Here are some tips that may be helpful as you get ready for the upcoming winter season.

The first order of business is to make sure your chimney is clean. This process should be done every year regardless of use of your fireplace. Not using it could result in birds or animals having nested in the chimney and blocking the flow. Also one needs to make sure that all creosote has been removed from the chimney. Creosote is a deposit left by burning uncured wood and is a very highly flammable substance that can destroy your chimney and/or home if ignited.

Buying you wood a year in advance is a good idea. Stacking so that you can cover the top but leaving the sides open is recommenced as this allows the air to flow through the stack further drying the wood. High moisture content in wood will not only make your fireplace inefficient, it will promote the build up of creosote in your chimney

Whenever possible, try to burn hard woods. Hard woods are more dense and will provide more heat and efficiency than burning similar soft woods. Oak, hickory, elm, maple and apple are all good hardwoods. The BTU's in a same size log of hard wood and softwood will be considerably greater because the hardwood is heavier.

Some folks like to store their firewood inside. This is generally not recommended as there could be insects nest in the wood. Storing your wood outside until ready for use is recommended.

Starting your fire can be a challenge but doesn't have to be. While some fireplaces have a grate for placing the wood on, those fireplace are not generally the most efficient. Of course the grate will allow you put put paper or starting materials under the wood and will provide a flow of air coming up from the bottom of the wood - all good stuff. However, using a great is not as efficient as burning the wood right on the floor of the fireplace. Starting your fireplace in the absence of a metal grate is easy. Just place the wood in a criss cross manner so as to allow air to flow in and around the stack. Is is imperative that you heat the chimney so that it draws. Large pieces of crumpled up newspaper makes are great starter as it will be very quickly and produce immediate heat. Using smaller pieces of kindling for the initial burn is critical. If you add larger pieces to quickly, they will start to smolder and product that thick blue smoke that is creosote laden. Leaving the door slightly ajar until you get a good fire going will help considerably.

Always remember to open the fireplace damper before attempting to start a fire. In some homes that have an outside chimney which is generally cold, you can open the damper a short while before starting the fire to start heating the chimney with room air.

Doors or a screen is highly recommended for any fireplace. Some wood will generate sparks that can fly into the room. It is always advisable to have a non combustible surface protection in front of the fireplace.

There are many types and styles of fireplaces, some efficient and some not so much. If your fireplace is totally used for ambience, it probably doesn't;t matter to you if it is efficient or not. However if you have an older masonry fireplace, you may want to consider an insert. Insert will definitely make your inefficient fireplace efficient.

Like anything else built into the structure of a home, a fireplace can become dull-looking and outdated over time, particularly when it's in a room with modern decor.

There are lots of ways to bring new life to a fireplace that has become an eyesore or you're just plain bored with. And now is a good time to do it.

"For homeowners who may have missed out on updating their fireplace in the fall, late winter is a great time to take advantage of sales on overstocked hearth accessories before the warmer seasons arrive," says Jess Baldwin, vice president of marketing, merchandising and product development for Monessen Hearth Systems, a hearth-products supplier that also sells Majestic and Vermont Castings brands.

Options can mean investing several hundred to several thousand dollars in the project. For instance:

Inserts: Inserts are the priciest way to rejuvenate a fireplace, but they're also the most energy efficient, particularly when converting a wood-burning fireplace to gas.

"Homeowners looking to update their fireplace and add a cozy ambience to their home can do so with the installation of a fireplace insert -- which can fit in a pre-existing fireplace," Baldwin says. "Besides the aesthetic appeal, fireplace inserts can result in increased heat output, reduced emissions and improved efficiency."

Some people love the crackle and ambience of wood. Hauling wood and cleaning up ashes -- that's all part of the wood-burner experience. But for others, not so much, and that's where inserts come in.

"A lot of people don't want to burn wood anymore," says John Malarney of Patio, Deck & Hearth Shop in Newbury.

Says Matt Patterson of Country Stove Patio & Spa in North Royalton, "We've sold a lot of gas inserts and vent-free gas logs lately."

An insert is a fireproof box that's surrounded by steel or cast iron and fronted by insulated glass, creating a closed combustion system that helps trap heat. You can continue using natural wood with some inserts, and the wood will burn more efficiently because of the heat containment. But most inserts are for gas.

Some inserts are equipped with a blower that forces hot air into the room through front vents, making the fireplace more efficient, Malarney adds.

Shop Fireplaces Here!

When you are connecting flexible gas pipe to your different gas appliances, you will need to figure out what type of connectors you require. There are both male and female adapters available, as well as brass tees when you need to split the gas line. Male adapters are threaded and allow a section of gas pipe with a female adapter to be screwed together.

Flexible Gas Pipe Comes in Different Size Diameters and Lengths

Flexible gas pipe comes in different lengths as well as different size diameters, including 3/8 inch, ½ inch, ¾ inch and 1 inch. When selecting gas pipe, choose the size that will work best with your gas appliance, fireplace or stove. You will also need to purchase adapters in the same size so that they will fit correctly onto the ends of the gas pipe. You will find flexible CSS gas pipe available on our website in a variety of lengths and sizes, here at Copperfield Chimney Supply

A nice way to heat up your home on cold days and save on your electric bill is to use a wood burning stove . You will find that there are different types of wood available besides using common firewood. There are cleaner burning wood fuels available, which are made from recycled materials which give off less smoke, but just as much heat. It is easy to keep a fire burning all day and night, regardless of your wood fuel preference, as long as you keep adding more wood to the stove.

A Wood Burning Stove Can Be Used in Many Places in Your Home

In the past, you would commonly find a wood burning stove in the kitchen. However, today, you will find these units in other places of the home, including living rooms, dining rooms, bathrooms and bedrooms. Modern, efficient wood burning models are available in all different sizes, on our website, here at Copperfield Chimney Supply. With these modern models, you can even run the chimney right through the middle of the home instead on an exterior wall.

Many Americans are bracing for high heating bills this year, but the frosty New England winter won't put a chill on Erik Fey and Kathleen Rutty-Fey's energy budget. The Feys are one of many families reducing their costly household oil or gas dependence by turning to a traditional fuel with newfound popularity: wood.

The Feys first used a wood stove to supplement heat in their New Hampshire home, then migrated to sustainable wood pellets and have never looked back. "I was hooked immediately: no more wood piles, or chopping wood; no more wood critters crawling around inside, or wood debris scattered on the floor," Kathleen said. "And it made sense to use the leftovers from wood use and production. We were feeling very green about our decision."

The pellets burn better than firewood, too. "Pellets are much cleaner in terms of emissions," said John Ackerly of the Alliance for Green Heat, a nonprofit organization that advocates the use of high-efficiency wood for home heating. "They are a low-moisture, consistent, dense wood product. Wood can be variable, and when people burn wet wood in a stove they produce a lot of emissions. Wood can be very operator-dependent." (See related quiz: What You Don't Know About Home Heating)

But perhaps the best green advantage for the Feys is the stack of cash they save on heating bills for their 250-year-old hipped roof colonial in rural New Boston, New Hampshire.

Just last week, Erik said, he had a discussion with his fuel-oil supplier about how little oil they use—less than one 275-gallon (1,040-liter) tank per year. At the going New Hampshire rate of $3.75 a gallon, the family might spend just $725 this year on oil. The six tons of pellets they feed into their stove each winter (at about $213 a ton) add another $1,280 for a total annual heat bill of only about $2,000. "Our oil guy said that some people fill up five to six times per year," Kathleen said. "If we filled our oil tank five times a year, that would cost about $5,000."

Feeding the flames with 40-pound (18-kilogram) bags of pellets still takes a bit of work, the Feys report, but the payoff in savings—and comfort—is well worth the extra effort.

Wood Heating Is Catching Fire

The Feys are not alone. So many American households are returning to the nation's original heating fuel—often in modern energy-saving pellet stoves—that the U.S. government's energy forecasters this month for the first time ever included an analysis of firewood and pellets in the annual Winter Fuels Outlook.

More than 20 percent of New England households that use heating oil also use wood as a source of heat, said U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) analyst Chip Berry. That number is about twice the national rate. New England happens to be the region of the United States that is most dependent on heating oil, which is now by far the most expensive home heating option.

Only 6 percent of U.S. households depend on heating oil, but 80 percent of them are in the Northeast—many of them in places with no pipeline connection to far cheaper natural gas, the heating fuel of choice for more than half of American homes. With the average U.S. household that uses heating oil expected to spend $1,909 on fuel this winter, well over three times the forecast average price for home heating with natural gas ($804), it's no wonder New Englanders are turning to wood. (See "With Record Heating Oil Prices Expected, Homes Dash to Gas")

About 38 percent of all U.S. households rely on electricity for keeping comfortable in winter, making it the nation's second most popular heating fuel. But its use is concentrated in the South, where there's far less need for winter heating. About 5 percent of homes rely on propane, which is typically delivered to homes in tanks, and is almost as expensive as heating oil.

Berry manages the EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), which provides data on how Americans heat their homes. According to the most recent (2009) data, Berry said, about 12 percent of American homes use wood, primarily as a secondary source of heat in homes that use heating oil or propane.

That EIA report notes that wood use has grown during the past decade after 20 years of steady decline during the 1980s and 1990s. "The results of the 2009 RECS show that wood is a significant source of heat in many U.S. homes, and wood consumption is almost as much as heating oil consumption," Berry said. "Given these facts, EIA felt it was important to begin noting wood as part of the Winter Fuels Outlook."

Colorado and the Pacific Northwest are other hotbeds of such wood use, according to the EIA. Other organizations confirm that the practice is growing. "The American Community Survey (U.S. Census Bureau) estimates that households using wood as a main source of heat increased from 1.87 million in 2005 to 2.47 million in 2011," EIA's Berry noted.

Sometimes-Forgotten Fuel

Ackerly of the of the pro-wood Alliance for Green Heat said wood already is a major part of the rural energy mix that may be overlooked by some decision-makers based in cities like Washington, D.C.

"It's very close, but wood creates more BTUs [British thermal units] in America for home heating than propane does," Ackerly said. "And it's also very close to catching up to oil. In a couple of years, I think it will be producing more BTUs for home heating than fuel oil. At that point it would be the No. 3 fuel in terms of heat production."

Currently, wood produces 0.5 quadrillion BTU (quads) per year, propane 0.49 quads, and oil 0.6 quads, according to EIA statistics.

Not surprisingly, people who live in rural areas are far more likely to heat with wood. The EIA survey results show 22 percent of rural American homes burn wood for heat, compared to only 8 percent of their urban counterparts.

Many wood users simply burn firewood or wood scraps, and about half of them save money by cutting the wood themselves. Only about 6 percent of America's wood-burning households use pellets, according to EIA stats. But pellets have some environmental advantages over firewood, according to Ackerly, in addition to conveniences like those enjoyed by the Feys.

Cleaner-burning pellets are produced from waste products such as lumber mill sawdust, and chips or scraps left over from lumbering or tree thinning. "Trees aren't cut down specifically to make pellets," Ackerly explained, "although most firewood sources are mom-and-pop-type operations that use a lot of dead and fallen timber and generally harvest wood sustainably."

The EIA is forecasting winter 2012-13 oil and gas prices to be about the same as last year's. But because last winter was so mild in much of the country, consumers are likely to burn more fuel and can expect their oil or gas bills to increase an estimated 15 percent or more, according to the agency.

EIA doesn't currently offer such forecasting or other price information for wood products. Ackerly hopes that will change, particularly in light of the tough times ahead.

"It's such an affordable way to heat. It's a real benefit for the consumer if the government could include this information, because people are having to make some tough decisions, with oil prices going up," he said. "You don't want to exclude some of the most affordable fuels and also the most renewable heating fuels."

Here are some safety tips from Consumer Reports:

Check the propane tank for any signs of rust, dents or any substantial corrosion. If the tank is not 100% you should replace it. There are LP tank fuel gages commercially available and are very easy to install. In the absence of a gage, you can remove it from the grill, stand it upright and poor hot water around the tank. The line of the cool area will indicate how much fuel remains in the tank.

You should carefully check for leaks, not only at the beginning of the season but periodically throughout the season. Dishwashing soap in a spray bottle is very effective in locating leaks. Spray the solution along all lines and connections. Any bubbling will indicate a leak. Remember, Propane gas is heavier than air and will settle (pool) to any lower area around the leak thus making it extremely dangerous.

The entire inside of the grill should be thoroughly cleaned of grease and debris. There are cleaning solutions commercially available for this purpose.

Cleaning your grates after each use simplifies the task as the grease will come off much easier when hot. Use a stiff grill brush if available. If you do not have a brush, crumpled tin foil will do the job.

Cleaning the exterior is best done when the grill is warm. Mild soapy water and a sponge will do the trick. A nylon pad can be used on tough areas.