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Gas Fireplace Logs

barmil | Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on February 27, 2009 06:19am

I was all ready to install gas fireplace logs in my conventional fireplace until I discovered that new codes require that the draft be made permanently open, even when not firing the logs. All year long sucking air up the chimney. My sister has those logs, and they inspired me, but hers are older and grandfathered. I’m guessing that some dufuss at some time forgot to open the draft before firing up the logs and died of CO poisoning. Or maybe somebody thought that might possibly happen and just instigated that code regardless. I am so tired of someone else protecting me from myself. Just like those anti-siphon hose bibs because someone just might have a hose end in stagnant water just as the city loses water pressure, sucking that stuff into the house. How often has that happened? Maybe on a country well, but not in the city where I live. Come on. So I guess that I’m stuck with burning real wood in my fireplace, further polluting the atmosphere with smoke and CO2, and creating ash for the landfill. Maybe there’ll be a system that uses energy efficient CFLs to simulate a fire behind cellophane flames, blown up by a fan, just as we had in the old days at Christmas, when we didn’t have a real fireplace? Though I love the smell of oak burning in some fireplace somewhere when I go outside in the winter, I wonder if there’s some fireplace wood that would be really stinky to all else outside. Ah, sweet revenge.

 

 

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  1. rdesigns | Feb 27, 2009 07:48pm | #1

    Sounds like you needed to blow off a little steam.

    Although I am an inspector myself, (plumbing and mechanical) I have to agree that codes are getting loaded with sometimes unreasonable requirements, like something I think I read once: We now are expected to protect not only the fool, but the stupid fool as well.

    However, as regards the requirement for anti-siphon hose bibs, the vacuum breaker helps to protect the rest of us from the mistakes or ignorance of others--if a hose-end device, say, with pesticide in it, gets siphoned back into the water system, there can be cases (rare, it's true, but serious, nonetheless) where people have been sickened or killed. Other contamination risks from hoses are things like the hose end being submerged in biologically contaminated water (puddle with dog turds in it, bucket with dirty scrub water, etc.) Admittedly, these would be rare occurrences, the spread of disease from contaminated water is well known, and hose-end vacuum breakers are cheap protection.

    Good plumbing has saved more lives than good doctoring ever did.

    1. barmil | Mar 16, 2009 05:29am | #5

      Of course I was blowing off steam! Now I'm resigned to building a small rack for some real wood out near the berry patch. We would only have "cozy" fires, not more than once a weekend during the winter or maybe less , so I don't need any large quantity of wood described in cords or fractions thereof. Maybe buy some from a friend. As to the hose bibbs, we solved that by evicting the ones put in by our plumber, the ones that spewed and drained and whatever whenever the water was turned on and off, and had him put in ones with just the anti-siphon feature. Now I know that I can safely leave my hose end in my Diazinon filled Hudson sprayer overnight, as is my normal practice, and not have the bibbs drain into my foundation whenever I turn them on and off.

  2. back2work | Feb 28, 2009 06:49am | #2

    Allegedly, a rotting tree puts off more CO2 than a burning tree. Oh-and plant a garden. Gas logs are so impersonal, and hard to split too.

    1. JasonQ | Feb 28, 2009 10:56am | #3

      Gas logs are so impersonal, and hard to split too.

      I couldn't agree more.  When we built our house a couple years back,  the wife didn't want a wood burner; too much potential mess, she said.  So we put in a gas fireplace.  I hate the farking thing.   

      I can get more than enough firewood for free - gas I have to pay for.    In a cold winter (like 2007-08) it gets pretty damned expensive to run the gas burner all the time - my kids are enamored with the fact that they can start the fire with a switch, which doesn't help.

      Besides, for most of us suburbanites, fireplaces are a luxury - few folks depend on them for a substantial amount of heat these days.  Why not go all the way with the decadence and get a woodburner?  At least you get some ambience and comfort from the thing.  Nothing like a nice wood fire IMO.

  3. back2work | Feb 28, 2009 07:10pm | #4

    Just to correct myself-

    Allegedly, a rotting tree puts off AS MUCH CO2 as a burning tree. (not more - allegedly LOL).

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