Wood burning fireplaces are usually less efficient and are messier but if you have wood, like the smell and sounds of a real fire they are great. Gas ones can be switched on and off and not lose heat up the flue. I have yet to use this fireplace but I really hope to have a client use it in the future as it seems to be easy to use, reasonably efficient and safe to use for a wood burning one. Rumfords really put out some nice heat and this one allows for the ability to close a screen or glass or leave it open depending on your wish. But it can be closed off at night and not worried about. Gas FP's dont always require chimneys and they are usually less costly up front. The dont usually require any extra foundation and are easily installed. Wood burning or masonry units may require addtional structure or a foundation. Here is a link to the wood burner I refer to. I have no idea on its cost but I am sure its more than some. But it has some great features. Watch the videos. Good luck on your decision http://www.renaissancefireplaces.com/en/renaissance-rumford-1000

macv - Thanks, so much for the reply. Well, with the 42" x 30" opening, our ratio is 1.4. If we had gone with the 36" opening, we would have hit 1.2 on the head. I know I should have paid more attention to previous discussions on fireplace proportion. darn. All of the imitative stone chimney enclosure is above the roof surface on the rear of the house. I think only one neighbor will have any kind of view of it during the winter when the leaves are down. Due to the slope of the lot from the road to the house, only the very top is visible from the road which is why we want this to have a nice treatment like the one you showed in the picture. I just talked to DH and he & the fireplace guy have come to a mutually agreeable to solution to trade some aesthetics for avoiding potential water issues. He said that he would write that up for me so I can post it. The corners won't be visible at ground level. However, we are using the same real stone thin veneer which will be at "foundation" level below the Nichiha shakes. DH says that there are corners for it. I know you were upset when you had to have your stamp removed from that project, so I'm sorry if I stirred up unpleasant memories. However, thank you so much for the insight. It really helps. Jo Ann

First, DO NOT get a ventless system. Many building codes actually outlaw them. I think they all should because the build up of fumes can be dangerous. Therefore, the choice is between a VENTED gas log system and something called DIRECT VENT system. A vented system works pretty much like your present conventional wood burning fireplace. It will provide some heat, but most of the heat will go up the chimney. It is not an energy efficient system. A direct vent system is comprised of a sealed firebox equipped with 2 vents that go up the chimney -- one to exhaust the fumes and the other to bring in fresh air to feed the combustion. It is very energy efficient, and can give off some serious heat. Direct vent systems are costly and take close to a whole day to install, assuming you already have a gas line in place. You really should consider this option if you want more than just the pleasant appearance of a flame. One more consideration: Since direct vent system can get very hot, it's a good idea to get one with a remote thermostat. Otherwise you'll wind up turning the thing on and off over and over again. But if you live in a climate zone where a kit of heat is not the primary consideration, for instance in Florida, a vented gas log system would be a reasonable option. If a really DRAMATIC dancing flame is what you're looking for, I think the Eiklor brand is the gold standard. But it will use a LOT OF GAS, and most of the heat will go up the chimney. So you're almost literally burning money with that one. I'm partial to direct vent. We have one here in North Carolina, and we love it. Make sure you find someone with a good local reputation to do the installation. Otherwise you'll wind up with buyer's remorse.

@Annie: Thank you for the link, it's from a reliable source so I am considering carefully what it says. Both of our stoves are connected to outside air and have been for decades. The inlets are on the typically upwind side of the house. Except of course, when we're having a Nor'easter. This house was built before the Civil War and has no insulation in its wall cavities (and none is possible due to the contruction of the wall assembly). So it defines a "leaky house". No problems here with "sick-building" issues related to being too tightly sealed. Sometimes I think we might as well be living outside! When we installed the O/A inlets it made an immediate difference in the draftiness of the rooms so I would be reluctant to go back, but fire safety is a paramount concern for us so I will be talking to my husband about this. We have no other combustion stacks (obviously no furnace or boiler, and our DHW is electric) so we have no carbon monoxide risks with or withhut the OCA. But I am planning on installing powerful vent fan in the current kitchen which is where the wood-burning stove is. (I'm moving the kitchen to another room to get away from the woodstove, but it will still close enough to be affected by the fan's power, I think.) I'm picturing in my mind the pathway of the combustion air within our stove and trying to decide if I have a risk of drawing super-heated air or coals back down into the combustion inlet piping (which is utterly unshielded along its entire length as it lies slap up against the wood sheathing of the wood room) if the system was depressurized, and I think not. But this is particular to my stove, and model, and not true for many other stoves that would simply feed the air directly into the firebox. I really appreciate the heads up and will ponder it some more, especially as we are slowly getting around to installing the new stove (which likely has an intake air pathway that is completely different.) @mjlb: LOL at your DH's association to arched doors and a crematorium. Fortunately the woodburning stoves like the Jotul, while perhaps slightly arched on top have lovely glass doors that don't seem like crematoria, at least to me. Soapstone (or other masonry) thermal mass stoves are fab, but not really the same fire-appreciation sense as any fire place or regular woodstove. They are intended to burn much smaller, hotter fires, often only a couple of times per day. They also are not really retrofitable into an existing hearth and chimney stack since they require different stack pathways and massing. Plus they are extremely heavy and must have a substantial foundation. I love them though, and am considering converting from woodstoves to masonry as we age in place. Woodstoves require such constant vigilance for safety and a considerable amount of physical activity to attend (even leaving aside processing the fuel from tree to firewood) that I can see it may be a problem at some point. We're in our 60's now. With no other source of heat if we couldn't burn wood we'd have to leave the house. My late MIL in the last year or two before she died had issues around her wood heating and cooking arrangements. Her cognition was becoming muzzy enough that I had decided she couldn't live alone there another heating season. Plus as she became frailer just loading the logs into her stove started to become a problem. I remember one miserable day when I split her entire winter's wood down into smaller pieces because she was forbidden to pick up anything more than 2 lbs. She wept the whole time I did it, and I felt so sad for her. A masonry stove since it is fired only two, or at most three times a day could be managed by someone paid to come in and attend to it. The rest of the day it just radiates heat, mildly enough so that you can sit on it safely. I considered getting a soapstone-walled woodstove before choosing the cast-iron Jotul. The soapstone walls are NOT safer to touch than cast-iron (unlike a masonry heater made of soapstone which relies on thermal mass). And having looked at several in the shop being repaired (cracking) we decided to stick with the familar cast-iron. There is one nagging issue for me around wood-burning: it can contribute to diminshed air quality from particulates in the smoke. When you get a whiff of a wood-burn, it usually smells quite pleasant, but in truth you are inhaling particulates and smoke, even in the cleanest, most efficient burning ones. One wood-stove is a trivial air degradation, but wood-burners in every household is a community problem. In many parts of the UK (and some cities here in the US) wood-burning, not to mention coal which is even worse air-quality-wise, is illegal. Stilll this is a harsh climate and some form of heat is necessary. As we have the woods (and generally only use thinnings and blow-downs), and process it on the farm, it seems environmentally better than oil or worse, fracked gas. But it is not totally environmentally benign. We have installed more solar panels to make power, and will add more to provide some electric heating capacity as well. There are no free lunches when it comes to heating in a cold climate. L.