Fireplace heatolater

From what I was told, this fireplace is considered a heatolater. I would like to put a set of nice doors on it. I do NOT want to do an insert, I like the real look of the fireplace. Kozy Heat makes an air tight door system, with and without draft vents. I was thinking about going without vents. Their is an ash door in the bottom of the fireplace that goes to a cleanout door in the basement. Thought I could open the 2 doors for draft for the fire and not use the air in the room, possably make a fresh air pipe to the door in the basement from an outside air vent. Or would the air for a wood fire need to come from the front air vents ?

got almost the exact same thing. rumford design fireplace. ash dump and all. only i have two more vents two feet above the lowers and theres fans in the lowers that make hot air come out the top. the steel burn area/throat or smoke shelf if you will is a heat sink...


extracting the heat from a coal rigged gizmo would be a trick as i think as the gasses will take much heat up the stack with it. to get the coal to burn good with the ash dump as a air supply i would think some fan to force the air up thru the coal would be needed and then even more heat woult be lost.

the whole principle behind a insert is to just contain the enviroment and control the air in and thru the coal as well as radiate the majority of the heat.

I trial and error'd a grate with a series of home welded tubes under neath with forced air thru holes drilled in the tubes. it actually worded great and the coal burned well, just the heat went up the chimney.... was fun playin tho...

I figured of burning wood in it, the beast in the basement is for coal . I would like to use for nice and a little extra on really cold days, their are 2 more hot air vents at the top above my mantle, not seen in the picture, they look the same. Figured if the supply air comes from the basement/outside air source the output would be a 100% gain. Not takeing my warm living space air up the chimney, if it would supply enough air so the fire doesn't smother.

http://www.kozyheat.com/pdf_files/airsealdoors.pdf These are the doors I was thinking about.

can't see where those doors will keep heat from going up the chimney--we had one growing up similar to poconoeagles set up-we did wood in it--my Dad also welded up a tube type anvil set-up---we had a damper pre smokeshelf--it heated the family room ok---mostly asthetics though---this is just one old mans opinion--if your just trying for looks,doors are cool--if you don't have a damper--no matter what you do,you're going to lose most of the heat---but if you really like the door set-up---go for it I would definatly go w/ the vents in the doors can't figure why they put your vents so low---heat rises & would create some sort of pressure to send the heat out --I don't know,maybe heat is not your concern

The efficiency of these can actually be a minus figure, meaning they lose more heat than they produce. This is usually caused by needing to leave the damper open until the fire dies which sucks the heat out of the room. What you propose will be much better than without it.

The only fireplaces that I have seen that are at all effective are the old Rumford designs burned steadily until the whole mass of brick becomes warm then kept warm with just a couple of logs smoldering steadily. Lot of creosote buildup in time.