We just finished up a renovation here at the homestead.
We have two fireplaces - upstairs and downstairs. The downstairs fireplace is circa 1966 - white painted cinder block in a weird wavy pattern floor to ceiling. As a capper, the fireplace is terribly inefficient, sucking warm air out of the room and throwing it up the chimney.
The renovation was two-fold. First, replace the goofy cinder block with floor to ceiling "river rock" from El Dorado.
The second part was to tun the fireplace into a super high efficiency gas furnace. I thought about an efficient wood burning one, but I wasn't keen on the maintenance and there's new technology to make the fire look super realistic. Also, I can use a thermostat on the gas furnace to keep the entire floor warm while heating the upper floor from underneath (about 1500 sq. feet). I went with the Travis model with "Ember Fyre" technology.
This isn't a DIY - you need to hire a gas plumber to hook it all up plus I needed someone to do the rock work. It was worth it.
The best part is that the whole thing works off an RF remote. I guess an IR remote would have been better so I could have programmed it into a macro in my Harmony, but it's still pretty cool to have remote controlled fire.
Kudos to Rich's in Bellevue and Smart Renovations who did the work.
I used to have a fireplace but got sick of chopping wood. I then purchased a thermostat and had it professionally installed. After about a 3 years my friend told me that I should check out a programmable thermostat. Oh boy did it do wonders for me. I can set it for a certain temperature for when I am home and for when I am at work. I highly recommend getting one.
Posted by: Programmable Thermostat | January 27, 2009 at 02:29 PM