I don't have either in my home, unfortunately, but it would be no contest -- wood.

Wood fireplaces have charm, they demand interaction and attention, and yes, they're more work. They're a lot like a dog.

A gas fireplace is like a cat. You can ignore it, and it really doesn't care.

We have a wood fireplace in our home and we never use it because we have a toddler and an infant and we're concerned about safety issues. Not to mention we're too lazy to bring in logs and deal with the ashes afterwards. Our friends who use their wood fireplace say that while it looks very romantic, they hardly ever use it during the wintertime because it sucks heat out and the house overall actually gets colder with the fire on.

We'll be putting in 2 gas fireplaces in the house that we are building and we are really excited about it. From what I've heard, gas fireplaces are cheap to use, gives off good heat, and are hassle-free!

Good luck with your decision.

When you talk about gas or wood fireplace, are you talking about a gas fireplace that has fixed glass on the front vs an open wood burning insert? I am going through these same issues, but I know I do not want one of those fixed glass front ones. I think I will go with a wood burning fireplace and maybe put in gas logs if I get lazy.

As a purist, wood is the only way to go. That being said I have Vent free logs in the corner fireplaces in the 2nd floor bedrooms. Those are for aesthetics and heat. In the living room is a real wood buring fireplace. Used for company or quiet evenings.

After much ado, we decided to go with gas logs inside and we installed a firepit outside that will use real wood.

Karen

I am defintly going with a Rumford wood nrning fireplave in the living room and a gas fireplace in the master...Deciding between,lopi and jotul..i will check out mendota and town and country...and possibly woodstock

Wood, wood, wood!
It'a a renewable resource, you don't depend on any utility or delivery truck in winter and the price has been stable for many many years. Whereas Suburban Propane is charging my neighbor $3.99 a gallon for propane.
But I live in Vermont where over 25% of homes use wood as the main heat source.
I've been in homes with a gas unit and they DO look "realistic" but a wood fire IS real! And when I take my dog for a run and I smell the woodsmoke in the air I know there's a warm hearth nearby.

In populated areas wood burning will degrade the air quality in your immediate neighborhood. I hate the fact that I have to breathe in whatever crap my neighbor happens to be burning in his wood burning fireplace. I like breathing fresh air, not smoky!

Wood all the way. To each their own, but for people complaining that wood is too much trouble...I have to say...how lazy can people be?....unless you are elderly or have physical problems. Maybe there would be a time for a gas stove in my later years, but for now it's wood all the way.

Air quality in major cities is already degraded enough. Why add insult to injury with wood-burning smoke? Gas is so much cleaner.

Wood is not too much trouble, and I love messing with wood fires. Unfortunately it stinks up the neighborhood, especially if you have two or three wood burners going.

I guess in Third World countries (and rural areas) wood is okay, I would like to think around here we should know better.

In a way I have both. In our living room I have a sealed gas insert. In our family room we have a sealed wood burning stove (Vermont Casting Encore). Here are what I think are good from each.

Woood stove pluses:

1. Provides more heat when hot.
2. Allows me to satisfy my pyro side.
3. Gives that Wood burning smell.
4. Able to use up dead trees and branches from yard.
5. A viable source of heat during power outages.

Gas Insert pluses:

1. Very low maintence.
2. Insta-Fire. Just flip a switch and it is on and then flip the switch again and it is off.
3. A lot cleaner to deal with. No bark pieces falling off or ash to remove.
4. Don't have to cut, split, stack, and haul the wood.

Overall I like having both options. For example today I went home for lunch and flipped on the gas insert. Tonight when I get home I might build a fire in the stove.

Randy

I'm with Randy. In the house I'm building I installed a gas fireplace in the living room, a freestanding woodstove in the family room and a free standing gas stove in the sunroom. And that's in addition to the geothermal heat pump. My wife likes to stay toasty warm in the Winter. I like to "clobber" (my 5 y/o's term for splitting) fire wood.

We use a wood stove exclusively in the double wide we live in while we build. It saves on electricity so we can plow more money into the new house, although, we still send a little extra to the PUD for the "Green Power Program".

Wood is not too much trouble, and I love messing with wood fires. Unfortunately it stinks up the neighborhood, especially if you have two or three wood burners going.

I guess in Third World countries (and rural areas) wood is okay, I would like to think around here we should know better.
********************

There's nothing like the smell of woodsmoke in the air. And sometimes you can tell when they're burning cherry or apple wood too.

Where's "around here"? It's a big beautiful country out there.

Some people enjoy cigarette smoke too and they think it's wonderful! More power to them! It doesn't affect me. I can avoid cigarette smoke with relative ease and choose not to smoke them.

Unfortunately, smoke from wood-burning is not so easy to avoid. Whether you are walking or jogging through the neighborhood, or even soaking in your hot tub you often are subjected to wood-burning fireplace smoke. I prefer breathing fresh air (especially while exercising). Wood smoke is probably the largest contributor to nighttime air pollution in most neighborhoods.

Why should neighborhood air-quality be compromised because a few people feel like burning wood. If the smoke smells so good, keep it inside your house or at least on your own property and I would have no problem with it.

I hope you never even think about moving anywhere NEAR a farm. Especially in May.

I have been agonizing over this for awhile myself, but I think I will put a wood burning fp in the greatroom of a place I'm building up north. I can run a LP line to it in case I change my mind some day, but like someone else said, I like the real thing, tending the fire, the crackle of wood, the hypnotising effect of it. Old fashioned I guess.

I advise anyone considering a wood burning fireplace to think twice. We recently purchased our home w/a wood burning fireplace. It looks great, but smells awful! It smell up the whole house. Plus, the majority of the heat it produces goes up the chimney; not just from the fireplace, but the house heat also. It seems the only time the smell leaves the house is when the flue is open. I will never buy another home w/a wood burning fireplace.

Bringing this back from the dead...

A little clarification is in order here.

1. Fireplaces. I assume we are talking about brick-lined holes in the wall, having a chimney w/ damper, and a screen or folding-glass thing across the front. Yes, they are spectacularly inefficient. All you really accomplish with a fire is creating a trememdous thermosiphon for sucking all of the air, hot or cold, up your chimney. No preheating of combustion air or control of burn rate means lots of smoke.

2. Fireplace INSERT: If made after, like, 1991 or so, this is an EPA-compliant steel box, set inside your old fireplace, and plumbed up your chimney with a 6" diameter stainless pipe (flue liner). If you use reasonably dry wood, your fire will produce ZERO smoke, except briefly when lighting the fire, or reloading fresh pieces on hot coals. A suitable analogy would be the puff of smoke you see from a big-rig truck when he shifts gears - just gotta get the fire going again.

3. Freestanding woodstove: if bought after 1991 or so, it, like the insert, is an EPA-compliant steel box which sits on legs in the middle of your floor. Behaves exactly like the insert, but kicks out even more heat.

When the EPA cracked down on fireplace emissions in the early 90s, woodstove manufacturers dumped a bunch of money into combustion engineering, thereby creating the spectacularly efficient stoves of today. They cleaned them up by managing the burn better - letting air in just the right spot in just the right amount lets the wood (and any smoke) burn thoroughly. I can stand on my roof with a good fire going in my new insert, and you seriously cannot "smell" any smoke, and the chimney spews hot clear gases (not that I sniff it for long).

Anyway, hope that clears things up on the woodburning end.

-Jerry

Don't be fooled about a clean burning fireplace or EPA compliance. One wood fireplace burning is equivalent to up to 100 cars constantly circling your house or neighborhood.
(a line of cars one half mile long).

A gas log fireplace burns far cleaner.

The numbers speak for themselves; see the following web site.

http://burningissues.org/

We have a direct vent gas stove at home and havent lit it in over 2 years, we had 2 masonry wood fireplaces built at our lake house and burn them every weekend. Whenever we have people over they love to sit by the fire place and feed it wood, there is nothing like the sound and smell of woodsmoke. In the summer we have a fire in the firepit outside :) If your fireplace is built properly built & burning clean there shouldnt be any bad smell in the house or out, I love the smell of wood smoke when out driving thru the country. I also like the smell of burning leaves in the fall too!
As far as websites and opinions I am sure I could find one that would tell us we are all going to die from radiation from our keyboards.(its the num locks you know)
I guess thats why I live in the country, I diddnt like the BO smell of the sweaty joggers running by me every day in the city.
Just my opinion :)

Some people like smoking cigarettes, some people like cigars, some even like smoking crack cocaine, I don't really care.

Some people like breathing in smoky or polluted air, others prefer fresh air. Unfortunately, it is difficult to have a choice when your "city" neighbor makes the choice for everyone subjecting all to their smoke.

In the country, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference, in the city, I say burn all you want in your fireplace, just keep the flue closed!

There is a lot of propaganda out there. Monts is going to find it to suit his beliefs.

Frankly I think the HUGE houses people are building now are far more damaging to the environment than people having an ocasionall wood fire. The average size on the Home Building site is 4000 square feet. Think of all the chemicals produced to make all the materials. I have a tiny house and live 10 miles from work. I'll burn all the wood I want.
Mary

What Monts is saying about wood stoves used to be true, their fumes were dirty and they created anywhere from 40 to 80 grams an hour of particles (these are the fine solids which make smoke, just to clarify incase anyone is asking what a particle means in relation to the fumes). The new ones however are very clean burning. The maximum allowed by the EPA is just 7.5 grams/hr, but it's very easy to buy one that is below 4.5 grams/hr. Potentially less if you buy a very good one. I've seen some which are only 2 or 3 grams/hr for a full sized stove that holds around 40 lb of wood.

To put these figures in to perspective one gram of particles would be about 1/32 of a teaspoon. This means that for a fairly average 4.5 grams/hr around quarter of a teaspoon of particles will be released in to the atmosphere. Frankly, if your neighbour was burning one of these units with a full load of wood right now you wouldn't even know it, the only clue would be that in the cooler weather you can see the hot fumes/steam rippling out the chimney.

As for that site, http://www.burningissues.org/ I think it's very suspect. In fact, I believe it to be nothing more than propoganda and wouldn't be surprised if the natural gas industry isn't behind it in some form. I know a very similar site that is funded by the vinyl industry that's sole purpose is to convince people vinyl siding is good for the environment! It's actually seriously toxic to the planet and human health, but that's a whole other topic... The fuel costs table is the most telling part as it uses the most misleading and carefully picked figures, and yet it does not mention just how or why they chose them? Amazingly they have calculated that both oil and natural gas are cheaper per btu than wood?! But then again their table assumes that the gas appliance is 95% efficient, which is rather missleading as even the high efficieny appliances rarely run at their full 90%+, and they presume the wood appliance is just 50% efficient when really any EPA certified appliance is very unlikely to be lower than 70%, while better ones are around 80%. The presumed btu in a cord of wood and it's price does however seem reasonable as an example, but I would be curious how many of you are paying $120 a cord?

Well, take a look for yourself and make up your own mind:
http://www.burningissues.org/fuelmonetaryvalues.html

Bry84

Can you tell us the good ones!

Thanks!

The website posted by Monts is nothing more than a compilation of googling "wood smoke lung cancer" or something else equally obvious. Well over half of the cited material was written prior to 1990 - before EPA requirements were assigned to wood stoves. Most articles/quotes from afterward reference catalytic stoves, which are temperamental at best and useless at worst. Lots of misinformation and deliberate deception, on a site obviously maintained by an organization with, ultimately, a population-control-based ethos.

DH was adamantly against gas, he said if we were going to do that he'd just as soon put a line of light bulbs in a frame and flip a switch, so we went with wood. (This was really one of the only parts of the house he cared about so I went with it). We ended up going with a wood burning stove that is set into a rock wall. It has a glass door so there isn't much smoke smell, just a touch. We also had a blower installed that will circulate the heat back into the house when we need it, otherwise the heat does go right up the flue. We have the blower switch wired to the generator so if the power goes out we can heat the main floor of the house pretty well. I know people will say to just hook the furnace to the generator, but it pulls a bunch of power and since we are on a well we really need the power for water and the stove, so that uses up most of our generator power.
We also live on 12 acres and have a huge supply of wood to burn just keep the property tidy.
Annette
Alpharetta GA

This is pretty similar to mine, except mine is in a rock wall not a formal setting like this one.
Annette
{{gwi:1524103}}

***Don't be fooled about a clean burning fireplace or EPA compliance. One wood fireplace burning is equivalent to up to 100 cars constantly circling your house or neighborhood.
(a line of cars one half mile long).***

Not even close! When wood burns it emits carbon dioxide. The same amount whether it burns or decays in the forest. Gas emits hydrocarbons. The same thing that comes out those 100 cars circling his home. And don't start about the buildup of CO2 causing "global warming" Because every time you exhale you too emit CO2. And that beautiful head on your beer is CO2 also.

Christopher, you got to be kidding!

It's not the carbon dioxide that would worry most people. Try closing the flue in your fireplace for a few minutes and then tell me about your experience!

I close the damper every night. And the stove burns all night because of it. It has a nice lazy flame and 74% of the gasses burn off before exiting the chimney. No hydrocarbons emit from my stove. Just CO2. And I use the ashes in my yard. Lots of hydrogen in those ashes. Makes the grass grow great!
See? No waste. And I don't have to rely on the Middle East to heat my home. I used 3 1/2 cords of wood at $125 per cord this year. How much did it cost to heat your home?

Ashes cannot be used in yards in many places. Here in New Mexico I tried it many years ago and it actually killed the dirt where I had put it. Nothing would grow. I had to dig it all up and throw it away.

Wow. Up here in VT we burn lots of maple (of course!) Some oak as well as birch with some pine thrown in to get things started. The grass loves it! One neighbor started throwing it on his driveway (They're all dirt and gravel) for snow melting and in the summer he had to pull the grass out of it. Now he just gets sand from the town garage for the driveway and puts the ashes on the lawn and garden.

It is possible to have too much of a good thing. Ashes are extremely alkaline, in fact they're a good substitute for lime if you use it, but generally you don't want to be adding huge amounts of anything that changes the PH to your soil. I've known people who dump all the ashes from their fireplace in to their garden, often in the same few places week after week, and then suddenly wonder why the plants are dying... Use a little occasionally and everything should be fine, and try to avoid applying it around plants that thrive in acid soils. A lot of people feel they must use it all because it's there and it's free, but unless you have a very large garden or use the fireplace fairly infrequently you should still expect to throw a good amount away each week with the rubish. You can also give it to friends and neighbours who don't burn wood themselves.

Oh, and I should mention that by ashes I mean ashes from untreated, unpainted normal wood. Not coal, BBQ fuel, household waste, plastics, paper (with the exception of a little newsprint used to start the fire), those manufactuered logs, or any other man made/composite materials. Most these things contain toxic materials that will remain in the ashes.

Again, I will clarify: Desert dirt cannot tolerate ashes. Period. So anyone living in these areas should not even attempt this.
Now the upside to living here is that we don't have any mold problems.

Desert soils are allready highly alkaline, adding ashes will make it even more alkaline. This is obviously a bad combination as any deviation from around PH 6.5 is moving out of the ideal growing range for most plants. Like I said, ashes are a good substitute for lime, so it would be sensible to find out if adding lime is a good idea with your soil before trying out ashes.

Anyway, while I have no personal experience of desert soils, I was under the impression that the plants which grow in them are adapted to the dry, low fertility, free draining soils and adding plant foods or soil improvements had negative effects. I suspect most plant foods would just wash right though soil like that anyway, particularly the modern chemical based ones.

Someone mentioned that they vented their furnace through their fireplace chimney. This should never be done. It is forbidden by every building code I have used. Every fuel burning appliance must have its own flue/chimney.
Lennox makes a nice Rumford style zero clearance fireplace and you can add a gas log to it..

What is a Rumford wood fire place? Meaning, is it a unit you can buy, or is it a type of fireplace you need to build?

Hmmm...what if I were to say I hauled my wood home in my Suburban. Not sure which i love more - my suburban or my wood burning fire place.

monts, why is it that people like you seem to think that you have the right not to be bothered by anything? It is rediculas when there is one wacko that is saying noone should burn in a fireplace around him, as if he is entitled to greater rights than those with fireplaces. hey, monts, fireplace smoke... get over it.

Posted by: Monts (My Page) on Wed, Jan 12, 05 at 22:56

"Why should neighborhood air-quality be compromised because a few people feel like burning wood."

Answer:
Because it's my right as an American to heat my home the way my father, my grandfather and my great grandfather heated thier homes.

==========================================================
Posted by Monts:

"Air quality in major cities is already degraded enough. Why add insult to injury with wood-burning smoke? Gas is so much cleaner"

Comment:
Gas is so much cleaner? Really... I would like to compare the amount of pollution that my EPA woodburning fireplace puts back into the environment vs. your natural gas.

How many gallons of diesel fuel were used to deliver my fuel source which is wood? ZERO

How many gallons of diesel fuel were used and burned off into the einvironment by delivering your natural gas to your home? Let's think? : Drilling rig hauled to the natural gas site by a semi truck. Drilling rig running 24/7 for a long time to reach the natural gas underground. Pumps that deliver the natural gas to the lines which finally make it to your home to burn?

Not so clean huh?

Right now everyone is changing over to wood again. Gas stoves and fireplaces are not selling. Everyone wants wood. Woodsmoke doesn't go high enough to destroy the planet as do gas emissions, and the smell of woodsmoke in the air on a winter evening is just so comforting. The smell of gas on a winter evening means soon there's gonna be a kaboom somewhere.

Interesting replies to this thread.

The ultimate decision...gas or wood...depends on what you want or what you are trying to achieve from your fireplace.

Are you interested in the physically contributing to the fire? Do you want to split and stack wood, benefitting from the "wood warms you twice" credo? The couple of times a week ritual of going out to the stack and collecting a few armloads of wood to bring into the house? The satisfaction of building and setting the fire?

Are you looking for the aesthetic of a wood fire? The snap, crackle and pop as the pitch pockets flare up? Are you looking to be transfixed by the ever-changing flame pattern as the wood logs burn down, with the variety of flame provided by buringing different types of wood? Do you like the subtle hint of smoke?

Are you willing to accept that having a wood fire may contribute a some heat gain to the house, or that it may actually cost you BTUs? Again, a nicely designed Rumford or equivalent with make-up air will give you a net positive, a poorly constructed firebox installed in a leaky house, or even in a tight house, that requires you to crack a window to keep the draft going, might actually have a negative effect on your heating bill.

If you'd prefer a turnkey fire with a fairly repetative flame pattern and prefer to have minimal interaction with the process of building a fire, then gas might be fot you.

If you still want a wood fire but are pushing for greater thermal efficiency then a wood buringing insert with a catalytic might be the best bet.

If you're like me and prefer to burn wood that you have chopped and split, and you enjoy the process of creating and enjoy the aesthetic provided by an open woodburning fire, then have a rumsford built. And have you mason provide make-up air for added efficiency with a better burn...as well as an ash cleanout in the back of the firebox to make ash removal a breeze.

Posted by: ChristopherH (My Page) on Mon, Oct 24, 05 at 7:33

"Right now everyone is changing over to wood again. Gas stoves and fireplaces are not selling. Everyone wants wood. Woodsmoke doesn't go high enough to destroy the planet as do gas emissions, and the smell of woodsmoke in the air on a winter evening is just so comforting."

Kennf:
In some cities (i.e. Denver/Boulder) there are wood burning bans during certain days of the winter because the "brown cloud" gets so out of hand. Wood burning firplaces are forbidden in most new construction in the ski areas for the same reason. I like the smell of burning pinon wood, but looking through a hazy brown cloud at everyone's chimneys pouring out smoke is not comforting.

Posted by: feathersnfins (My Page) on Mon, Oct 24, 05 at 1:04

"Answer:
Because it's my right as an American to heat my home the way my father, my grandfather and my great grandfather heated thier homes."

Kennf:
I'm fairly certain the Bill of Rights doesn't mention heating methods. We no longer have the "right" to spray DDT or smoke cigars in the maternity ward. If you live on a 20 acre farm in the Northeast, more power to you. Burn all the wood you want. As for the rest of us, it's not always an option, and it sure as hell isn't a "right."

Kennf:
I'm fairly certain the Bill of Rights doesn't mention heating methods. We no longer have the "right" to spray DDT or smoke cigars in the maternity ward. If you live on a 20 acre farm in the Northeast, more power to you. Burn all the wood you want. As for the rest of us, it's not always an option, and it sure as hell isn't a "right

I actually live on a 2 acre lot in the South. I actually believe it is my right to do so since there aren't any laws against burning wood to heat my home. I also believe that it is anyone elses right to burn wood to heat their home or just to enjoy a nice fire if that is their wish.

As for all the talk and complaining about smoke, BURN SEASONED WOOD. You can't even tell I'm burning a fire becasuse there is NO smoke. If I had 100 fires burning with seasoned wood in 100 fireplaces like mine on one city block, there wouldn't be a brown haze.

I would absolutely love it if one of my neighbors came to my front door and asked me to stop burning wood because it "smells". I would laugh in their face. Then I would probably start rolling around on my front porch laughing.

"As long as trees will grow, wood I will burn"

hhmm burning wood or making some rich people even richer or I can use electric which is made by burning coal-ya thats clean burning or I can live by a nuke plant- I think I'll take the wood

To me it's simple,if you have a lot of time on your hands for all the work associated with wood(cutting,chopping,stacking,hauling-in,fire-building,ash removal and disposal,cleaning up wood debris from floor after hauling it in,killing all the spiders who hitched a ride on the firewwood and are now crawling up your wall,chimney sweeping,ect...)more power to ya.And if you have a free source of wood,great.However,if you work long irregular hours like me,and have too many other chores and things to do,gas is the only way.It really sucks to come home to an ice cold house late at night knowing it's gonna take hours to get warm.Better have a gas backup and find a way to use outside air for combustion.I won't even get into dry air,extreme heat/cold cycles,pollution on and on.Looking for a new hobby?

I had a concern about gas fireplaces and their future. I had read in the newspaper that natural gas reserves are quite low and could be running out in the near future. They even speculated that Canada, the main source of our natural gas, could be severely reducing natural gas exports in 15 years. There have been no new major discoveries of natural gas resources in some time and the cost/discovery ratio has grown exponentially.

Perhaps, in the long-run, highly-efficent wood burning fireplaces are the way to go? I understand the masonry or Rumford or Finnish style fireplaces are extremely efficient and use only a handful of twigs to heat the mass of bricks which then radiate heat all day and it does not require constant tending.

Hmmm...I don't have alot of time on my hands and a wood stove is not a lot of hassle..Get wood deliverd to your house...takes 2 hours to stack 3 cords. Grab an armful of logs at night and light a fire. Turn the blower on and in less than 1/2 hour, 62 degrees turns to 70 degees. Empty ashes once a week...takes less than 5 minutes. I don't buy the "wood is a hassle" reasoning...unless you are chopping down trees I guess.

BTW, I have yet to have a spider from the wood.

Wood is the only way for me...gas, IMO is the fake way to go..don't like the looks, the heat, and the lack of smell.

We went with a wood burning Rumford design, we will have a make up air switch to turn on when we burn it (it also comes on automatically when the range hood is turned on in the kitchen)It draws additional make up air thru the air exchanger when turned on.
We also put a dumbwaiter right next to the fireplace that brings the wood up from the wood room in the basement. Also added a vac pan in the hearth of the fireplace (the only place that wood chips might fall.
I have had gas fireplaces and gas stoves and rarely used them; it's just not the same to us. It is all about the smell sound and feel to me. We also have an unlimited supply of free wood from out property.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rumford Fireplace Info