The Wood Fireplace Insert Blog

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How can you use left-over cooking oil, toilet paper rolls, and dryer lint to make your life easier.  Well, believe it or not, there is a valuable use for these items and it not only recycles them and keep them out of the waste cycle, but it also makes your life easier as well.  This is a pretty neat idea for a recycling, self-sufficiency geek like me.

Sue Talbert of annarbor.com recenty wrote an article about creating her own easy to use fire-starters by using items in the home that she would normally throw away any way.  It is a highly creative use and a great idea for making your fireplace easier to use and making use of items you already have on hand and reducing the amount of waste that your household put out.

The full article is here.

I love this idea for the fact that it not only makes use of normally wasted materials but it saves you from spending money on commercial fire-starters as well. A double win!

If you have any great ideas like this feel free to pass them along.

Wood Fireplace Inserts

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In many homes, the fireplace is the heart of the house, and when you add a wood fireplace insert, it can also bring you many hours of economic comfort and environmentally friendly warmth?  Wood fireplace inserts are a type of stove that is specifically designed to fit into the firebox of an existing fireplace so that they can use the fireplace flue as the vent.

Why invest in a wood fireplace insert you ask?

Well, a wood fireplace insert will transform a 10% efficient fireplace into a 70-80% efficient wood heater overnight.  Now that’s a major boost in efficiency!  In fact, many air-tight fireplace inserts allow one load of wood to heat a home all night long.  Because of this the insert will end up paying for itself.  Fireplace inserts can achieve sizable payback in 2-3 years just from the money saved on heating bills.  The colder your climate the faster the payback.  Fireplace inserts also eliminate the normal cold air drafts down the chimney as they provide both radiant and convection heat that distributes heat more evenly throughout the entire room.

If you have a gas equipped fireplace, gas-fired inserts are also available. Gas fireplace inserts have a greater output of heat than conventional gas logs and they are designed to be more like a wood-burning insert. Gas inserts provide convenient heat that’s clean, easy to use and safe for the whole family to use. All you have to do is turn it on and sit back and enjoy the fire and warmth.

When installing a new hearth appliance be sure to have your chimney and venting systems inspected by a Certified Chimney Sweep before the installation process begins.

Wood Fireplace Insert

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Here is a recent press release that has some interesting information about using government incentives to help cover the cost of installing a new, more efficient fireplace insert.

Tax Credit Allows Homeowners to Stay Warm and Save Cold Cash On Lennox Hearth Products

Up to $1,500 now available for purchase, installation of energy-efficient wood and pellet Stoves, fireplaces or fireplace inserts

Orange, CA (Vocus/PRWEB ) February 2, 2010 — Providing taxpayers with incentives to make homes more energy efficient is a key portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and the federal government recently issued clarifying guidelines on how the legislation affects homeowners who purchase a 75 percent efficient wood- or pellet-burning stove, fireplace or fireplace insert. When homeowners purchase and install qualifying hearth products during 2009 and/or 2010, including many from Lennox Hearth products, they can receive a 30 percent tax credit for costs incurred, up to $1,500.

Energy efficiency is a key component of the Stimulus Plan, as it provides incentives to homeowners who purchase high-efficiency, alternative energy heating sources such as wood or pellet stoves and fireplace inserts. These products provide potential energy savings to the American homeowners while also benefiting the environment

The fireplaces, stoves and inserts available today are definitely not your grandpa’s wood stove
When you add the tax credit on top of cleaner emissions, increased efficiency, the opportunity to zone heat your home and the desirability of using renewable fuels to reduce your carbon footprint, it just makes good sense for homeowners to consider the benefits of investing in a wood or pellet heating products

“Energy efficiency is a key component of the Stimulus Plan, as it provides incentives to homeowners who purchase high-efficiency, alternative energy heating sources such as wood or pellet stoves and fireplace inserts. These products provide potential energy savings to the American homeowners while also benefiting the environment,” said Wendy Howells, vice president and general manager of Lennox Hearth Products (LHP). “Wood- and pellet-burning stoves, fireplaces and inserts are cost effective and can help homeowners utilize zone heating to further save on their home-heating costs. A good example of zone heating is when a stove is used to heat the kitchen and great room during the day. Then rooms such as formal living rooms, dinning rooms and bedrooms, which families use less frequently during that time, can be maintained at lower temperatures, saving money.”

Wood and pellet stoves offer additional environmental benefits as a home-heating option since the fuel sources they use are renewable, as opposed to natural gas, oil, propane or electricity. The new legislation means homeowners who are dedicated to living in a way that reduces their environmental impact are now being rewarded with a significant tax credit to help their efforts.

“The fireplaces, stoves and inserts available today are definitely not your grandpa’s wood stove,” said Howells. “Lennox Hearth Products has more than 20 different models that qualify for the tax credit and they complement virtually any home interior, from traditional to contemporary to rustic.

“When you add the tax credit on top of cleaner emissions, increased efficiency, the opportunity to zone heat your home and the desirability of using renewable fuels to reduce your carbon footprint, it just makes good sense for homeowners to consider the benefits of investing in a wood or pellet heating products,” added Howells.

An Official Manufacturer’s Certificate, which homeowners can use when preparing tax returns, is available to customers at www.lennoxhearthproducts.com. While neither the certificate nor a product sales receipt is required for submission to the government, homeowners are encouraged to retain both for their tax records.

About Lennox Hearth Products:
Offering a diverse family of products for every style and budget, Lennox Hearth Products (LHP) is a leading manufacturer of indoor and outdoor fireplaces, fireplace inserts, free-standing stoves, gas log sets, accessories and venting products for the specialty retail, residential new construction and industrial markets. LHP, based in Orange, California, is a business unit of Lennox International Inc. (NYSE: LII). Through its subsidiaries, LII is a global leader in the heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration markets. More information about LHP can be found at www.lennox.com.

Source: PRWeb

Information on Wood Fireplace Inserts

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With the recent major winter storms that have hit the east coast it reminds us how beneficial it can be to have a wood fireplace insert and a good supply of fuel that can provide heat for the home and for cooking at times when conventional power sources fail us.

Heavy winter storms are always a possibility in many areas and having an alternative heating source like a wood burning fireplace insert or a wood stove just makes good sense.  A good emergency plan will always provide the capability of being self-sufficient for a least a few days by having sufficient supplies on hand and having alternative heat sources.

If you live in an area where the weather can become extreme and you don’t have your own independant way of producing heat you really need to take the time to find a solution that will work well for your budget, lifestyle and amount of risk.   If you live off in a rural area and the power goes out, it may take quite some time for help to arrive in the worst of cases so you need to have a plan in place now.  Take some time and make sure your are prepared now while you are thinking about it – not when it is too late.

Wood Fireplace Inserts

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Wood fireplace pellets are small pellets made of compressed wood chips and saw dust that is a by product of other more lucrative wood processing. The chips and saw dust are dried to a specified moisture content, then compressed by a very high pressure machine. They are compressed with so much pressure that no binding agent is required other than the sap from the timber itself.

The benefits of wood pellets are as follows:

- Ease of transport

- Clean burning fuel

- It complies to consistent standards. (Things which have standard sizes, shaped and moisture content can easily be designed for)

Pellets can be purchase by the bag for hand loading or by the truckload if you have a system that is set up for it.

When ordered by truckload the pellets are blown from a delivery truck up to 20 yards to a storage unit. In the past there has been a lot of hassle with dust, but this was largely due to the use of agricultural feed trucks being used to deliver the pellets. As dust is not really an issue for agriculture, they did not have dust minimisation technology, and it was a mess. If you use one of the large suppliers these days, there is little problem.

Understanding Wood Pellet Boilers And.. Combustion

Wood pellets can also be used to fuel a boiler.  The pellets are fed into the “burner” where they are burned. The burner in all boilers does much the same job. It’s a place where the fuel is mixed with air to provide the optimal conditions for combustion, and lit. Before you know it the combustion gases are travelling through the heat exchanger where it heats up the water.

The flame from the burner, and the resultant combustion gases escape into the boiler, transferring their heat to the water circulating through the heat exchanger within the boiler. The heat is then distributed the house using a wet system. In most cases water flows through the heat exchanger in the boiler, absorbing heat from the flame and the combustion gases. This hot water is then circulated around the house to radiators, underfloor heaters and hot water cylinders.

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With the Holiday rush quickly coming to an end now may be the best time to buy a wood fireplace insert.

Many dealers may be looking to bolster sales for the end of the year.  Others may need to move out older models to make room for new ones.  Also, with retail sales in the shape they are many dealers are discounting much further than normal.  Plus you get the benefit of lowering your heating costs.

This is also somewhat off-season now that we are part way through the winter.  It will likely be easier to schedule installation.  All in all if you have been thinking of adding the benefits of a wood fireplace insert to your home now is probably a good time to start checking around.

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