Coalpail.com Forum

Hello and Merry Christmas,

Has anyone here heard of the Texas Fireframe? Here is a link to it for you to see. Does this make sense? I have this house in the Poconos and one in the Philly area which I have to sell and I'd like to heat the Pocono one with wood until I can put in a coal unit. Because heating two home is oh so expensive. As of this last week I had to buy oil again first time it was $683.00 and now $1304.00 and I keep the temp at 62 to 65. This Pocono house has a Hearthstone Harvest wood stove that heats the "family room" above the garage and kind of heats the walls of a couple bedrooms and nothing else. The small fireplace, I say small because the Keystoker, Harman and Hitzer dealers all say the inside dimensions of this fireplace is too small for their coal burning inserts is used for firewood now. Looking online to find ways of stretching my wood heating bucks I found this item. http://www.texasfireframe.com/index.html What do you think of this?

I think I need to grow a winter coat and maybe blubber up too.

Thank You everyone.

I would not waste the $$$, hot air rises. What happens when the top log burns ? Their are grates on ebay that are made of hollow tube with a blower to push the warm air out, that might work better. Does the fireplace have glass doors ? If you want a stove, why not put it on the hearth instead of inside.

I bought one of these to use in my fireplace back in New Hope before I was liberated by my Stanley Argand. These grates are pretty effective. They expose a pile of hot coals for more radient heat as the grate feeds the logs down from above. If I had another fireplace. I would get a set of these.

http://www.gratewalloffire.com/

AA130FIREMAN wrote:I would not waste the $$$, hot air rises. What happens when the top log burns ?I don't know? Their are grates on ebay that are made of hollow tube with a blower to push the warm air out, that might work better. I'll have to check that out. Does the fireplace have glass doors ? Yes it does, is there anything I should know about the glass door? If you want a stove, why not put it on the hearth instead of inside.

The hearth only goes out about at most 18 to 24 inches. Thank you for the info

Joeski wrote:Does this make sense?

Yes it makes sense. But improving a fireplace isn't going to stretch your fuel dollars the way you want. To get a real improvement, you need a stove. Ben Franklin proved this hundreds of years ago, those physics haven't changed. A fireplace is an inefficient way to heat a home.

The open fire is nice to watch and sit by, but; I can tell you any attempt to heat with a fireplace is a futile effort which takes lots of wood and lots of labor. The last year that I had the fireplace, I kept the fire going continuously for the entire heating season at the expensive of 14 cords of wood at 200 bucks a pop. I managed to keep my shins fairly warm though.
Even a used wood stove would be a vast improvement, so; to echo what others have said. It would be best to get a stove. You can get an inexpensive hearth board from any good stove or fireplace shop. You can pretty it up later, just get something installed so you can achieve some degree of comfort.

wsherrick wrote:The open fire is nice to watch and sit by, but; I can tell you any attempt to heat with a fireplace is a futile effort which takes lots of wood and lots of labor. The last year that I had the fireplace, I kept the fire going continuously for the entire heating season at the expensive of 14 cords of wood at 200 bucks a pop. I managed to keep my shins fairly warm though.
Even a used wood stove would be a vast improvement, so; to echo what others have said. It would be best to get a stove. You can get an inexpensive hearth board from any good stove or fireplace shop. You can pretty it up later, just get something installed so you can achieve some degree of comfort.

Wow!! 14 cords @ $200.00 each plus all the work involved. I was wondering how much it might take in the Pocono's. I guess woo is good if you need to do a lot of bending, lifting, carrying, cutting ans other stuff like that. The is a hell of a pile of wood.

Thank you for the tip.

WOOD is more expensive that coal for the BTU's produced. Keep the wood to have a romantic night with the misses. A cord is 4' x 4' x 8',alot of work involved if you don't have the trees.