Fireplace doors, good or bad?

I was told that there are not a good thing, glass doors on my fireplace. . Why is that?

Doors Fireplace good

This entry was posted by admin on July 7, 2010 at 1:56 pm, and is filed under Heating and Cooling. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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#1 written by Randy F 1 year ago

a fire place works by radiant heat. glass doors will reflect the heat back into the fire place where it will just go up the chimney.

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#2 written by Dan 1 year ago

Glass doors keep sparks in, but if you put in glass doors you want to do it with a insert that will have a blower to blow the hot air into the room. That way you get the look and the heat of the fire and eliminate the chance of fire in the rest of the house where you don’t want it.

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#3 written by Daniel 1 year ago

There are a variety of “screens” available that allow heat from the fireplace to be vented into the room while still offering the spark-arresting, visual satisfaction that only glass doors can give. As for efficiency your best bet would be a fireplace insert, some of which have glass doors, because they will trap and re-burn the gasses before they are vented out the chimney resulting in a hotter, longer burning fire. I used one as the sole heat source in a two-story home in Northern Michigan and stayed toasty all year ’round.

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#4 written by Mr.Q 1 year ago

Glass is not a good conductor for heat. You will be wasting your money both for the glass and heat energy.

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#5 written by Larry E 1 year ago

Even though it has a fire going in it an open fire place drafts the air from the room so your heat is going iup the chimney. Doors stop this and radiate heat into the room.

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#6 written by German Jerry 1 year ago

It depends on what you want the fireplace doors to do for you. Lets hit a few of the expectations put on fireplace doors.

1) Q: Can fireplace doors keep smoke out of my house while I use the fireplace.
A: They are actually pretty helpful at this as long as you get reasonably tight fitting doors that only vent on the bottom. They make a nice barrier to help keep smoke in for the most part. Most of a time this is only a problem at the start of the burn.

2) Q: Will glass fireplace doors keep out the cold draft?
A: Glass doors are not good at this at all, but metal dampers are not very effective either. Glass doors tend to have many seams and crevices that let air through and the glass is not a good insulator. Even “tight fitting” glass doors can be rather leaky and the air vents sometimes dont close completely. To seal a flue effectively, use a chimney balloon.

3) Q: I want glass doors to help me get more heat from my fireplace
A: Fireplace doors do NOT do this well, but they are mildly effective in a different way. They do help you keep the fireplace from sucking all the interior air out of your house so quickly. That’s good. But they also reflect quite a bit of the radiant heat back into the firebox and up the flue. That’s bad, especially since a fireplace will only burn at about 10% efficiency anyway at the hottest part of the burn, and most of the time run at negative efficiency.

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