It’s also astonishing how much wood needs to be split, to heat even a moderately sized house. Depends on the climate though, I guess.

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dredmorbius 10 hours ago | parent [-]

And the fireplace / stove.

Most open-hearth fireplaces are tremendously inefficient, not only sending most of the heat up the chimney, but drawing in additional cold air in doing so.

A masonry stove with an external air draw should be far more efficient, and burn much more cleanly to boot. The pollution factor from woodstoves is another major consideration, and means wood-burning is limited in many areas.

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dylan604 9 hours ago | parent [-]

My dad and his father built the house my family grew up in. The fireplace had two vents on either side of the fire box that drew air from the floor and vented near the ceiling. The ceiling fans in the room would circulate the air in the room. It was the only place I've spent time that a fireplace actually was useful.

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bluGill 4 hours ago | parent [-]

When those work well they're fine but be very careful. It's not uncommon of for smoke to go out what you think is the in intake and often those aren't correctly built as a chimney and so you can burn your house down.

	▲	dylan604 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Knowing how ours were built, I don't even know what you describe could happen. The intake vents are on the floor with a standard height raised hearth (12"???) while the exit vents are about 6' off the floor. Not really sure how smoke is any where near the intake. The smoke is contained within the chimney. I'm at a loss at how to design something so poorly that the smoke is near any vents. Then again, I've grown up around construction, so maybe that knowledge is preventing me from thinking dumb???