When I bought my house, I had the option to add a fireplace. I refused. First, I didn’t want to pay for it, second, I didn’t want to clean it, so I would have only used it a handful of times a year, mostly around Christmas. The house I grew up in had a brick fireplace in the living room. I only remember it being lit two or three times at the most. Probably for the same reason I didn’t get one, my dad didn’t want to clean it.
The big, monolithic blocks standing vertically at the side of the house are today, mostly just show–just a framed box for an 8" steel pipe inside. Possibly many houses you see have a chimney, just not the sort you’re looking for.
kurikai@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Fireplaces are inefficient and expensive, poolute a hell of a lot, and a lot of effort. Heatpumps are simple effecient and the cheapest to run and maintain.
Macaroni_ninja@lemmy.world 52 minutes ago
In my country its usually required for new builds to have 2 methods of heating. People usually have gas or heat pumps as primary but almost all of them puts a fireplace as well in the house, so chimneys here are very common.
I also have a fireplace additional to a heat pump, but I would only use it if there was a power outage for multiple days during winter.
So yeah, fireplaces are mainly for the vibes :)
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 12 hours ago
Pretty sure people just use fireplaces for vibes these days.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
Fireplaces? Sure. The furnace still gets used for actual heating in the winter. Anyone wanna buy me a ground source heat pump and pay for installation, I’ll rip the furnace out.
Montagge@lemmy.zip 16 hours ago
I’ll never live somewhere without a woodstove again. Two weeks without power, and 20F/-6.5C inside the house will change a person lol
Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
Woodstoves are nice as an option but I’ll just take backup power any day. Gas pressure is normally still fine for a long time durring most outages and it takes very little power to just run the blower fan on a gas furnace. I’ve run mine off my vans inverter using an extension cord and some farmer grade wiring practices at one point with no issue. Plus I can also power other things with backup power. If it’s an extended outage then most gas furnaces can easily be converted to run on propane and swapping out tanks is much easier than dealing with fueling a woodstove.
someguy3@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Where’s that? 2 weeks in certain places and millions are dead, essentially precautions are taken at the supplier level.
Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 16 hours ago
How about not living somewhere where this is even a possibility in the first place. 🥲 2 Weeks, wtf…
I’d also argue for solar panels / a small consumer wind turbine and a battery backup (which can power the heatpump) instead of architecture from the last millenia.
Evotech@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Yeah it’s good emergency prep
CouldntCareBear@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
A heat pump is £10k to buy and install, that ain’t cheap. In fact that would buy me enough wood to heat my house for 50 winters.
Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 16 hours ago
Comparing the initial costs of one with the upkeep costs of the other surely is a way to make a bad argument sound more sensible.
kurikai@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Deep down you really know that it would only last you like 7 years including the cost of buying and installing a fireplace. Then you gotta pay for a shed/cover to keep the wood dry and storage of it for at least a year.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 12 hours ago
What does it cost to buy and install a wood burner?
lime@feddit.nu 17 hours ago
they’re also able to work completely without electricity and fuel transport (depending on your situation), which is increasingly becoming a concern in some parts of the world.
my optimal setup is an air-to-water heat pump connected in parallel with a wood furnace fitted with a flue gas afterburner, feeding a hot water tank. we already have a big thermal mass in the house so the heat pump would keep the temp stable 99% of the time, but sometimes it gets close to -40 and then it’s good to have massive heating capacity.
jimmux@programming.dev 16 hours ago
My family insist on using the fireplace because they have some backward ideas about it being natural and cheaper because there’s so much wood around here. They use it way more than necessary, and use more wood than necessary, so a load runs out very fast and it often gets so hot they have to open the windows.
I like the aesthetic, but it’s a massive waste of time and money. Sourcing wood is expensive. Stacking it takes a lot of time, during which I could be doing productive work.
I’m sure the smoke is affecting our health, too. If I go for an early run on a cold morning the smoke hanging in the air makes it much harder to breath.
I might understand if there wasn’t a very good heat pump right there. The running costs of it are barely noticeable.
tacosanonymous@mander.xyz 17 hours ago
100% agree. I love the vibe of a fire place so I definitely have a fake one though.