5 Real-Life Lessons About Wood Fireplace
Nothing can match the charm of a wood fireplace. But a fireplace is not just about looks. Fireplaces add warmth and comfort during cold seasons and in perennially cold terrain. Since woods fireplaces work with live fire, safety should take precedence. Following certain basic safety norms and precautions can avoid a lot of headache and loss.
1. Dry And Cured Woods Are Better
Wood meant for the fireplace should be split and dried for about a year. The log pile should be covered with sufficient ventilation on the sides. Hardwoods (dense woods) burn longer, while less dense woods burn well, consuming more wood. Irrespective of the wood type, wet woods emit lot of smoke and hardly generate sufficient heat and fire. Therefore proper drying of the wood is important. More important, you should burn only firewood and not scrap wood, painted wood or any other kind of treated wood.
2. The Jetmaster Open Fireplace
The Jetmaster open fireplace has an inbuilt damper system in the firebox and this can be closed when the fireplace is not in use –a simple push on the damper control lever with the specially provided tool will do. Placong chicken wire or mesh around the termination cap will ensure no birds or vermin will nest in the chimney
3. Clean The Chimney Once Every Two To Three Years.
As the Jetmaster and glass fronted wood burning fireplace and inserts burn super cleanly cleaning of the flue pipe is not required as regularly as was required in the past. Also using hardwoods like Babool or Teeker will produce far left tar and creosote than oily pine woods and other soft woods, requiring less cleaning of the chimney.
4. Burn Safely And Slowly
Fireplace is not the place to burn your household waste products. It is simply not designed to handle hazardous inflammable material. While lighting fire, keep the damper completely open to increase the airflow (air draw) in the early stages. Kindle the fire occasionally to prevent smoke from lingering on and for the fire to burn well.
5. Disposing fireplace ashes
The Jetmaster and Master Fireplaces glass fronted fireplaces require minimal cleaning of the ashes. An estimated once or twice a season . In fact a Jetmaster medium sized open fireplace can handle about one ton of wood burnt down to a fine ash in the logpan.When disposing the ash simply scoop out the ash from the deep logpan or firebox with a fire shovel or even a small garden shovel or spade will do and give it to your plants or vegie patch. Plants love it .