How To Add A Fireplace To An Existing Home

Planning Guide: Fireplaces

Fireplaces not just add together exceptional ambiance to a home, they tin can provide valuable, price-efficient heat besides. If you lot're not lucky enough to accept a fireplace in your business firm, you lot tin can certainly accept one installed—just first review the options.

Is there anything better than sitting abreast the fireplace on a chilly wintertime eve? Not simply does a fireplace provide decorative charm and the practical benefit of warmth, but information technology tin can besides add to the value of your dwelling. In fact, by some estimates, homeowners compensate 130 per centum of the corporeality they invest to build a fireplace, with 78 percent of home buyers rating fireplaces equally a desirable amenity. If your home doesn't have a fireplace, that'south OK: With conscientious planning, yous can add ane.

Equally you begin your research, the first affair to know is that fireplaces generally fall into i of three categories: masonry, cypher-clearance (also known as pre-fabricated or manufactured), and gas. Of class, each blueprint has its pros and cons. So before yous determine to larn how to build a fireplace of any type, it's essential that you lot consider the different options in light of your project budget, your aesthetic sense, and the particulars of your dwelling's construction method and architectural style.

How to Build a Fireplace - Masonry

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Masonry Fireplaces

The most expensive pick is a forest-called-for masonry fireplace. Arguably, information technology'due south too the most attractive and impressive-looking. When the average person envisions a fireplace, this is the kind that comes to heed. A masonry fireplace consists of a brick or stone firebox, a brick or stone chimney, and, mostly, a woods mantel.

Information technology'south a lot easier learning how to build a fireplace like this in new construction. Calculation one to an existing home presents myriad challenges, simply it certainly can be washed. Before you do annihilation else, identify the room in which you lot programme to locate the fireplace, then brand certain its floor joists are reinforced. Neither brick nor rock is lightweight. When used in the quantity necessary to build a fireplace of average size, these materials are hefty indeed, and then building codes require that the firm framing exist modified to accommodate the increased load.

Related: 10 Accessories for the Fashionable Fireplace

Farther considerations include the dimensions and thickness of the firebox, the size of the damper opening, and the type of chimney and liner used. Local building codes typically give detailed specifications for each of these details as well as for the minimum distance between a fireplace and combustive materials.

Talk to your builder near the claim of an air-circulating system, which forces the fireplace to draw in libation air from the room. Once that air is heated, a low-voltage fan pumps it dorsum out into the habitation. Without such a system, masonry fireplaces can steal warm air and send it upward the chimney, resulting in college monthly heating bills. A nonmechanical way to accost this problem is to build a fireplace with a slanted firebox, which inhibits warm air from escaping to the outside.

How to Build a Fireplace - Zero Clearance

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Zero-Clearance Fireplaces

In comparison with masonry fireplaces, cipher-clearance fireplaces are much easier and less expensive to install, requiring significantly less structure piece of work. Because they are lightweight and take firebox enclosures that e'er remain cool, cipher-clearance fireplaces can sit straight over hardwood floors and within a few inches of existing walls. For rooms of any size, merely for small-scale rooms in detail, homeowners accept found that zero-clearance fireplaces are a sensible, more than satisfactory pick.

Wood-burning, gas, and electrically powered zero-clearance models are all available, with the difference between them largely being a matter of lifestyle and personal preference. When information technology comes time to brand a purchase, the real question is, "How big?" You tin make up one's mind the ideal size for a cipher-clearance fireplace with some elementary math. Measure the width and length of your room, then add those measurements together. The number of feet you summate will be the all-time size of the opening—in inches—for your fireplace. Then, if your room measures 12 anxiety by 15 feet—for a total of 27 anxiety—then choose a model with an opening of at least 27 inches.

Ordinarily, zero-clearance fireplaces vent through a lightweight metal tube that extends through the ceiling. Some models, still, incorporate an external air-venting feature, one that draws air from the outdoors. By non having to draw air from the room, these fireplaces can operate up to lxx percent more efficiently. Only whereas zero-clearance fireplaces can ordinarily be installed anywhere, these more than efficient designs must be situated on an exterior wall.

How to Build a Fireplace - Gas

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Gas Fireplaces

While they don't offer the sounds and aroma of a wood burn down, gas fireplaces create lovely ambiance and oftentimes supply more than warmth than woods does. Plus, gas fireplaces are much easier to kickoff—say goodbye to all that newspaper!—and there's no cleanup or danger of fire from errant embers to worry about.

Environmental friendliness is another reason why gas fireplaces accept go more than pop. A woods-burning fireplace pollutes; a gas fireplace pollutes less. That's true in function because gas models characteristic thermostatic controls, enabling the homeowner to operate the fireplace equally if information technology were a traditional heating arrangement . If you've ever cracked a window when a wood burn got a piffling too hot for comfort, and so y'all know that, delightful as they are, traditional fireplaces do not excel in energy efficiency.

Like their zero-clearance cousins, gas fireplaces don't demand a ton of room. For a standard unit, the master installation requirements are 1) a connection to the gas supply line and 2) an adequate venting mechanism. Bargain with the get-go requirement by positioning your fireplace near the propane or natural gas line, or in a room to which it would be both feasible and cost-constructive to run an extension. The second requirement—venting—can exist handled in a variety of ways. Yous can do information technology through an existing chimney, by installing a new chimney, or most simply, through a length of lightweight metal tubing that leads from the unit to the outdoors.

Note that unvented gas fireplaces are available and increasingly mutual. They use catalytic converter technology to cleanly burn all the fuel that is fed to it, with little to no off-gassing. But exist advised that some take expressed business organization that unvented gas fireplaces might not ever succeed in burning 100 percent of the propane or natural gas. So for safety's sake, remember to site yours near a window that can be cracked on those occasions when you are enjoying a fire at home.

No affair your decisions regarding how to build a fireplace, familiarize yourself with the maintenance and cleaning techniques required for it to work safely and effectively.