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I'm torn. I love a real fire, but I'm incapable of getting them started without lighter fluid (don't ask). DH has to get them going. I'm also not cleaning up that mess, so he's on the hook for that, too. So if we had a wood fireplace again, the day he croaked would be the last day the fireplace was used.
Hence, we have gas.
I admit that I was relieved that the builder didn't offer wood when we buiit in 2012. It woukd have been an ugly argument. But i doubt we would have bought a house without one. Hell, all three houses I owned in Phoenix had fireplaces and all were used frequently.
Last edited by Jkgourmet; 08-30-2016 at 08:24 PM..
I don't have time to tend to a real fire at this point in my life, so gas wins out for convenience sake. Also, my uncle's woodstove caught one side of his house on fire last year, even though the flue was regularly cleaned, so those things make me a bit nervous.
This summed up my thoughts before I got a chance to try
I love the smell, crackle, and quirks of an old school wood fire, but I don't like the commitment, the maintenance, the mess, the wood storage, etc.
The smell of anything (good or bad) loses its luster quickly as the nose adapts. I have smelled gas fireplaces before but I think they were improperly installed (and even if they do smell the owner probably gets used to it and cannot smell it after the first day or so). I have also seen gas fireplaces that had poor heat output and didn't add a lot of ambiance / character to the room, but I have also seen good gas fireplace installs that had plenty of heat and beauty.
But at the end of it all, in this area at least, gas fireplaces end up winning, because the beauty and ambiance is easily achievable, cost to operate is laughably low, heat output is typically more than adequate (since they are usually not the only source of heat in the home), and most homeowners do not want to regularly invest time in the startup and wind-down of a real fire.
Convenience wins out in this case. Some of these ceramic logs are visually indistinguishable to the naked eye, and are a joy to own. There's nothing less real about the actual fire. Only less trees killed.
Does anyone know what % of firewood is harvested from old growth forests which will not be renewed? I'm not sure if it's like paper, where if we didn't use the paper, the tree wouldn't be planted.
I have a wood burning fireplace now but have not used it in many years. Sick of fighting the down-drafts to get it started. Who knows, may be that the design is at fault since the the roof peak is higher than the chimney. This year--gas logs.
I would just as well have none at all. Given the short cold season down here, it just takes up a lot of wall space that could otherwise put to better use. We have a wood burning and have used it like three times in the ten years we have lived in the house. If we had gas logs I imagine we would use it more because of the convenience. Last year I had thought about firing it up Christmas Eve, but as we had the air conditioning running it didn't seem to make much sense.
I had a wood stove in my house in Vermont and burned wood religiously every fall/winter/spring for nearly 15 years. There's nothing like the smell, sound, look and feel of a wood fire.
But like m378 said, you have to commit to it. Wood is heavy, takes up space to store, has to dry and be kept dry, the ashes get everywhere and there's a lot of maintenance to do on the stove/fireplace/chimney. For several years I cut, split and dried my own firewood from trees around my house. I saved a lot of money doing that, but it's a tremendous amount of work and requires more equipment than an average homeowner would be willing to have.
Now that I live in NC I have a gas fireplace and use it maybe a handful of times in the winter. I miss my wood stove.
I picked the "seems good for retail" option because I'm afraid to light them.
I know, but I have a family member whose house burned down.
Anyway, they seem to be a plus - are they?
Sort of like the garden tub, soaker tub, spa tub, that no one wants but everyone buys for resale?
Actually, I rarely have someone tell me that a fireplace is on their list of wants, needs, or gotta-haves.
It would be hard to put much value in one, IMO.
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