Fire Danger Warning

Last night in the back of my head I was trying to decide what to write about for my first blog post, when in our local newspaper there was an article about the dangers of "zero tolerance" pre-fabricated steel fireplaces. Link to news story here. Many builders are putting them in new homes because they're cheap, fast and easy to install compared to a fireplace made of traditional brick.

The problem is ~ are you ready for this? ~ they are not intended to be used for heating your house or even burning wood!!

A number of homes have been lost to fires due to this idiotic design. My opinion is they should be outlawed. Lets face it, if a house has a fireplace, somebody will one day put a roaring fire in that thing.

My first thought was, how do you fix that without having to tear the side of the house off? The idea that came to me was to seal off the fireplace with brick, extending the brick out on the floor and install a wood burning stove.

See drawing below:



1) Existing tin fireplace
2) Be sure to close the flue
3) New woodburning stove and brick
4) Triple wall chimney pipe
5) Ceiling air space box (a must)
6) Existing chimney
7) Spark arrestor (keep this clean)

Just a quick sketch, but let me know what you think.

~SJN