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Today, we tend to think of fireplaces as cosmetic parts of our home: they turn living rooms into more attractive places to gather, and they add an ambiance of the holidays to any time of the year.
But fireplaces can also serve as adjuncts to your heating system, providing warmth to rooms to assist a furnace, boiler, or heat pump. If you are looking for fireplace installation that goes beyond a pleasant-appearing home addition to provide you with additional heating as well, talk to our Stamford, CT fireplace experts at Celco Heating and Air Conditioning. We have more than three and half decades of experience with fireplace installation.
What type of fireplace delivers more heat?
Fireplaces come in a greater diversity of types than they once did. The traditional wood fireplace now has competition from the gas fireplace. Gas fireplaces have some major advantages over the standard wood kind (chief among them: no need to keep getting more wood and tending to the fire), but the important issue here is if gas fireplace emit superior heat.
Let’s turn to the U.S. EPA on this issue. A difficult part of answering the question is how variable and unpredictable the heat from a wood fireplace is. The heat depends on the amount of wood put on, as well as the type of wood. You can more easily predict what a gas fireplace will produce, since it’s only the flick or a switch or the turn of a handle to bring on the flames.
The EPA, however, does not recommend an older wood-burning fireplace as a primary source of heat. “Draft from a fireplace tends to suck all the warm air in a home and take it up the chimney. If you use a fireplace, expect other rooms in the home to be cooler due to escaping warm air. And, if you’re using central heating while burning in a fireplace, expect your heater to work harder to maintain temperatures around the house.” The EPA then emphasizes that this does not apply to gas fireplaces, which require less venting and burn more efficiently.
So the question is not so much which one emits more heat; it’s which one prevents the loss of more heat. In this regard, the gas fireplace clearly comes out on top. However, we cannot deny the greater pleasure people get from the crackling sound and wonderful aromas of a wood fireplace. There are types of wood fireplaces that can help heat your home, such as high-efficiency fireplace inserts. If you don’t want to go with a gas model, be sure to ask your installer about these great options.
Celco serves communities throughout Connecticut, including Stratford, Norwalk, Darien, Westport, Fairfield, Bridgeport, Trumbull, Monroe, Milford, and Shelton, CT. We provide custom fireplaces and a variety of HVAC services to ensure that every home in our service areas is heated and cooled as needed, year-round. We provide HVAC repair, installation, replacement, and maintenance services. Contact us today to learn more about our services and which fireplace would best suit your needs!
