A Peculiar Blog

Once again winter is fast approaching (though I wonder at people saying it’s approaching when it’s clearly cold as all get out already.) and that means getting out the plastic sheeting and duct tape to cover over the windows in an effort to keep some of the heat from leaking out quite so fast as it does with uncovered windows.

This is when I start thinking back to the last place I lived where we had a working fireplace that easily provided enough heat for the entire house.  Oh, this one’s got a fireplace as well but there’s a big difference.  When we first moved in here I fired it up and tried it out.  No matter what I did or how hot I got the fire, which I’d gotten pretty good at before, you couldn’t feel the heat more than about three feet away from it.  Instead, most of the head went right up the chimney.

It didn’t take long for somebody to suggest getting a wood burning stove to put in the fireplace or even one of those electric fireplace inserts that a lot of people use.  The thing is though, the good wood burning stoves were simply not within our budget and the electric ones kinda defeated the purpose.  You see, in this part of Arkansas, we’re subject to power failures that happen fairly often when the weather gets severe.  Especially when it’s cold and there’s a lot of ice involved.  Part of our reason for wanting to have a working fireplace is to have heat when the power fails.

I eventually gave up on the thing and covered IT in plastic along with the windows.  It’s ugly as possible with most of the area below the mantle pretty much wrapped in plastic and duct tape but at least it stopped the huge flow of cold air coming in through the fireplace.  Not only that, but in the warmer weather I don’t have to take that bit of plastic down.

[tags]winter, weatherizing, fireplace[/tags]