Fireplace question

So with the temp likely to drop even more this weekend and our electric bill on the rise, we want to make use of our fireplace more. We've got lots of wood and kindling.

If we keep the fire going until we go to bed, we have to leave the flue open overnight, correct? But by doing that, by the time we get back down in the morning freezing cold air will be blowing down the chimney. The fireplace has glass doors, but I don't see how the doors will help much.

Am I missing something here? Is this just the nature of how it all works? Can we close the flue partially? I'm a fireplace dork! Help!

Oh, our fireplace is pretty bog-standard. The only fancy bit is that it has a fan we can turn on to help circulate the warm air into the room.

Fireplaces aren't that great to heat with.  If you want to heat most of your home, it is best to have a woodstove.

Make sure your chimney has been cleaned and inspected.

Your damper (if it works like the one on a woodstove) should be opened enough to keep the fire going at the desired level without smoke coming back into the room.  You don't want the fire too low that it goes out, but you don't want it so high that it burns out too quickly.  Have enough fuel on the fire once it gets going to stay burning for a while. It will help if one of you wakes up at least once to check on it during the night.

I am not sure if the glass doors on a fireplace are just a safety feature or if they help distribute the heat better.  Basically, fireplaces are not as efficient as stoves as the heat sort of just comes out the front and there is little surface area  to heat up.  A woodstove, even one that isn't a furnace or boiler, has more surface area and radiates heat in more direction.

There's probably someone who can give you more answers specific to fireplaces.  Good luck.

Ack! Don't close the flue before you go to bed.  The glass doors and the fact that you have a blower unit on your fireplace will help with getting heat distributed.  The glass doors will help keep the cold out too.  The chimney, even with the flue closed, will have a draft.  It's the nature of chimneys.

Just make sure you have the chimney swept before you use it heavily.  Pretty easy to heat with wood.   

Oddly we're finding that it's not much cheaper to heat with the fireplace. We're on propane for our heat here and two tanks cost £85 - we could easily use a tank a week when we're at home a lot, but I spent £20 the other day on a bag of kindling, a bag of wood, and two bags of smokeless coal and they didn't last a week and we only used the fireplace in the evening, so I think the cost is a toss up....

I'm pretty sure we don't have a damper on our chimney and I've never noticed a significant draft. We get more cold air through our front door which we're going to put a curtain over.

Oh, and FYI I've now heard from two different sources that if you burn a lot of wood on a very regular basis you should have the chimney swept twice a year. We mostly use indoor coal as it's warmer and so I've only had the sweep out once....

We plan on putting a log burner in next year, but just have the open fire for now. I'm actually surprised at how much heat it does give out, as I didn't expect that. In the evenings, we huddle round it and turn the heating off. Like Anne, we mostly burn the indoor coal stuff, and we also go through a hell of a lot of it + kindling. We don't use much wood, but what we use is from trees we cut down in the garden, so that's free at least!

Balmerhon, with your glass door and fan, yours almost sounds like an open fire with some of the benefits of a wood burner! And if you already have wood and kindling, it's probably a smart move to make more use of it.

Thanks everyone. Yes we get all our wood and kindling from the the yard now so it's not an extra cost. We can't afford a wood stove and we rent anyway. The heating in this house is going to force us to have to think about moving again, unfortunately.

But meanwhile, since we have the wood, we need to make use of it. I think the chimney was swept before we moved in so we should be ok there.

I'll just close the glass doors when we go to bed but leave the flue open.

When we lived in England we used coal at many of our homes (we moved a lot) but I don't think I can get it here.

Her BalmerHon - I just noticed you live in Maryland. Whereabouts exactly? I'm guessing from your ID you live in Baltimore, lol? Love the hon I live in Annapolis at the moment but will be moving to England within the next 4 months or so.