Al Heavens is a Haddonfield, N.J.- based, nationally syndicated, home-improvement writer and author whose newspaper columns, magazine articles, and books have been the first word on remodeling for 50 million readers for more than three decades. He is the author of What No One Ever Tells You About Renovating Your Home and Remodeling on The Money: Fifteen Innovative Projects Designed to Add Value to Your Home and was “The Gadgeteer” on Discovery Channel’s Home Matters program.
Whether it is used regularly or sits idly in the living room, a fireplace is one of the things that seems to make a house a home.
Most real estate agents agree that buyers want the house they buy to have a fireplace even if they don’t plan to use them. That is even true in Southern California, where you cannot sell a house without a fireplace, even though you probably don’t need one more than three days a year.
Fireplaces provide a focal point in the house and have decorative value. Some people may simply put plants in them, but even so, they provide that sense of warmth — hearth and home.
And hearth and home seem to have become more important since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly 18 months ago.
Climate doesn’t seem to be a factor in home buyers’ decisions to include a fireplace on the must-have list.
The decision-maker is lifestyle, guided by the conditions of the economy. When you have money left over, you want to spend it on things you don’t need, and that includes a fireplace.
Adding a fireplace to an existing or even a new home is often costly, but most homeowners do not appear to mind the expense. A fireplace can be paid for over time in a 30-year mortgage, and today’s lower interest rates reduce that kind of financial burden even further.
Fireplaces have been around for centuries, of course, but there was a time, specifically in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when they were considered obsolete and unnecessary.
A fireplace is one of the things that seems to make a house a home.
During that time, central heating – coal and then oil furnaces – began replacing the fireplace, which was not really an efficient source of warmth. Houses typically had one fireplace, usually centrally located, which warmed one large gathering place and doubled as the place where meals were cooked.
Once the family left the fireplace area and retired to their beds, they were far from warm. In fact, when the temperature outside was freezing or below, even the fireplace couldn’t provide warmth unless a person was standing right in front of it.
Central heating began appearing in upper class and then middle-class American homes in the early 20th century, with coal-fired boilers circulating hot water to radiators and back to the boiler for reheating – a “closed” system. The fireplace, with its soot and smoke, was simply old-fashioned by comparison.
My old house, built in 1906, did not have a fireplace — just a mantel where the fireplace would have been. Having an alternative heat source would have been helpful in the event our coal-to-oil-converted boiler had failed, which happened a couple of times in 12 years.
When we bought our 1929 bungalow, however, it had a fireplace (people in the 1920s still wanted them, just as they do today, even if they didn’t need them). Rather than deal with wood and soot, we opted for a 44,000 BTU gas insert, which is enough to heat our 2,000-square-foot house if the furnace fails (which happened a couple of times in 20 years).
It is a technically an unvented or “vent-free” gas fireplace, with an oxygen-depletion sensor that automatically shuts it down. We also have a carbon-monoxide detector a couple of rooms away.
However, since the fireplace has a chimney that had been cleaned of creosote and spider webs, we have the damper opened an inch to vent it.
For the last 30 years, the fireplace again has been standard feature of new construction. What has changed is not the size of the fireplace, but the number of fireplaces and locations.
The concept of fireplaces has changed, builders say. The shift from masonry to prefabricated designer boxes has put fireplaces in bathrooms, dining rooms and bedrooms, as well as living rooms and family rooms.
Fireplaces can be seen on walls of entertainment rooms, below big-screen televisions, so that you have your choice, I suppose, of what you want to watch.
Designer fireplaces include two-sided glass models located in the pass-through from, say, the living room and the conservatory.
The increase in locations results from advances in technology: development of gas fireplaces and the ability to vent them through a wall to the outside without a masonry chimney, and the use of flexible pipe for bringing the gas to the units, which is what we have (ours taps into the hot-water heater below and comes up under the fireplace through the floor).
Data show that it’s about 50-50 wood vs. gas, with wood in the living room and gas anywhere else, she said.
Burning wood, however, raises environmental issues. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, wood-burning appliances and fireplaces can emit large quantities of air pollutants, including nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, organic gases, and particulate matter.
Many of these compounds can cause serious health problems, especially for children, pregnant women, and people with respiratory ailments. Several have demonstrated cancer-causing properties like those of cigarette smoke.
Wariness about gas vent-free appliances persists, and the units are banned in some states. Municipalities usually have the last word on whether they can be installed.
Both unvented and vented heating appliances must be properly maintained to reduce the risk for associated health hazards, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Electric fireplaces are making some inroads into the market, although the amount of radiant heat that plug-in fireplaces provide remains well below the 15,000 to 40,000 BTUs that gas fireplaces generate.
More than a decade ago, I added an electric fireplace to our bedroom, framing a wall facing our bed, with built-in bookcases on either side. Behind this is storage, accessed by a bookcase on the side that slides in and out.
Unlike the gas fireplace, the electric unit has a shelf life and is being replaced this month by a newer and more efficient version. Oddly enough, the new one costs about the same as the 10-year-old unit.