The beauty and challenge of an Inglenook fireplace

Inglenook fires are a classic feature of many UK houses. Featuring gnarly old beams and bricks made hundreds of years ago and Inglenook was the warmest place in the house in their heyday. They were created as the place to cook on and heat the room in an age when the kitchen wasn’t a separate part of the house. Many Inlgenooks are over 2 meters wide, over 1.5 meters tall to the underside of that impressive beam and over 1 meter deep. Some feature seats either side where the lucky occupant could keep warm as they stared into the flames – as long as they could put up with the smoke. 

Another feature of an Inglenook is the cavernous chimney that carried the smoke away. Most you can stand up in and many you can see the sky or the stars our of the top without any trouble. You will also see wooden or steel braces up in the chimney where meat would be hung to smoke or cure. Inglenook fireplaces evoke memories of a bye gone age but having one in modern house has its challenges. 

That cavernous chimney is needed to get a draw from that huge but beautiful fireplace opening. This is an issues however if you find there is leak in the chimney which means it needs to be lined. Reducing the size of the chimney diameter will mean the Inglenook will smoke. It’s also an issue in that such a big chimney will take huge amounts of air from the room – whether the fire is lit or not. This is air that your other heating source (radiators or underfloor heating for example) is trying to keep warm. Many Inglenooks offer negative efficiencies because the heat they add when they are lit is less than the heat they lose when they are not lit. 

There are options however from specialists in the UK who offer open fires that will close down that massive opening and work on an 8 inch (200mm diameter) flue to reduce heat loss and increase efficiency (50% ). Some also offer convection systems built in to take heat away from the fire and move it around the room. Camelot Real fires have designed their Thermovent open fire to offer a wood burning fire that if made to order and CE marked. Hand made canopies, grates and dog irons ensure you get the right look to replace your wood burning grate with increased performance and they fix smoke problems. 

To know more about inglenook fireplaces and Inglenook visit to website.

Why have a fireplace grate?

Fireplace grates weren’t a feature of orginal fire places. Dog irons (which grates often sit on with one each side) were introduced first as something to lean logs on to get air under the fire to make them burn more readily. Fire grates were introduced to the UK when people started to burn what was originally called sea coal as it came from abroad. As a fuel coal offered more heat per ‘lump’ and was thus more compact to store and handle (although its much more dirty) which was an advantage during the industrial revolution in the ever growing cities and towns.

Coal burns just like wood but because it comes in lumps rather than ‘sticks’ it has a tendancy to fall into a pretty solid mass when you put a load of it on the fire together. This means no air can get in to fuel the fire if its built on a bed of ash as a wood fire should be. Hence the creation of the dog grate in all its forms.

Many of these still exist and are in use in period homes all over the UK but the users are often disappointed with the heat they get from them – usually when they are burning wood. In a grate a wood fire gets too much air so it roars uncontrollable gobbling up the logs at a rate and with rush of air to the fire it takes the heat up the chimney. 

If you have a fireplace grate and want to burn wood look for a solid base to put in it to hold some ash to build the fire on. If you burn coal a grate it the right tool for the job.

There are alternatives to grates for people who want to burn wood that look the part and can offer greater heat out put (up to 14KW and 50% efficiency) along with convection systems to move heat away from the fire and into the room. Camelot Real fires have designed their Thermovent open fire to offer a wood burning fire that if made to order and CE marked. Hand made canopies, grates and dog irons ensure you get the right look to replace your wood burning grate with increased performance and they fix smoke problems

To know more about fireplace grates and fireplace grate visit to website.