Chimney Care Company's Blog
Give The Gift That Keeps on Giving: A Fireplace Facelift!
Fireplaces are the heart of a home.
They provide a focal point for the home’s living space, and they serve as a place for friends and family to gather around. A fireplace that’s outdated or in disrepair, however, can leave a homeowner frustrated and embarrassed, and the fireplace itself can sit unused. That’s why a fireplace facelift provides the perfect gift! It can update the look of a home, render a fireplace once again use-able and lower heating bills. A fireplace facelift can even increase the value of a home! When you give a fireplace facelift for a holiday gift, you have a variety of options for updating the look of the fireplace to suit the gift recipient’s needs and your budget.Some common fireplace upgrades include:
- Fireplace repairs. Often, the problem with the fireplace is that the fireplace is showing its age. The firebox tiles crack. The hearth becomes stained. The metal grates corrode. How can you give someone a fireplace facelift? Hiring skilled fireplace technicians to fix their fireplace’s simple cosmetic problems! This provides a restored, beautiful fireplace that is once again a pleasure to look at and that is safe for lighting a fire.
- Fireplace accessories. Fireplace accessories can dress up the hearth and provide and instant fireplace facelift. Andirons, a quality set of fireplace tools, or a well-crafted fireplace screen are all great gift options. This is especially true when you’re looking to dress up someone’s fireplace.
- Fireplace façade. Perhaps nothing reveals a fireplace’s age like the façade. Fireplace trends come and go, and a façade that was trendy 10 years ago can age a home. Fortunately, there are many ways to give the fireplace a facelift. That includes adding tile or veneers over outdates surfaces, changing out fireplace doors, or replacing a passé mantle. Sometimes the right coat of paint or finishing treatment can make a hearth look like new.
- Fireplace insert. One of the most dramatic fireplace facelifts you can gift someone is a fireplace insert. A fireplace insert can instantly change the look of the hearth. In addition, it can upgrade fireplace efficiency and lower home heating bills. An insert also can make a fireplace more use-able.
Are You Ready?
Gas and Wood Fireplace Inserts Add Both Beauty and Heat to Your Family Room
If sitting in front of a crackling fire is your favorite way to warm up during the cold winter months, but your traditional fireplace isn’t quite cutting the mustard anymore, we have a solution for you that will add both beauty and heat to your family room. Fireplaces are a highly desired feature for many new homebuyers; unfortunately, they’re also a major air gap, sending as much as 8% of valuable heated air straight up the chimney. An energy-saving wood, pellet or gas insert will help you transform your existing hearth into a super-efficient heater that can significantly cut your energy bills.
Wood-Burning Inserts
Wood-burning inserts create real heat with real logs. This firebox slides into your existing masonry or metal fireplace. Your installer will snake a stainless steel liner down your chimney to connect to the top of the insert before fitting a decorative cast iron, steel, or colored porcelain flange around the insert to provide you with a finished look. Many front doors come with ceramic glass to help with radiating heat into the room. Adding logs to the fire is as easy as opening the front door and tossing some in. Wood-burning inserts can easily heat anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 square feet of living space, depending on their size. Inserts designed to heat 1,500 square feet will typically burn for three to five hours before needing more wood, whereas inserts designed to heat upwards of 3,000 square feet will typically provide an 8- to 10-hour burn window.
Pellet Stoves
Instead of burning wood logs, a pellet insert burns wood pellets—rabbit-food-sized bits of compressed, recycled wood waste and other renewable substances—that are poured into a hopper. Like its wood-burning counterpart, a pellet insert is a sealed combustion box with a partially glass front door that’s surrounded by a decorative flange. To operate the system, you buy a bag of pellets, pour them into the hopper, press a button, and sit back and enjoy the fire. Unlike their wood-burning counterparts, pellet stoves need electricity—to start the fire, operate the blowers, run the auger that feeds the pellets into the burn pot, and run the computer board that monitors the whole system. Pellet inserts can easily heat anywhere from 1,000 to 2,500 square feet of living space, depending on their heat-generating capacity and the size of the fuel hopper.
Gas Inserts
Converting to gas has never been easier. Unlike the older generation of gas fireplaces, today’s gas inserts are real heat producers that can use propane or natural gas to power a steady flame that dances across fake logs, decorative glass chips, or stones, all behind a sealed glass face. A gas insert can be used in masonry or prefab fireplaces and can be vented through the existing chimney or directly through an adjacent exterior wall. In comparison to the other options, a gas insert is the easiest to use and requires very little maintenance beyond the customary annual check. Lighting the fire is as easy as flipping a switch. It is ideal for zone heating (heating the room you’re in while turning down the thermostat in the rest of your house).
An insert, installed by a factory-trained professional, will help to keep your heated air in the room. Inserts generally run anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000, including installation (prices can vary depending on the current state of your fireplace and existing chimney liner). Choosing the fuel type you want to use is the first step in the conversion process. To help with this decision, you’ll need to decide what’s most important to you—burning real wood and having heat even if the power goes out (wood insert), burning bio-fuel without the hassle of chopping and hauling wood (pellet insert), or push-button convenience for flipping on fast heat in a specific area of your home (gas insert). Regardless of the route you choose to go, the professionals at The Chimney Care Company can help you every step of the way.