Show Us Your Fireplace

[Dream Burls]

Dropped down into the 20's here last night. Time to stoke up the fireplace. Here's a picture of my first fire of the season. Show us yours.



Have a great weekend everyone.

 

[gadunz]

Small, brick, burns plastic rubbish to give the neighbours cancer. An incinerator disguised as a fireplace.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

I'm up to 6 cords cut split, carted and stacked, 4 for me 2 for my buddy, for about 6 more cords worth on the ground in my woods. We've been burning in NEPA for about 2 weeks now. Last year we went through 5 cords of wood and 1 275 gallon tank of fuel.

I gotta find a pic of the fire place and I'm post it.

When we built our house 16 years ago that was 1 of 2 necessities, a brick fireplace, which has gotten plenty of use, once the cold weather sets in we burn non stop, is not unusual for the Old Lady to burn for a week before she has to let the fire for to get rid of the excess ash.

We've always burned for heat, ever since we moved in together in 1980, lived in an old 1800s farm house on 6 acres down south Jersey, we had an old 30s wood/coal parlor stove.

 

[Dream Burls]

We've always burned for heat, ever since we moved in together in 1980, lived in an old 1800s farm house on 6 acres down south Jersey, we had an old 30s wood/coal parlor stove.

How bout that, I have an old 1800s farm house on 3 acres in Dutchess County. The guy who sold me the place told me that with an old house you don't own it, it owns you. Boy was he right, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

[T. Erdelyi]

The farm house became kind of a commune, it was a refugee for my friends who still lived home, (which was most of 'em back then, I was the first one out on my own at 17).

It wasn't unusual for me to come home from the night shift and find tents in my yard with camp fires burning or a couple of friends in the house huddled around the stove stoking the fires to keep warm.

Ah the 70s..... no I mean, aaah the 70s... I don't seem to remember much of those days...

 

[Dream Burls]

Ours was an old chicken farm. The coop was still there when we bought about 20 years ago, but all it did was serve as a home for a million bees and wasps so we tore it down about 10 years ago. The outhouse is still there though.

 

[Piso Mojado]

I live in an 1883 farmhouse built with three upstairs rooms, three downstairs rooms and a cellar (outside entrance). No fireplace here: they had a coal range in the kitchen and a cannonball heater upstairs. There was a big windowless closet (bedroom size) where they threw dirty clothes all winter, to boil them in the yard come spring. That was life on the prairie.

Chicago annexed Lakeview Township in 1889 and it urbanized fast; electric trolley lines came in and the dairy farms, truck gardens and lumberyards were divided into residential building lots. The owners moved their farmhouse to the rear of the lot in 1915 and built a three-flat apartment building in front.

The apartment building had a coal-fired boiler, hot water radiators (not steam, thank god) and no electricity. Electric service was local option in 1915 and I guess my block didn't want to pay the assessment. There were ice block refrigerators with floor drains, gaslight fixtures in every room, and each parlor had a vented fireplace for a gas hearth.

Those fireplaces vented through a mini-chimney in the roof parapet, and the flue was still open when I moved in: sparrows would fly in looking to nest and fall down into my third floor apartment.

I would have loved to rehab those fireplaces with working gas hearths, but we ran into the problem you always get with a gaslight building sooner or later: a gas leak no one could trace. We shut off the gas to the tenant units, put in a new electric line, and gave everyone an electric range. Too damn bad.

 

[mete]

For those wanting to build a fireplace , please make a proper Rumford one , they work the best !
Does anyone have a Russian type ? That's a huge mass of brick and fed once a day with small branches .Burns quick then givesw off heat all day.

 

[boring]

I talked to a guy that built the Russian style fireplaces. really cool but they are expensive.

 

[Sullie]

My wife's Great Grandfather built this fireplace by hand with rocks found around the cabin...with I had a better picture, it's an amazing piece of work

 

[Sullie]

For size reference, that Pike is just shy of 4 feet long

 

[KDucky's brother]

We use this wood stove for all our heating(cook on it often). It'll run you out of our small house(1200sq) if not kept turned way down most of the time. Its going right now as it snowing currently. Its running 24/7 for about 4.5 months. Even when I shovel out the ashes(about every 10 days depending on the wood used), I keep it going off to the side. wood heat is awesome. ..and dry as hell. ..and dirty(heating with wood in general).

This is about 1/2 of the wood I have on hand currently. All Oak or Birch. 2 rolls thick in the middle. The rest is stacked up next to a downed tree or still needing split'n. Its a yr round process. Cheap tho! Nice! And when we lose power(which is often) we 're good:thumbup:. At those times I'll run the 9k generator for lights, refrigerator, tv and box, router/pc, Xbox(!), etc.