I heat my home with a fireplace insert. Works very well. In the evenings, I open the insert doors for a few hours so we can enjoy the fire, like having a fireplace. I know it is not as efficient with doors open, but I'm willing to do the extra work every year for that additional wood it takes. Maybe 1/2 cord or so? So I'm flipping up through the channels on Dish TV trying to find something worthwhile, (which is a struggle sometimes) and come across the Yule Log Classic channel. A fire in a fireplace burning perfectly, crackling and everything!! To think I do all that extra work and here I could have just turned TV on to channel 8981. Real one on the left! Happy New Year everyone!
I do the exact same every fire. Especially with cherry. Worth it. If using cherry put a screen up. It pops and embers come flying out. Learned the hard way
I usually never burn cherry but got some this summer for next year, thanks for the tip. I've had red maple occasionally throw some pretty nasty sparks too.
Hickory and cedar can throw sparks like crazy too. The week long power outage we had around Christmas in the late 90's taught me that. We didn't use the fireplace at my folks house, but had to for that....in other words we didnt have wood. So we cut up old cedar we had at the farm to use for fence posts (plenty dry) and some hickory we got from a cousin. Even using the big total coverage screen some sparks flew out and had us nervous...
