Industry Insider: Hearth and Home, Mount Prospect

For virtually hundreds of years, a fireplace was a fireplace. It allowed people to light a fire in their home for heat, cooking or just ambience.

Improvements were made over the years, like the addition of flues to control air flow, the invention of prefabricated fireplaces, and the use of gas lighters and gas logs to make lighting a fire easier and cleaner. But the biggest changes in fireplaces have come in the past decade, said Pat O’Donnell, owner of Hearth and Home in Mount Prospect.

“All of us in the industry started getting calls from our customers about ten years ago, complaining about their fireplaces, which had always drawn perfectly well, suddenly smoking into the house,” he said. “We asked what at the home had changed and started taking notes and then comparing them.”

It turned out homeowners were insulating their homes better and adding things like ceiling can lights, restaurant-grade exhaust fans in the kitchen and airtight windows. The result was homes that had always been positively-pressured in the past had suddenly become negatively-pressured. These houses had to draw their air from somewhere so they were pulling it down the chimneys.

Neither tempered glass doors nor closed flues made significant difference in the phenomenon because they do little to impede airflow.

So manufacturers got busy and invented the modern fireplace insert, a self-contained, closed door system, which can be installed in an existing fireplace in a matter of hours since they come in a range of sizes.

“Inserts can turn any room into a warm and cozy space. They are convenient and easy to use,” O’Donnell said. “You can use them like a supplemental zone-heater that will help control high home utility bills while improving indoor air quality.”

Inserts can be used for either wood-burning fireplaces or gas log-burning hearths.

“Wood-burning fireplace inserts are made from cast iron or steel and have self-cleaning glass doors that allow the fire to be viewed while the doors are closed, making the fire more efficient,” he said.

The open design fireplace allows heated room air to be drawn into the fire, causing it to burn too fast and wasting energy, O’Donnell said. A fireplace insert, on the other hand, slows the fire down and increases its temperature, allowing its efficiency to skyrocket. Emissions from the fire are also reduced to almost nothing.

Many manufacturers even augment the operation of the insert by offering fans and thermostats to control the amount of heat entering the home, preventing the room from becoming too hot.

In addition to wood-burning inserts, there are gas fireplace inserts that transform a masonry or prefab fireplace into a sealed gas appliance, O’Donnell said.

“They consist of a gas log set into a steel or cast iron heat exchanger and are sealed on the front with ceramic glass, not the tempered glass of conventional fireplace doors. Many of these units have fans to move the heat and are also available with remote controls, wall switches or wall-mounted thermostats,” he said.

They are much more efficient (up to 80 percent) than conventional gas logs and are also safer, O’Donnell said.

“Homeowners who install these find they are so easy to use that they are using their fireplaces much more often,” he said. “Many are using them all day long.”

Fireplace inserts range in price from $3,000 to $5,000 and come in a number of different colors and finishes with black and charcoal, as well as metal tones like natural iron and oil-rubbed bronze being most popular.

As for that lovely burning wood smell so many people enjoy coming from their fireplace, O’Donnell said that is part of the trade off.

“You do lose that smell with a fireplace insert, but you don’t want that anyway since that smell is actually wood smoke back-drafting into your home and lungs. That also dirties the ceiling and walls.”

Instead, he recommends using natural pine wood aroma sticks that are match lit and burn like incense. They smell great and can be used anywhere with or without a fire, O’Donnell said.

Hearth and Home is located at 530 W. Northwest Hwy. in Mount Prospect. For more details, visit www.hearthandhomeUSA.com or call (847) 259-7550.