In my vacation house (where I went to live for one full winter season), I turned the fireplace into an enclosed (still wood-fueled) fireplace: there's a fan (if I want to) but it's not blowing smoke, it's blowing warmth from the warmed up "firebox" (whatever that is called) inside the house.
It's day and night compared to that same house back when it had a regular open fireplace: smoke would drift inside the house, no matter how cautious I'd be. And the efficiency was terribly bad.
Now I still get to enjoy the view and once the fire is well started and the smoke correctly goes through the chimney, I can even open the enclosed fireplace's for a while and hear the crackling / get the full ambiance.
Lovely. I hope to go there in december. Falling asleep in front of the fireplace is one of my greatest joy in life.
It did cost about 5 K EUR IIRC (to transform the open fireplace into an enclosed one) but then warming the house with wood is super cheap (an enclosed fireplace is much more energy efficient than an open fireplace).
FWIW I warmed the house during the entire summer with five "stères de bois" [1] (an old french unit that isn't used for anything anymore beside wood logs meant to be used as fuel), paid 60 EUR each. So 300 EUR to warm the house (south east of France, mild winter).
BTW: house in the middle of nowhere, hardly any neighbors. So they don't get my smoke and I don't get their.
I second this. My sister has an enclosed fireplace and last time I visited her, I measured the air quality next to it and was surprised to find no elevated PM2.5 inside the room.
However keeping the door just a bit open emitted a lot of smoke into the room and gave a completely picture.
So I would recommend measuring the air quality in your home if you run any fire place.
I should probably write a blog post about it sometime.
Yup I got a pm2.5 & AQI monitor a couple years ago and was so excited to have a fireplace in my new house, but trying it with the monitor showed me I really shouldn't. I am considering an enclosed fireplace to still be able to use it. I am now wondering if just emitting it into the air (out of the chimney) is acceptable.
EDIT: also it's been shocking to check on it while cooking, our vent hood is mediocre to bad so we end up keeping a door open most of the time we are cooking
Is this a modern wood stove or insert? I recently bought one for a new home we're building, and from my research they're incredibly efficient these days. Not installed yet so we will see, I suppose.
It's day and night compared to that same house back when it had a regular open fireplace: smoke would drift inside the house, no matter how cautious I'd be. And the efficiency was terribly bad.
Now I still get to enjoy the view and once the fire is well started and the smoke correctly goes through the chimney, I can even open the enclosed fireplace's for a while and hear the crackling / get the full ambiance.
Lovely. I hope to go there in december. Falling asleep in front of the fireplace is one of my greatest joy in life.
It did cost about 5 K EUR IIRC (to transform the open fireplace into an enclosed one) but then warming the house with wood is super cheap (an enclosed fireplace is much more energy efficient than an open fireplace).
FWIW I warmed the house during the entire summer with five "stères de bois" [1] (an old french unit that isn't used for anything anymore beside wood logs meant to be used as fuel), paid 60 EUR each. So 300 EUR to warm the house (south east of France, mild winter).
BTW: house in the middle of nowhere, hardly any neighbors. So they don't get my smoke and I don't get their.
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A8re