenever we were home to tend a fire it was pretty normal to start a fire and have it going for most of the day. The fireplace had an air inlet that allowed the outside air in and there was a blower installed above the firebox blowing behind the vent pipe into the room. It kept an entire 2 story house up to temperature on days under 0f/-15c. If it was warmer than that we had to be careful because the size of the fire could actually make the house uncomfortably hot.

It was a cheap way to heat the house because we found wood to chop and there was an instance where severe wind took down many trees and we collected wood left at the roadside(with permission) when they began the curbside program for fallen wood so it worked great.

Works great for low or no cost heating depending on where and how the wood is collected, not the eco-choice though as burning wood to heat a house inefficient and highly polluting.
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Old 11-17-10, 04:45 PM   #13
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Most (okay, all) of the fireplaces I've seen draw in combustion air from the house, and send most of the energy from the wood up the flue. These are primarily decorative devices.

You could get good efficiency from a wood-burning device that draws combustion air from the outside and has heat exchangers on the flue, plus a good seal on the flue cap. But I don't see any efficiency advantage of a fireplace over a wood-burning stove.

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Old 11-18-10, 01:43 PM   #14
Ryland
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RobertSmalls View Post
Most (okay, all) of the fireplaces I've seen draw in combustion air from the house, and send most of the energy from the wood up the flue. These are primarily decorative devices.
Not sure where you are finding these fire places, but like I said I've worked cleaning wood burning fire places for almost 10 years and have only seen a few that don't draw outside air in to the fire box and alot of fire places also have some sort of heat exchanger on them, that either uses natural convection or has a fan that blows air.
Then there is the theory that the fire place should be heating not just the air but the mass of stone or brick and that is why you need to have it in the center of your house is if that mass is on an outside wall then you really are loosing that heat.
But the big thing that keep warm air in a house from going up the chimney is the dampener, that heavy steel door that closes off the chimney when the fire place is not in us, they do wear out over time and people do forget to close them.


The other thoughts that I had about that list was the suggestion that you should not put solar on your roof as it would keep you from collecting rain water... solar hot water and solar electric tend to have a layer of tempered safety glass, collecting water off a glass section of roof works really well, you get much cleaner water then asphalt shingles gives you, he didn't say anything about putting a steel roof on your house that I remember seeing, they aregreat for rain water collection and they last 100+ years along with being recyclable instead of going in the land fill and polluting our ground water and the only advantage that wood siding has is that it's cheap, steel siding will also last 100+ years or more and never needs an oil based stain like wood and tends to give a tighter house.

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