TickerToo: Oh Wow! This lovely place now has a web site! Absolutely wonderful to see it growing! Now I'll have an excuse to travel back to Bentonsport, IA and thoroughly enjoy this garden's expansion. Of course, it will be a much long drive for Sue and I, since we live in Manistee, MI - about an hour's plus drive south of Traverse City. I am really sorry that you live so far away, but I'll give you another excuse to travel - whenever you plant to visit this garden - plan it as a stopping point to visit the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. In order to fully enjoy this garden in St. Louis, you might wish to plan for a 1.5 day tour - there is so much to see and enjoy. By the way, if you and yours are into staying at a Bed & Breakfast place, you might give Maggie Leyda a jingle; she's owns and operates Maggie's B & B in Collinsville, IL - located within a 15 minute plus drive to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. Maggie is a retired academic Librarian, who has traveled in the orient via freighters and such and who will also offer you a nice room with reasonable rates, many stories of her travels, and a good healthy breakfast to boot. Here's the link to her B & B http://www.bnbfinder.com/bedandbreakfast/level3/8335 Thank you for your cautionary message. So far I haven't run into any tree roots, but I suspect that I might when I go to plant along the semi-shady area on the side of our garage. I promise to be very careful!! FYI - I've also posted the virtual tour link to the Missouri Botanical Garden below so that you can partially enjoy this place without actually traveling there. Again, a special thanks for providing me and others with the link to this wonderful growing garden gem in southeastern Iowa. Here is a link that might be useful: Missouri Botanical Garden - Virtual Tour

I know this is an old thread, but it seems to have spurred some interest over the last few years. I, too, wanted to know if these grate heaters worked and came across this thread, but wasn't really convinced one way or the other from peoples' responses. On a whim, I decided to buy one, so I figured I could contribute if there are others like me who are curious. First of all, I went with the Cozy Grate Heater from woodlanddirect.com, and I've owned it for about 2 months (November and December). Granted these aren't the coldest months in New England where I live, but I felt I had enough experience with the unit so far to give my two cents. Here goes: - Does the unit put off heat? In short, yes. I keep my thermostat set on 60-62 degrees. Within a couple hours of lighting a fire, my living room (where the fireplace is) is up to 70-72 degrees. It's an approximately 10x20' room and it gets plenty toasty. Some of that heat does go into the rest of the house, but primarily it heats the space where the fireplace is located. - Will this unit provide heating for your whole house? Not really. I do notice the thermostat climb a few of degrees in other parts of the house, but again, primarily it seems to heat the fireplace room. I would say these units are best suited as supplemental heat for your existing heating system. - Do these heaters provide comparable heating to a fireplace insert or wood stove? Not really. My in-laws have an insert and my mom has a wood stove, so I can make a fair comparison. From my experience, the grate heater burns wood quicker than wood stoves & inserts and doesn't put out the same amount of heat. My guess is this has to do with air control - inserts and wood stoves are airtight and you have complete control over the amount of combustion air. A fireplace door (even with a damper feature) is not completely airtight. My mom's wood stove can burn a few logs all day long. I could burn though the same amount of wood in just a few hours. Again, the unit does a great job providing supplemental heat to your fireplace room, and a little bit for the rest of the house, but they aren't going to be a whole-home heating solution. One last consideration that isn't mentioned anywhere online: The unit I purchased (Cozy Grate Heater) is designed to operate most efficiently with the fireplace doors CLOSED. It says so in the instructions. However, I discovered that most fireplace doors are made of tempered glass and are NOT recommended to be closed while a fire is burning. Tempered glass can only withstand temperatures of about 500 degrees. They do make glass doors from a special type of glass called ceramic glass which is INCREDIBLY expensive - this is the same glass found in inserts and wood stoves. Before I bought the unit, I wanted to also purchase new fireplace doors. After discovering this, I decided to keep my existing doors just in case the glass on the new doors ended up cracking. I did call the company that makes the cozy grate heater and asked about this. A nice woman I spoke to told me she's never had a customer call and complain that their glass doors cracked. So far (again, 2 months in), I haven't had an issue - I don't build raging fires and I keep the burning logs at least 6 inches from the glass. Just be aware of this if you're considering buying a grate heater. All in all, I'm very satisfied with my grate heater. I wasn't expecting it to perform as well as an insert, but rather wanted it for supplemental heating of my living room. I love having a fire, but hated the smoke and lack of heating efficiency. This unit has certainly met my expectations. Sorry for the long-winded response, but I'm hoping this will help others out there who are in the same situation I was two months ago!

Berlin, thanks for your tips. I just found Heat Stop products on my own yesterday. Nice to know someone, yourself, endorsed them and that you say the joints "can be made" in 1/2 inch thicknesses by mixing it thick. When you recommend mixing in small batches, how quickly does the "stiffly mixed mortar" set? I do have some masonry skills so this is doable for me. Another issue I have is that I will have to mail order Heat Stop, but I can get "Fireplace Patch" manufactured by Rutland in 1 pound quantities from a TSC nearby. So, I was wondering if I could reset all the bricks on a background of regular mortar, because many of the bricks in my fireplace are completely separated from all the mortar that once held them. Then, finish pointing the mortar joints with the Fireplace Patch so that the Fireplace Patch will be in 1/2 inch to 1 inch depth in the joints. That way the regular Type S mortar won't be in contact with any flames but the Fireplace Patch will. Do you foresee any problems with taking that approach? Or should I just get a 50# sack of Heat Stop? One more question, would you, or anyone else, have any tips for cleaning the carbon from the fireplace bricks before I rebuild the firebox, or is carbon on the bricks a non-issue?

It would be a big deal to lower the fireplace box. If however, you are talking about building a new hearth that is level with the opening that is fairly easy to do. First you need to check your local building code to see what the required hearth depth is for your size firebox opening (the measurement between the outer edge of the firebox opening and the outermost portion of the hearth). This is usually about 18" and is important to keep any burning embers that escape from causing a fire. That will determine the minimum depth you need to build to. Build a frame out of 2x4's with the dimensions you want (the top should be about two inches below the firebox opening this will compensate for the thickness of the coverings mentioned below). Cover it with 3/4" plywood. Most codes require at least 1" of non-combustible materials on the top of the hearth (check your code). The next steps depend on what you want to cover it with. If you are going to use brick, you should put down a layer of cement board and then mortar and brick. If you are going to use tile/stone, you will probably need a couple of layers of cement board (to achieve the required thickness of non-combustible materials) then thinset mortar and the tile or stone. Knowing the approximate finished thinkness of your covering is important to building the frame height so that the finished product matches up with the firebox opening. Many people like the hearth to be slightly higher (1/2" - 1") than the opening so that it's easy to sweep ashes back into the firebox. Good luck.