The Consumer A FIRESIDE CHAT

People don’t depend upon the warmth of a fire to heat their homes anymore and there’s a good reason for it. It’s not only an inefficient method of home heating, but an expensive one. Firewood is running about $85 a cord this year. A cord of wood heats 24,000 cubic feet of air; Lone Star Gas will sell you an equivalent amount of fuel for $42.78. In some ways the old days weren’t necessarily the good old days. But even though wood is not an effective substitute for natural gas, there are ways to make a fire in your fireplace a contributing factor in your house heating efforts.

This year’s fireplace accessory market is flooded with products, some good, some not so good. The worst in the lot is the magic grate. Selling for anywhere from $30 to $100, these “heat convec-tors” have the appearance of a row of five or six automobile exhaust pipes bent into U-shapes. Theoretically, the con-vectors should absorb heat at grate level and hurl it out through the top openings into the room. But let’s face it, the major reason for having a fireplace today is the beauty and relaxation which it affords. A fireplace full of exhaust pipes is not very beautiful. Additionally, the constant contact with extreme temperatures is too much for the grate to withstand. It’s just a matter of time before it will begin to deteriorate.

A slight improvement over the manual heat convector is the automatic version, which has an electric fan attachment to force the hot air into the room. The economy model sells for $48.99 in the Sears catalog, the deluxe for $ 150 at the House of Fireplaces, 1315 Manufacturing.

The most efficient fireplace is the Heat-ilator, sold by Fireplace Center, 2225 Beltline Rd., Carrollton. The Heatilator is a complete, scientifically designed unit with built-in air ducts and power operated vents to deliver usable heat into the parts of the house where it’s needed. But you can’t always convert an existing fireplace into a Heatilator economically. House of Fireplaces has a conversion unit which sells for $189.95. The unit is composed of a fireplace hood, an electric fan and two metal coils protruding into the firebox to gather heat. Though the appearance is not particularly distracting, the noise from the fan is. And the constant pressure of direct heat on the two coils could be expected to lead to the same difficulties that have been experienced with the manual heat convector.

There is one winner in this year’s market, however- the glass fireplace screen, sold by Fireplace and Patio II, 15054 Beltway. These beautiful screens of tempered glass enclosed in polished brass perform a much needed energy saving function. In the late evening, as the fire begins to dwindle, there is always a bed of hot coals insulated by ashes that will continue to smolder after you’ve gone to bed. For this reason, you cannot afford to close the damper before retiring or you will wind up with a house full of smoke. With a tight fitting glass screen, you can close off the fireplace from the interior of the house and still allow the smoke from the smoldering coals to escape normally. With the conventional wire screen, a great amount of furnace heat is lost up the chimney during the hours when the furnace is working the hardest – at night. Since heat rises, the effect is about the same as if you had left a door open all night.

The better glass doors have four enclosed sections which fold easily to the side while the fire is at its peak, and a wire curtain behind the glass to retard flying sparks when the glass is opened. (The glass can be kept closed during the entire process, but this allows little heat into the living area.) Unfortunately, glass screens are not yet available to accommodate rounded fireplace openings. There is also a problem with stone fireplaces since the ridges are more irregular than brick. A good glass screen will cost a minimum of $200, and bargain hunting efforts to get one for less are losing propositions.

The type of wood you use has a lot to do with the energy efficiency of your fireplace. But first, of course, be sure you are getting what you pay for. A cord of wood is a stack of 24-inch logs that is 4 feet high and 16 feet long. If your logs are only 21 or 22 inches long, you’ve been ripped off by about ten percent. And watch out for Y-shaped logs. They take up more than their fair share of space on the stack. Some wood sellers leave gaps in the interior of the stack which are not detectable until after they are long gone.

The best all-purpose firewood in this part of the country is a mixture of green and dry split oak. Pine will give you an easy-to-start rip-snorting fire, but at this time of year you can run through a cord of pine in about two weeks. A pine fire also produces a lot more smoke than oak and that is hard on your chimney. Never use cedar. It’s so full of resin that it will fill your chimney with sparks and endanger your roof. Hickory exudes a lovely aroma, but it’s more expensive and not as readily available as oak. The most likely place to find hickory is at Lewis Fields’ wood lot, 6901 Maple, where it will cost you about $95 a cord.

It’s very important to buy split wood. Some wood dealers will try to pawn offa whole cord of yule logs on you, which are much more of a hassle to handle. And don’t be misled irlto thinking that the soft-looking bark will ignite more readily than wood exposed from splitting. Bark is a natural insulation from fire. Ask these questions when ordering wood: Is it green, dry or a mixture? Is it all oak? What percent of the cord is split? Does the price include stacking?

Some fireplace tools and accessories are for show, others for fire building and tending. One accessory that you don’t need but might want anyway – for appearance’s sake – is a set of andirons. These were used centuries ago as supports for a crossbar on which one might impale a pig or hang a stew pot. Andirons serve no functional purpose if you have a grate, which is highly recommended. Buy as large a grate as your fireplace will accommodate, leaving a few inches for air circulation all the way around. Another accessory that you can live without is a hearthside log holder. If you burn standard-sized split oak, the log holder won’t accommodate enough wood to do you any good. A kindling box is much more practical, but admittedly not very attractive.

The essential tools of the trade include a hook-ended poker for turning logs, a shovel for removing ashes, a long-handled brush for cleaning the hearth of ashes and scraps of bark, and a set of log tongs for wrestling with cantankerous logs. For $4.79, Sears sells heavy gauge steel tongs with a special center coupling that allows you to get a good grip on a piece of wood. Some people like to use a bellows to encourage dwindling embers, but a simple turn of a bottom log with the hook-ended poker will do just as well. The largest selection of fireplace accessories in the city, perhaps in the state, is found at the Fireplace Doctor, 17730 Davenport. This store has an amazing array of choices, including hundreds of different tool sets and screens. Be sure to select solid metal tools rather than the hollow variety. They won’t withstand the test of time.

You now have everything you need to build an efficient fire. How do you build one? Take a large unsplit green log and place it on the back of the grate. Lay a split dry log in front of the back log. Lay another split dry log directly atop the two base logs. Now, this is important: Be sure that there is sufficient space between the two base logs to permit the fire to rise freely along each side of the top log.

If you’re lucky, you have a built-in gas starter. If not, lay a base of crumpled newspapers under the recommended log alignment, and a layer of kindling on top of the paper.

Soon you’ll have a roaring fire. After itreally gets going and there are plenty ofred hot coals littering the base of the fireplace, throw a split green log on top, whichwill burn just fast enough to keep all thelogs burning at an even rate. And for goodness’ sake don’t run over with your shovelevery time you see an ash fall. Ashesmake a fabulous base for the coals andhelp throw the heat out into the room.Remove the ashes (or spread them) onlywhen they build up to within one inch ofthe bottom of the grate, so that air circulation is not impeded.