by Wayne Hemrick
Homeowners who have dwellings that have older fireplaces in them know that the beauty of a real fire tends to come with energy inefficiency. Old wood-burning fireplaces have a tendency to release a great deal of heat up the flue and chimney, rather than keeping it where you want it, namely inside your home. This is why many home owners who have old fireplaces choose to use a fireplace insert replacement with them. This allows you to keep your beautiful mantel, and to be able to see a real wood fire or a gas fire as you choose, but with a fireplace insert replacement that fits snugly into the opening of the fireplace and prevents the loss of heat. Eventually, those inserts will become worn, and you will need a fireplace insert replacement. It is at this point that you will want to visit a local fireplace showroom, where you can see the latest modern options in fireplace replacement systems.
Wood fires are beautiful to see and hear. The golden glow, and crackling sound of the logs burning adds a cozy ambiance to any room. Wood-burning fireplaces do have extra chores that many homeowners find rather burdensome. There is the ash and soot that must be regularly cleaned out of the fireplace, which is a messy job. You will also need ready access to wood for fuel, which is not always convenient if you happen to live in a city. This is why many people choose to have a gas fireplace replacement.
At length, by mid-afternoon, after we had had two or three rainbows over the sea, the showers ceased, and the heavens gradually cleared up, though the wind still blowed as hard and the breakers ran as high as before. Keeping on, we soon after came to a charity-house, which we looked into to see how the shipwrecked mariners might fare. Far away in some desolate hollow by the seaside, just within the bank, stands a lonely building on piles driven into the sand, with a slight nail put through the staple, which a freezing man can bend, with some straw, perchance, on the floor on which he may lie, or which he may burn in the fireplace to keep him alive. Perhaps this hut has never been required to shelter a shipwrecked man, and the benevolent person who promised to inspect it annually, to see that the straw and matches are here, and that the boards will keep off the wind, has grown remiss and thinks that storms and shipwrecks are over; and this very night a perishing crew may pry open its door with their numbed fingers and leave half their number dead here by morning. When I thought what must be the condition of the families which alone would ever occupy or had occupied them, what must have been the tragedy of the winter evenings spent by human beings around their hearths, these houses, though they were meant for human dwellings, did not look cheerful to me. They appeared but a stage to the grave. The gulls flew around and screamed over them; the roar of the ocean in storms, and the lapse of its waves in calms, alone resounds through them, all dark and empty within, year in, year out, except, perchance, on one memorable night. Houses of entertainment for shipwrecked men! What kind of sailor’s homes were they?
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
A gas fireplace conversion does not mean that you are stuck with an unrealistic-looking blaze inside the fireplace. Modern fireplace replacement inserts have handcrafted logs and the fire color itself is bright and lifelike, unlike the old blue-looking gas flames of yesteryear. Brilliant yellow flames are created through just the right mix of air and gas in a contemporary stainless steel burner system that is used in the gas fireplace replacement system to bring you a glowing fire.
A gas fireplace conversion is pretty simple to achieve. You will want to take precise inner measurements of your current fireplace, and then take that information with you to a fireplace showroom. Once there, technicians can help you in finding a fireplace replacement insert that will work well with your existing fireplace structure.
Once you have the fireplace insert replacement installed, you will likely wonder why you did not do the fireplace replacement installation sooner. Instead of fighting with paper and kindling, all you need to do is flip a switch or touch a remote control and your fireplace replacement insert will light up. The gas fireplace replacement is also a major new way to heat your home efficiently, saving you money over the course of the insert's lifetime.
So take a trip in person or online to a fireplace showroom to learn how easy it is to add a gas fireplace conversion system to your home. In this article Wayne Hemrick writes about fireplace replacement and denver electric fireplaces