In over ten years
of heating people's homes, one question I hear all the time is: how do
I know if my fireplace is going to be big enough? As a result, I
have written this to try and help you become an informed consumer.
Some
manufactures will list a square footage for their appliance. In my
experience, this has led to installing a fireplace that doesn't
produce enough heat to comfortably heat the entire space.
Whether you plan to use your fireplace for heating the main room, a bedroom or provide heat for most of the home, it's best to think about the following.
When choosing a
fireplace, fireplace insert or free standing heat stove, just like a
furnace or heat pump, the appliance needs to be properly sized for
maximum effectiveness and performance. This doesn't matter whether
you're using wood, pellet or gas.
All of the following
steps should be performed by the heating professional installing your
fireplace.
Properly sizing a
fireplace requires a simple heat load/loss calculation using the
following factors:
- How big is the space: 100 square feet or 900 square feet?
- What are the walls made of: brick, solid wood like logs, stick built fame with siding and drywall, etc.
- What “R” value is the insulation in the ceiling, walls and floor: the higher the “R” value the more heat stays in.
- What type of windows does the space have: single pane, which has the lowest “R” value, or double pane or triple pane which has the highest “R” value. .
- Are the ceilings flat or vaulted: 8-10 ft for flat ceilings, for vaulted ceilings it's best to figure or 1 ½ stories or roughly 15- ft ceilings.
- How drafty is the house?
Now that the amount
of BTUs required to effectively heat the space has been determined,
we can find the correct fireplace for the space.
From the selection of fireplaces, take from each one:
The amount of
BTU input.
Times the efficiency
rating.
This equation will
give you the BTU output of each fireplace.
A bit of advice is to always select a fireplace that produces above the BTU requirements determined by the heat load/loss calculation. This will allow you to turn down the flames, which reduces the heat output for normal use and gives you that extra power for when it's colder outside.
Thank you for
reading, I hope you found this helpful.
I will be posting
the heat load/loss form I use soon.
If you have any
questions feel free to email us at straitcomfortsystems@gmail.com
