Unlike traditional wood burning fireplaces, a direct vent fireplace does not require a chimney ran through the entire home. Instead this type of fireplace only requires that a direct vent be placed on the exterior wall where the fireplace is installed to allow toxic fumes from the natural gas to escape outdoors. This small vent is easily installed by cutting through a small section of the exterior wall.

Direct Vent Fireplace Uses Natural Gas

When you are shopping for a fireplace for your home, you can choose from several different types. You can get a wood burning fireplace, but this will require a chimney. You may choose a direct vent fireplace, and this type will require a natural gas pipe line be run to the fireplace, as well as a direct vent installation. Unless you already have an existing wood burning fireplace, the direct vent type is easier to install. You can select the type of fireplace you desire from Copperfield Chimney Supply .

There are many advantages of installing gas fireplaces over traditional wood burning fireplaces. One advantage is that gas fireplaces are cleaner burning and do not release particles in the air. Another advantage of installing a gas fireplace is no longer having the need to cut or purchase firewood. This also eliminates the need for storage for your firewood and having to carry bundles of wood into your home. One of the greatest advantages of gas fireplaces is the ability with many models to simply switch it on and off. By being able to simply turn off your fire, you don't have to worry about immediately leaving the room or your home.

Direct Vent Gas Fireplaces

Did you know you can have gas fireplaces installed into your home even if you don't have an existing fireplace or chimney with a direct vent fireplace? Learn more about direct vent gas fireplaces at Copperfield Chimney Supply .

WOLF STEEL LTD., Barrie, ON

A clean face design with an exclusive CRYSTALINE™ ember bed embraces Napoleon's new collection of contemporary fireplaces. The Crystallo™ provides inspiration to create a hearth experience that focuses on warmth, beauty and style. CRYSTALITES™ (lights that accent the crystals from below) can function with or without the flame. Simply irresistible!

Up to 17,000 BTU's

• Top or rear vent design allows for versatile installation options

• Cost saving and environmentally friendly electronic ignition with battery back up

• Convenient on/off switch and built-in adjustable flame/heat control

• Exclusive CRYSTALINE™ ember bed sparkles with modern elegance

• Standard radiant, porcelain reflective panels echo flames and crystal reflections throughout the firebox

• Optional contemporary surrounds are available in three designs and in luxurious pewter and brown finishes

• Optional blower kit with variable speed and thermostatic control

• Optional convenient hand-held remote control

• Approved for bathrooms, bedrooms, bed sitting rooms and mobile homes

By Ashley Stewart Herald writer

The cold weather is creeping up on us, but a visit to the home show might help you make your house a little cozier this winter.

New innovations and advice from the consultants at Monroe Fireplace may allow you to swap that flickering yule log on the TV screen for one in your own fireplace.

“A fireplace adds the romance or aesthetic of a fire, which is sort of a traditional part of an American home,” said Bob Martin, owner of Monroe Fireplace.

“It also adds a practical element where the fireplace or stove unit can supply some or all heating in a home,” he said.

Martin, 69, and his wife bought Monroe Fireplace in 1985, when it was an 800-square-foot showroom carrying only wood-burning fireplaces. Today, the business has expanded to include a 3,500-square-foot showroom offering a full range of stoves, inserts and fireplaces that burn wood, pellets or gas.

Here are his tips for homeowners considering adding a fireplace.

“First, identify your motivation,” Martin said.

Customers should consider whether they want a fireplace that will save money on a heating bill, to provide backup heating without power or for aesthetics.

This will help them to identify the type of stove they should be looking for.

Pellet stoves require electricity, so if a customer is looking for a backup heat source, opt for a wood or gas stove, Martin said.

“The amount of space you have to donate to the product is important,” Martin said. “And you have to consider how much time you want to devote to it.”

Wood stoves are what Martin calls a lifestyle choice because they require continuous labor, including the daily handling and preparation of wood. Gas and pellet stoves are much less labor-intensive, he said.

Martin has a free-standing natural gas stove at home. He said gas stoves have the combined benefits of both wood and pellet burning stoves. They produce flame that looks similar to wood stoves, have the ability to run without power and can be economical. They also have better heating performance.

Fireplaces are typically added to a home when it is built. Inserts can be added to an existing fireplace to make it more efficient.

Martin said that customers should look for a reputable, experienced dealer who uses manufacturers that have “a good track record.”

“Our job is to work with the customer to help them determine what their needs are and match a product to their needs,” Martin said. “Product lines keep expanding, and that makes our job more important … you can’t just walk into this business and be functional and productive.”

Monroe resident Kip Rumens, 47, is a sales representative for Travis Industries, a fireplace manufacturer that supplies Monroe Fireplace. He will be speaking at the home show seminar, Zone Heating Will Save You Money and Energy.

Rumens said it’s more energy-efficient and less costly to heat your home in portions or zones.

People used to buy large wood stoves to heat their entire homes and would end up overheating and then opening windows to cool off, he said, wasting money and energy.

Advances in heating allow customers to use smaller stoves while retaining or improving efficiency, Rumens said.

“There are some groundbreaking technologies; doesn’t matter if it’s a fireplace or a stove or an insert,” Rumens said.

A new self-lighting wood stove ignites wood in 45 seconds with the press of a button. With this technology, the wood stove is 80 percent efficient compared with the 35 percent in an older wood stove, he said.

Gas stoves are about 85 percent efficient, and wood stoves without self-lighting and pellet stoves are in the mid-70 percent range, he said.

Have you ever noticed that your house is extra chilly in certain areas? While this phenomenon may be associated with ghostly activities, if the cold is close to an area with windows or doors you can breathe a big sigh of relief. Thresholds are one of the toughest areas of the house to insulate and could be where a lot of your heat is escaping. But using the right materials will help keep the cold from knocking at your door this winter.

Some of the typical steps that can be taken to insulate a house include weatherstripping windows and doors, insulating the attic and box sills and caulking. The primary end of these methods is to stop excess cold air from infiltrating the house. But the materials you choose can play a major part in temperature control as well. This is because heat transfer is a form of conduction. Keeping your home better insulated with less conductive materials can help that wood stove go further to keeping you warm and prevents as much heat from going to waste.

Quantifying Heat Transfer with R-Value

To understand how insulation is measured, we have to take a look what engineers and builders call the “R-value.”

The R-value is a metric that is used to quantify a barrier’s effectiveness at block the conductive flow of heat. The higher this number is, the more effective it is at stopping heat from leaching through.

The transfer of heat through an object is determined by the difference in temperature between each side and the material’s resistance to conduction. This difference can be divided by the R-value and multiplied by the total surface area of the barrier to give the total amount of heat transference through the barrier in terms of BTUs per hour.

For a variety of reasons, including security, weather resistance and superior R-value, hollow metal doors are going to be the best choice for almost any exterior application . Beyond the door’s frame, the next most influential property to R-value is going to be the composition of the door’s inner core..

A Comparison of Cores

You may not think about it much, but with the exception of antique doors, the interior is normally hollow. If this weren’t the case, doors would be extremely heavy and material-intensive to produce. While modern solid core doors do exist, they are typically retained for specialized purposes where the additional expense is deemed necessary.

So what’s inside a hollow door? To add additional stiffness, weather resistance and insulation, door manufacturers fill the inside of the door with some type relatively lightweight material. This core can be made out of a variety of materials which affect the door’s cost and structural properties. For the purposes of this article, we’ll be focusing particularly on insulation.

Honeycomb

The first common type of core found in doors is called a “honeycomb core,” named after the hexagonal lattice it is made up of. You may be surprised to hear that this material is actually a type of cardboard. However, in this case it is hardened with a special resin to increase structural rigidity. The honeycomb pattern allows manufacturers to maximize the stiffening property of the material without adding excessive weight to the door. This provides significant durability and is cost-effective to manufacture but doesn’t provide much in the way of insulation. It is also effective at disrupting soundwaves to provide a reasonable level of sound dampening. With a low R-value, the doors have good stability but aren’t the best for exteriors. If you’re looking to save on energy costs and minimize the amount of temperature transfer through thresholds then honeycomb core doors aren’t going to be the best choice.

Polystyrene

The next, more insulating material is polystyrene, which is sometimes abbreviated as EPS (for expanded polystyrene). EPS cores are both cost effective and provide fairly good insulation. It is the same type of foam you might find as packing material in boxes or in the shape of disposable coffee cups. The material provides stiffness and helps serve to prevent moisture from getting inside the hollow of the door. With a thermal resistance ranging from R-3 to R-5, EPS is a better insulator than honeycomb but still doesn’t offer the most insulation against cold temperatures.

Polyurethane

Polyurethane is more dense than polystyrene and therefore provides more resistance to temperature change. During the manufacturing process, it can start out as a liquid spray that expands and dries, filling the inside of the door thoroughly and bonding to the frame which adds additional strength to the door. Alternatively, there are versions that are installed as rigid boards more like polystyrene, but with the added density of polyurethane. The material is ideal for exterior openings in cold climates as it provides some of the best insulation available. The lowest level of polyurethane insulation is going to be as good or better than the best level of polystyrene insulation. It’s R-value is normally somewhere between R-6 and R-8.

Part of polyurethane’s propensity for insulating is due to pockets of low-conductivity gas contained in the material known as hydrochlorofluorocarbon. During the first two years after manufacturing, some of this gas escapes the pockets and the door’s insulative properties are slightly reduced. However, this is a fairly minimal reduction and after the first two years the hydrocholorofluorocarbon content of the polyurethane will remain relatively unchanged.

The Bottom Line

For those looking for a reasonable amount of insulation, both EPS and polyurethane core doors will be sufficient. But if you live in a colder climate, going polyurethane is most likely worth the slight additional cost of the material.

Hopefully this guide helps to give a good basic overview of common door materials and their insulative properties. While nothing replaces the warmth of a good fire, adding a little more insulation can help those logs go just a bit further to warm the inside of your house and keep cold from barging in. Unless, of course, it turns out the cold spots are from a ghost after all.

When it comes to fireplaces, the options truly are endless - both for existing fireplaces or those being installed from scratch. Choices range from Gas and wood freestanding stoves and zero-clearance pre-fabricated fireplace. Most are manufactured from steel components and can be placed just about anywhere in the home.

Generally, the living room and the kitchen are the most used rooms in a home and therefore are the most logical choices for locating a new stove or fireplace.

Costs to install a new fireplace or stove can vary greatly, starting with the appliance itself. Many homeowners are capable of doing the installation themselves and there are Internet sites like woodstoves-fireplaces.com that offer a great selection of products plus free technical and installation advice.

There are too many options for types and decorative materials to list here. The internet provides a wealth of information about fireplace and stove designs.

Each type of fireplace or stove will use its own chimney system required by the manufacturer of the appliance. It is imperative that the installation instructions be followed exactly and completely to assure safety.

If you already have a fireplace, you can consider the new direct vent gas insert or a high efficient wood insert.

Older masonry fireplace are mostly inefficient and an insert will correct that situation providing the heat to the room that is generally lost up the chimney.

Where you like will bear heavily on what type of fuel you choose to burn. County living provides easier access to wood while city living lends itself to gas appliances for the ease and convenience.

Particular attention should be paid to the efficiency of the product you are purchasing, especially if you plan to use it for supplemental or whole house heating. In almost all cases, you can save money over operating your central heating system.