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How Fireplaces Work · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know? What's from House stuff
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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:40
Speaker 1: Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerome the Jairs.
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Speaker 1: So this is stuff you should know. Jerry got a
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Speaker 1: piece of mail the other day that said Jerome, Oh yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: like real mail though, right, Jerry, Yeah, I don't know
0:57
Speaker 1: how that happened. Oh like mail mail, not like a mail.
1:00
Speaker 1: Oh little Jerry just said confirmed. Weird. We've been doing
1:05
Speaker 1: a lot of this Jerry translating lately. That's really weird.
1:09
Speaker 1: That's bizarre. I mean, I sold your address to a
1:11
Speaker 1: mailing list, but I've never been reimbursed for it. So, uh,
1:16
Speaker 1: how how are you, sir? Great we are fresh off
1:19
Speaker 1: our live shows and Boston, Mass MA and uh Washington,
1:25
Speaker 1: d C and uh Big. Thanks to everyone that came out.
1:29
Speaker 1: Those were a lot of fun, Yeah for sure. And
1:31
Speaker 1: thanks to the Brightest Young Things for having us to
1:34
Speaker 1: the Benson Ball with Tigna Taro And it was wonderful
1:37
Speaker 1: we got to meet Ticks. She was just as nice
1:39
Speaker 1: and nonplussed as I would have voted exactly. She didn't
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Speaker 1: make a fuss No, nor should she. Wait, I mean
1:47
Speaker 1: that in a good way. Wait, is it non plus
1:49
Speaker 1: the opposite of what you think it means? I don't know.
1:52
Speaker 1: I think non plus means like you're you're agitated, means
1:55
Speaker 1: you're plused. Yeah, I'd learned things all the time on
2:01
Speaker 1: this show. Yeah, me to your favorite part of my job.
2:03
Speaker 1: And uh, most specifically, the most recent thing I've learned, Chuck,
2:07
Speaker 1: is that fire, the use of fire, the technological application
2:13
Speaker 1: of fire, that's as far as I'm going actually predates humanity.
2:20
Speaker 1: That it was Homo erectus who was the first um
2:23
Speaker 1: upright hominid who controlled fire, and it was as long
2:28
Speaker 1: ago as a million years. There's evidence of the use
2:32
Speaker 1: the controlled use of fire by humans as as much
2:35
Speaker 1: as a million years ago. Yeah, it's just here, uh
2:39
Speaker 1: in this article that you found that uh in China
2:42
Speaker 1: their hearts of clay, silt and limestone from like a
2:46
Speaker 1: half a million years ago. And uh, you know signs
2:50
Speaker 1: like you said in Africa over a million years ago
2:52
Speaker 1: that people and these are in caves, so essentially indoor fireplace. Right. Yeah.
2:58
Speaker 1: But and if you are an anthropologist, you are familiar
3:02
Speaker 1: with the term hearth, but that's usually used to, um,
3:07
Speaker 1: describe something that doesn't really resemble the hearth that we'll
3:11
Speaker 1: talk about today. Usually it was like just a shallow depression.
3:15
Speaker 1: Maybe it did have some limestone or some clay or
3:17
Speaker 1: something else to keep it from catching fire, but nothing
3:21
Speaker 1: like the fireplaces we know of today. The ones we
3:24
Speaker 1: see and say there's a fireplace, they're actually about seven
3:29
Speaker 1: hundred years old. Yeah, and I think, um, the history
3:32
Speaker 1: of the chimney isn't super clear, but by the fourteenth century,
3:36
Speaker 1: and of course Europe, when you had a little dough,
3:40
Speaker 1: you could then afford the nice chimney or maybe just
3:42
Speaker 1: any chimney. Well actually, yeah, people started to afford chimneys
3:46
Speaker 1: quite a bit. Um. There was especially in say jolly
3:51
Speaker 1: old London, there was a lot of chimneys that sprung up,
3:56
Speaker 1: a lot of problems that arose, as we'll see later on.
4:00
Speaker 1: But yeah, the the it's kind of interesting to see
4:03
Speaker 1: the fireplace hasn't really changed much in like seven hundred years.
4:08
Speaker 1: And then you step back and you're like, no, actually,
4:10
Speaker 1: that's kind of evident when you think about the fireplace
4:13
Speaker 1: and how ridiculously inefficient it is. Yeah, it's kind of changed.
4:19
Speaker 1: I don't know, it depends what you It depends what
4:21
Speaker 1: your definition have changed. Hole in the wall with a
4:24
Speaker 1: whole above it that's tall and narrow and leads to
4:27
Speaker 1: the outside. Yeah, within that, there have been a lot
4:30
Speaker 1: of changing sure, sure, but the overall general design has
4:33
Speaker 1: has been relatively unchanged for seven years. It's like toilet paper. Yeah,
4:39
Speaker 1: they're they're not as straight as they used to be.
4:41
Speaker 1: Um Ben Franklin was someone who did a lot of
4:45
Speaker 1: complaining in life. He did about when you know, he
4:49
Speaker 1: was just kind of person who would look around the
4:51
Speaker 1: world and in his everyday surroundings and say, why do
4:55
Speaker 1: people do it like this? That's stupid. I've been Franklin.
4:59
Speaker 1: There's better as listen to me. Take a peek under
5:03
Speaker 1: my silken robe. He very famously wrote that on the
5:08
Speaker 1: back of the Declaration of Independence. But fireplaces used to
5:12
Speaker 1: get under his skin, apparently because the design, and we're
5:16
Speaker 1: going to talk about this, the traditional fireplace is fairly wasteful. Oh,
5:21
Speaker 1: tremendously so. And it can even make your room colder, yes,
5:26
Speaker 1: which is counterintuitive. Yeah, it's like nonplused. Yeah, I looked
5:30
Speaker 1: that up, by the way, So nonplus I'm correct. The
5:33
Speaker 1: nonplus means you're agitated. Well, it means it means that
5:38
Speaker 1: you are surprised and confused to the point that you
5:42
Speaker 1: are unsure how to react. So not necessarily agitated, just
5:47
Speaker 1: but you're definitely not just like laid back. No, So
5:50
Speaker 1: Tignachar was not nonplused. She was not confused on how
5:53
Speaker 1: to react. She reacted the exact way, which is Yeah,
5:58
Speaker 1: she's just chill and very sweet. I didn't expect like
6:04
Speaker 1: some big show trust me from anybody that meets us. Well, no, so,
6:09
Speaker 1: I just want to put that out there, and I
6:10
Speaker 1: didn't want to sound like I was disappointed. She didn't
6:14
Speaker 1: like throw those snap crackers and start taftings. No, I
6:17
Speaker 1: got exactly what I wanted, which was a very nice
6:20
Speaker 1: lady who gave me a big hug in a photo.
6:22
Speaker 1: I think that's come across. Yeah, that just I'm sensitive
6:26
Speaker 1: to that stuff. Once I started opening my mouth digging
6:30
Speaker 1: that hole. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. Here's
6:32
Speaker 1: a little more route anyway. Um, let me let me
6:37
Speaker 1: give you a stat here. Wait. First, I think everyone
6:40
Speaker 1: wants to hear about how you felt when you met
6:42
Speaker 1: tig Nataro. I was super excited. Can you tell how
6:46
Speaker 1: was she? Uh So, here's a little stat for you.
6:51
Speaker 1: The National Association of home Builders did a survey, and
6:55
Speaker 1: I guess this is recent. It doesn't name the year,
6:59
Speaker 1: but um it sounds recent. People still want their fireplaces
7:03
Speaker 1: to the tune of seventy seven of home buyers say,
7:07
Speaker 1: and that's I guess in the US. Yeah, like even
7:11
Speaker 1: in I mean that's accounting for the hot places as well.
7:14
Speaker 1: Sure you know, so I would imagine in the cold
7:17
Speaker 1: places it's probably more like Yeah, well, remember I don't
7:20
Speaker 1: remember what episode it was, but we talked about how
7:23
Speaker 1: in New York it's very ghost these days to to
7:26
Speaker 1: have a fireplace that you use because it's so waste.
7:28
Speaker 1: That is ghost. Mean what I think it means now
7:30
Speaker 1: in doubting everything, it means super laid back and nonplus.
7:35
Speaker 1: Oh so like New Yorkers like, oh, you have a fireplace, Yes,
7:38
Speaker 1: how not green? Which I mean they're correct. There's a
7:42
Speaker 1: lot of un greenness associated with fireplace. Sure, you know,
7:49
Speaker 1: especially as far as like air pollution goes air quality. Um,
7:53
Speaker 1: there's a lot of problems. Sure, there's a lot of
7:55
Speaker 1: problems that come out of it. Like for example, I
7:58
Speaker 1: guess if we're gonna talk about this for a second,
8:01
Speaker 1: if you are a kid and you have um, I
8:04
Speaker 1: don't know, respiratory diseases, you're far likelier to be living
8:09
Speaker 1: in a house where your folks burn would So if
8:13
Speaker 1: you're a kid or an elderly person, respiratory distress can
8:17
Speaker 1: be brought on because smoke is gonna get in the
8:20
Speaker 1: room no matter how great the fireplace is, right, or
8:22
Speaker 1: if you're let's say, if you already have asthma or something,
8:25
Speaker 1: you're not doing yourself any favors by letting that smoke
8:29
Speaker 1: in the particles particulate matter creep in there. Yeah. And
8:32
Speaker 1: also I mean like house fires. There's like two house
8:36
Speaker 1: fires in the United States every year that resulting like
8:39
Speaker 1: ten people's deaths from directly from fireplaces. Yeah. Yeah, But
8:45
Speaker 1: no matter who you talked to, for the most part,
8:47
Speaker 1: the people say still worth it. Ye yeah. I'm gonna
8:52
Speaker 1: die of like blacklong and my house may burn down
8:55
Speaker 1: before I get a chance too. But I really loved
8:57
Speaker 1: fires in the winter, and I'm really I'm willing to
9:00
Speaker 1: take that risk. So you know my deal or do you?
9:03
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh. We live in a house that
9:08
Speaker 1: was built in nineteen and we're renovating it still forever.
9:13
Speaker 1: And we have the fire place that is not used
9:18
Speaker 1: and it's not able to be used unless we pay
9:22
Speaker 1: like some pretty good dough to get it retrofitted and
9:25
Speaker 1: the chimney worked on. And I for years have been
9:30
Speaker 1: leaving just little sticky notes and I'll write it in
9:33
Speaker 1: crayon on the bathroom wall and just little things like, hey, am,
9:38
Speaker 1: how about that fireplace? And she says, quit writing on
9:41
Speaker 1: the walls. Uh, We're not getting a fireplace just yet.
9:45
Speaker 1: But maybe I've been there for like ten years. When
9:47
Speaker 1: is when does our life? When do we start living
9:50
Speaker 1: our life? Is my question? With a with a fireplace,
9:54
Speaker 1: have you considered trading something she wants for the fireplace
9:58
Speaker 1: that doesn't work like that? Have you considered begging. That
10:03
Speaker 1: doesn't work either. Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. Well,
10:07
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what I do. I wait until
10:08
Speaker 1: she goes out of town and they just do it yourself. Yeah,
10:11
Speaker 1: but do it terrible way so that somebody is a
10:14
Speaker 1: professionalist to come in and go behind you. Yeah, and
10:17
Speaker 1: then they have no choice. You're like, I gotta get
10:18
Speaker 1: the fireplace guy in here. Now there's a giant hole
10:20
Speaker 1: in the wall. Uh. Long story short, though, we still
10:23
Speaker 1: don't have a fireplace. And I'm still despite all the negatives,
10:27
Speaker 1: and I try to lead a green life, but I
10:29
Speaker 1: just I want that wood burning thing. I don't want.
10:32
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the substitutes. But and that's great if
10:35
Speaker 1: you're into that, because they are better in many, many ways.
10:39
Speaker 1: But I just love that wood crackle, the smell. I
10:42
Speaker 1: want that particular matter my lungs. You and seventies seven
10:46
Speaker 1: percent of us homeowners, Um, so yeah, most people do.
10:51
Speaker 1: Say I'm willing to look past the problems for a
10:53
Speaker 1: wood burning fireplace, But like you say, there are they're
10:56
Speaker 1: all there's alternatives, that's right, But we're gonna talk about
11:00
Speaker 1: all of it here. Should we talk about the parts? Yeah,
11:02
Speaker 1: let's talk about this is This is when I say
11:05
Speaker 1: like there was very little change to the design over
11:08
Speaker 1: seven years ago. It's true, man, Yeah, I didn't realize
11:12
Speaker 1: some of these parts existed. So, um, I did learn
11:15
Speaker 1: quite a bit in this. I thought it was pretty
11:18
Speaker 1: much the firebox and the flu that ran up the
11:22
Speaker 1: chimney and that's it. But there's more to it than
11:24
Speaker 1: that there. Well, yeah, these are I think these are
11:26
Speaker 1: the improvements that came over time. So you do have
11:29
Speaker 1: the heart that you mentioned that's gonna be built out
11:32
Speaker 1: of something fireproof. You don't want a wood heart. That'd
11:36
Speaker 1: be bad. It's probably rock or brick. And that's yeah.
11:40
Speaker 1: That's where you sit and drink your bourbon while you
11:45
Speaker 1: warm your back. It's like an apron on the floor
11:48
Speaker 1: that extends out from the fireplace. Yeah, and it can
11:51
Speaker 1: be even with the floor, as is the case now
11:54
Speaker 1: or the one I grew up with. I grew up
11:56
Speaker 1: with one of those Mac Daddy huge rock fireplaces. Those
12:01
Speaker 1: ones are like hand and you could sit on the thing.
12:04
Speaker 1: They're the best. They are the best, but they're also
12:06
Speaker 1: like just kid killers. They look like, you know, well
12:11
Speaker 1: not if you don't climb in it, okay, which I
12:13
Speaker 1: never did. Yeah, that that is pretty nice. You got
12:17
Speaker 1: the well, so you know, like the hearth extends out.
12:20
Speaker 1: But if you look usually up the walls along either
12:23
Speaker 1: side of the hole in the wall, and then above
12:26
Speaker 1: above it. Um, that's called the surround. It's usually made
12:29
Speaker 1: of something either that's the same as the hearth, same
12:33
Speaker 1: material as the hearth, or some other fireproof thing like
12:36
Speaker 1: tile or brick or stone. And that's just to basically
12:40
Speaker 1: prevent that fire from licking out of the firebox and
12:45
Speaker 1: setting the house on fire. So straw no good, no
12:48
Speaker 1: as a material. Uh. You have your firebox. That is
12:52
Speaker 1: just what you think it is. That's the square typically,
12:55
Speaker 1: although they're shaped a little differently. Now. Um, that's the
12:58
Speaker 1: square that holds your fire right, and it's where the
13:02
Speaker 1: smoke starts to collect. Um. What you're sending the stuff
13:07
Speaker 1: up to behind behind the firebox is actually called the
13:11
Speaker 1: smoke chamber. And there's a there's a transition area in
13:15
Speaker 1: between the firebox, which is where you actually have the fire,
13:19
Speaker 1: and the smoke chamber, which is above and slightly behind it.
13:23
Speaker 1: And there's it's called the throat. It's the opening that
13:25
Speaker 1: that connects those two things. And this the smoke chamber
13:29
Speaker 1: smoke box I think I've been calling it. It actually
13:32
Speaker 1: connects the firebox to the FLU and it's got some
13:36
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff going. And this is like where where
13:39
Speaker 1: some improvements were made to the design. Yeah, and the
13:41
Speaker 1: FLU is surrounded by the chimney. Also again not straw,
13:46
Speaker 1: it's gonna be brick almost always. In the back rear
13:50
Speaker 1: of the smoke chamber, there's a smoke shelf. It's concave. Yeah,
13:54
Speaker 1: because if you if you look at a fireplace, you
13:57
Speaker 1: just think it just goes straight back and up right.
14:00
Speaker 1: Well that some of the old designs did well, they
14:02
Speaker 1: were stupid. Yeah, that's why how it's changed them. Right,
14:05
Speaker 1: So if you go if you look at the back
14:07
Speaker 1: of the fireplace, if you could stick your head up
14:10
Speaker 1: into the firebox, you don't want to do that. But
14:12
Speaker 1: when there's no fire you don't want to do it. Period.
14:15
Speaker 1: You'll see that there's actually a shelf there and it's
14:18
Speaker 1: angled forward to in front of that. Like like I said,
14:21
Speaker 1: it used to be just sort of a cube and
14:23
Speaker 1: it went straight up. Now it's sort of zig zags
14:26
Speaker 1: uh back and forth a little bit its way to
14:28
Speaker 1: the FLU. That's right. So the whole point of that
14:31
Speaker 1: shelf and the zigzag is so that, um, when rain
14:34
Speaker 1: comes in, it doesn't get into the fire. It's almost
14:37
Speaker 1: basically a protective overhanging and um it also keeps particulates
14:42
Speaker 1: like soot and stuff from falling into the firebox too. Correct. Uh,
14:47
Speaker 1: that smoke shelf underneath it, you're gonna have the damper
14:50
Speaker 1: and that is that covering. That's uh, it's movable, and
14:54
Speaker 1: that separates the firebox from the place above it, and
14:57
Speaker 1: that keeps that's you know, and you don't have your fire,
15:00
Speaker 1: that's when you close. We used to stay close the
15:02
Speaker 1: flu uh And we didn't use the word damper in
15:05
Speaker 1: my house. Yeah. I don't know why, but that's technically
15:09
Speaker 1: what it is, just the damper and you get your
15:11
Speaker 1: their different mechanisms. But ours had a little uh little
15:15
Speaker 1: uh islet circle thing that you would stick. We used
15:20
Speaker 1: our fire poker and we would just unhook it and
15:22
Speaker 1: then close the damper and that when your fire is
15:25
Speaker 1: not burning. You want to keep that thing open when
15:27
Speaker 1: it's burning. Obviously, Well yeah, you're gonna find out really quickly. Yeah,
15:31
Speaker 1: it's closed. It's like an epiglottis for the fireplace. Sure, Yeah,
15:36
Speaker 1: it's got a throat, why not what else we have? Um,
15:40
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's a chimney damper at the very top of
15:43
Speaker 1: the flu could close too, it's unnecessary, Oh you think, sure,
15:50
Speaker 1: But then uh, at the very top of the chimney,
15:53
Speaker 1: there's something called sparker rest or, which is usually like
15:55
Speaker 1: some sort of mesh grate that will allow like gas
15:58
Speaker 1: and in air, but we'll keep um little embers and
16:02
Speaker 1: stuff from going out onto your roof and setting your
16:05
Speaker 1: house on fire. Yeah, especially like paper tends to float
16:08
Speaker 1: up and out. Uh, the chimney cap can it serves
16:12
Speaker 1: the same purpose, And that a lot of times is
16:16
Speaker 1: one and the same, Like the chimney cap and the
16:18
Speaker 1: spark arrest are all one piece. A lot a lot
16:20
Speaker 1: of times is that it? I haven't heard of this
16:23
Speaker 1: ash dump. That sounds pretty neat though it's basically I
16:27
Speaker 1: guess a hatch in the floor where you can just
16:29
Speaker 1: sweep the ashes. I guess that sounds like in the
16:32
Speaker 1: olden days when your house was built on you know,
16:36
Speaker 1: two bricks, and it would just drop into a bucket below,
16:39
Speaker 1: as would your poop. There are different buckets under your
16:43
Speaker 1: house that collected things. Do you want to make sure
16:45
Speaker 1: you knew which bucket you're grabbing at any given time.
16:48
Speaker 1: I didn't want to surprise. And then finally got your
16:51
Speaker 1: little door. It's either you know, glass or metal, or
16:54
Speaker 1: it might just be a screen. We never had in
16:57
Speaker 1: mind growing up. We never had the glass door. Sure,
17:01
Speaker 1: just the screen. We had one of those in in
17:03
Speaker 1: my high school house and it was a We had
17:06
Speaker 1: a gas fireplace. Yeah it was fine, but I was like,
17:10
Speaker 1: this is not wood. All right, Well let's take a
17:14
Speaker 1: break in. Um, we'll talk about would after this. So
17:40
Speaker 1: we're back, Chuck, and we're going to talk This would
17:44
Speaker 1: not be an apt episode if we didn't talk about
17:48
Speaker 1: basically the physics of how a fireplace works, because there
17:52
Speaker 1: are some physics involved, pretty impressive ones if you ask me. Yeah,
17:56
Speaker 1: I love this article said lighting a fire inside your
18:00
Speaker 1: living room and it kind of hits home, Like how
18:03
Speaker 1: kind of crazy that is? And said there are two challenges,
18:06
Speaker 1: one not setting your house on fire to keep the
18:08
Speaker 1: smoke from entering the room. But yeah, I never really
18:13
Speaker 1: thought about it. And everything we just talked about basically
18:15
Speaker 1: was to prevent the first part catching your house on fire,
18:19
Speaker 1: that's surround the hearth, all that stuff. But then if
18:22
Speaker 1: you get a little more into the guts of the fireplace,
18:24
Speaker 1: that's to keep the smoke from filling up in the room.
18:27
Speaker 1: And when you when you look around your house, uh,
18:33
Speaker 1: you will find that there's a lot of different places
18:35
Speaker 1: for air to get in. And that's actually quite necessary
18:38
Speaker 1: for a fireplace. It's quite necessary for living and breathing. Sure,
18:42
Speaker 1: for breathing, it's important for that too, but to keep
18:45
Speaker 1: a fire going and to keep the smoke from going
18:48
Speaker 1: filling up your living room, which again you'll find out
18:51
Speaker 1: very quickly if you don't have your your damper open,
18:53
Speaker 1: which I had before. Um, if you if you have
18:59
Speaker 1: air comeing into your house, then you can keep the air,
19:03
Speaker 1: the smoke from the fire going up the way it's
19:05
Speaker 1: supposed to. And and that happened simply because heat tends
19:10
Speaker 1: to rise. Yeah you don't. You know. One of the
19:12
Speaker 1: places I get a nice flow of air in my
19:15
Speaker 1: house is from closed windows. Oh yeah, you got thin windows? Yeah,
19:22
Speaker 1: we have it. We've only redone a few of the windows.
19:24
Speaker 1: That's on my like must do list is to get
19:27
Speaker 1: all the windows replaced. But it ain't cheap. But you're
19:31
Speaker 1: gonna earn that money back, you know. Over time with efficiencies.
19:34
Speaker 1: But yeah, I have those old windows, Like it can
19:37
Speaker 1: be fully shut and you can stand and your hair
19:39
Speaker 1: will blow. Like, where's this coming from? It's going through
19:42
Speaker 1: the glass. It feels like it's defying the laws of physics.
19:46
Speaker 1: It's freezing near my windows. Now I remember you mean
19:49
Speaker 1: I had a house like that, knows I mean the wavy,
19:53
Speaker 1: vaguely wavy kind of windows. Yeah, those were thin. It's
19:57
Speaker 1: kind of neat though, to think that I'm living like
20:00
Speaker 1: a settler basically. Yeah, in parts of my training your
20:03
Speaker 1: own butter so, um, yeah, you want to talk about
20:08
Speaker 1: the different kinds of heat. Yeah, so you've got conduction, convection,
20:13
Speaker 1: and radiation, and fireplaces use convection and radiation but not conduction,
20:21
Speaker 1: hopefully not conduction, no conduction mains. Your house is catching fire,
20:24
Speaker 1: I means you're literally touching something hot, correct, Yeah, But confection,
20:28
Speaker 1: of course, it's when that hot air circulating to cooler
20:32
Speaker 1: areas of your home in this gate, and the radiation
20:35
Speaker 1: is just literally feeling that flame warmth. Yeah, it's a
20:40
Speaker 1: In the case of the fireplace, it's infrared and visible light,
20:44
Speaker 1: electro magnetic radiation. Basically, there is actually some radio waves
20:49
Speaker 1: in some microwaves produced by a fire, which is kind
20:52
Speaker 1: of cool. But for the most part, you're feeling infrared
20:55
Speaker 1: radiation and you're seeing visible light radiation. Right, So when
21:01
Speaker 1: you're when you're warming yourself by a fire, you're you're
21:04
Speaker 1: being radiated. Thermal radiation is being admitted from the fireplace.
21:09
Speaker 1: But there's also convection and can yeah big times right.
21:13
Speaker 1: Convection actually makes up most of the way that heat
21:17
Speaker 1: is um moved through a fire, And because you want
21:21
Speaker 1: to keep the smoke out of your house, you're also
21:24
Speaker 1: actually keeping those convection currents from going into your house
21:29
Speaker 1: as well. Meaning as Ben Franklin pointing out, because remember
21:32
Speaker 1: he was a huge complainer that most of the heat
21:35
Speaker 1: from a fire is just purposefully being funneled out of
21:39
Speaker 1: the house up through the flu in the chimney. I
21:42
Speaker 1: think it drove him nuts a little bit looking through
21:44
Speaker 1: some of these quotes, yeah, because he really spent a
21:47
Speaker 1: lot of time like trying to figure out how to
21:48
Speaker 1: make a fireplace better. You gotta understand though, too, like
21:52
Speaker 1: when he was alive, these weren't just for like charm, No,
21:56
Speaker 1: they were to like stay alive, and the idea that
21:59
Speaker 1: you were wasting all is fuel. I think probably part
22:02
Speaker 1: of it also is the inefficiency probably drove him nuts. Well, yeah,
22:05
Speaker 1: i mean he's dead, right, Like, you've got so much
22:07
Speaker 1: heat just going right up the chimney, and not only
22:10
Speaker 1: that when you get that draft, because the fire needs
22:12
Speaker 1: the oxygen, so that's another reason it's pulling this air in,
22:16
Speaker 1: but it's also pulling in you've got your thermostat on
22:19
Speaker 1: and your heat going, it's pulling some of that warmer
22:22
Speaker 1: air in and up and out as well, right, and
22:26
Speaker 1: even air that it's warming through convection, like that's that's
22:30
Speaker 1: being irradiated out of the fireplace. It's being sucked in.
22:35
Speaker 1: And as a result again that that when the air
22:39
Speaker 1: is sucked into the fire and is pushed up the
22:42
Speaker 1: flu through the chimney, it's got to be replaced. It's
22:44
Speaker 1: creating what's called a negative pressurization, right, and that means
22:51
Speaker 1: that air wants to come in and replace the air
22:53
Speaker 1: that's being sucked out and up the chimney. So coal
22:55
Speaker 1: they're from outside is being drawn in, which is how
22:58
Speaker 1: like you said before, right, but the fire can actually
23:03
Speaker 1: make your house even colder because it's pushing the warm
23:05
Speaker 1: air out through the fireplace and sucking in cold there
23:08
Speaker 1: from the outside. Yeah, and it's not um it says
23:13
Speaker 1: here here's the stat that said that a traditional fireplace
23:17
Speaker 1: can draw four to ten times as much air from
23:20
Speaker 1: the room that it needs to actually burn that fire. Yeah,
23:23
Speaker 1: something like five hundred cubic leaders of air a minute. Yeah.
23:28
Speaker 1: So compare that to like the smart fireplace a k a.
23:33
Speaker 1: The wood burning stove a the TV with the fire
23:36
Speaker 1: burning on it. Right, I love a wood burning stove. Man,
23:40
Speaker 1: those are great, do you. I've never really been into those. Yeah,
23:44
Speaker 1: and I got no problems with them. It's not a
23:47
Speaker 1: it doesn't It's not good for every home, aren't They
23:50
Speaker 1: incredibly dangerous? Like they get super hot, right, they're really hot.
23:54
Speaker 1: So like if you fell onto one or something, right, Yeah,
23:58
Speaker 1: you don't put uh the skateboard next to it the
24:02
Speaker 1: banana peel okay, step one. But um, and you know
24:07
Speaker 1: you're not gonna have like a super modern house with
24:09
Speaker 1: a wood burning stove, like it's a little more charming
24:12
Speaker 1: in your cabin or something. Actually, I was looking through
24:15
Speaker 1: I think a Popular Mechanics or something. I had different
24:18
Speaker 1: types of of of stoves stoves, and there are some
24:22
Speaker 1: that are kind of moud. Oh well, that's cool, so
24:25
Speaker 1: they're trying to bring it into the future. Yes, well,
24:28
Speaker 1: they're remarkably efficient. Um well, how much did you say?
24:31
Speaker 1: Five cubic leaders? I believe of air a minute is
24:36
Speaker 1: sucked into a fireplace the average fireplace, and only twenty
24:39
Speaker 1: for a woodburning stove. Yeah, that's pretty efficient. So they're
24:43
Speaker 1: super hot. You can you can cook on them too,
24:45
Speaker 1: you can boil your water and do all sorts of things.
24:48
Speaker 1: You know, just don't touch it. No. I think the
24:52
Speaker 1: Randazzo has had one in their place in Connecticut. Oh yeah, yeah,
24:56
Speaker 1: and I think it's supposedly worked super well, like it'll
24:59
Speaker 1: it'll heat a room and then some yeah you know. Well,
25:02
Speaker 1: and the the reason why it's because it's it's like a
25:05
Speaker 1: contained fireplace, but it's not just wide open. It's out
25:10
Speaker 1: in the open. Yeah yeah, but I mean you shut
25:13
Speaker 1: the door to it, right, You shut the door to it,
25:15
Speaker 1: so you're saving the warmer around it from being sucked in, right.
25:19
Speaker 1: And then it's also removed from the interior of the
25:22
Speaker 1: wall so that it can heat on all sides. It's
25:26
Speaker 1: right up there so you can fall on it. And
25:28
Speaker 1: then the flu itself can go up and then out
25:32
Speaker 1: of the room so that the hot gas that's being
25:36
Speaker 1: carried out can heat the air in the room around it.
25:39
Speaker 1: So you've got that stove pipe. Yeah, you've got a
25:41
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of different ways the air is
25:44
Speaker 1: being warmed in your house by a wood stove. Yeah,
25:46
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look into these new ones. There's new ones.
25:49
Speaker 1: There's also like very there's some famous ones. They're like
25:53
Speaker 1: mid century design that are super mod um Swedish ones, uh.
25:58
Speaker 1: And then there's like they're ones that look kind of
26:01
Speaker 1: like the traditional ones, but they're they're newly built and
26:03
Speaker 1: like their improved designs. Remember the old seventies fireplaces that
26:09
Speaker 1: were uh like orange um metal, and that would the
26:16
Speaker 1: Swedish one I'm talking about. Really, it's based on that
26:18
Speaker 1: old old seventies Look, No, that's the one I'm talking
26:21
Speaker 1: about the seventies. Okay, Yeah, there's newer ones too, but
26:25
Speaker 1: that the iconic orange one. Yeah that's yeah. Yeah. Like
26:28
Speaker 1: my friend, one friend in high school, Chris Boten, had
26:33
Speaker 1: the most seventies house. Oh dude, it was wonderful, like
26:37
Speaker 1: it was the orange fireplace surround like built in a
26:41
Speaker 1: terrarium set deal with plants and rocks and things. I
26:45
Speaker 1: think there might have been a little fake waterfall. Oh
26:49
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was macromy at some point, but it
26:52
Speaker 1: was just it had one of those sunken living rooms,
26:55
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, and looking back now like it's a
26:58
Speaker 1: super cool like mod house, like people now would be like,
27:03
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's preserved in time. It's the greatest
27:06
Speaker 1: thing ever. Like his hit a water but of course,
27:09
Speaker 1: but um one of his walls, his entire wall was
27:11
Speaker 1: like a blown up photograph of like a Hawaiian sunset. Oh,
27:15
Speaker 1: we had a couple of those in our in our house.
27:18
Speaker 1: Not not a Hawaiian sunset, but we had like a
27:21
Speaker 1: forest with a waterfall going through it. And then in
27:25
Speaker 1: our kitchen a forest mural no no water, that's very
27:29
Speaker 1: ice storm. Uh yeah, I've never seen that movie, but
27:32
Speaker 1: I can imagine, because yeah, I mean, like key parties
27:37
Speaker 1: are happening and people are drinking eggnog around the orange
27:41
Speaker 1: lacquered fireplace. It's a wonderful time. But let's say you
27:45
Speaker 1: have just the regular, regular old fireplace to start. Yeah, right,
27:50
Speaker 1: you want to you come across it, you say, what
27:54
Speaker 1: what the heck is this thing? What do I do well.
27:56
Speaker 1: The first thing you do is you all got into
27:58
Speaker 1: the airnet and go to house stuff works and look
28:00
Speaker 1: up how to operate a fireplace? Because how stuff works
28:03
Speaker 1: has you covered? Man? Yeah, I mean the only thing
28:07
Speaker 1: I could say this would probably be good for is
28:09
Speaker 1: if you've never literally never started a fire. But it
28:13
Speaker 1: seems like coming knowledge to me. Yeah, there's some details
28:19
Speaker 1: in there that I don't know. Like hardwood's right, you
28:22
Speaker 1: don't want to burn pine or any soft wood. Okay,
28:25
Speaker 1: you want your hardwood's like hickory ash oak kind of stuff,
28:29
Speaker 1: and you want it seasoned. That's the key. Yeah. You
28:33
Speaker 1: can't go cut down a tree in the yard and
28:36
Speaker 1: chop it up and burn it the next week because
28:39
Speaker 1: it will smoke and you'll see literally, I mean when
28:42
Speaker 1: I go camping, we get rooked all the time on
28:46
Speaker 1: firewood purchases, and we sit down for the evening, throw
28:50
Speaker 1: the wood on there, and you just start hearing the
28:52
Speaker 1: sizzle and you see the water just literally boiling out
28:55
Speaker 1: of it, and we're just like, man, well, okay, that
28:59
Speaker 1: roads guy, I'm gonna go back. Here's how. Here's how.
29:02
Speaker 1: You got to test it right there in front of
29:04
Speaker 1: the guy and watch him score him. Take two logs
29:08
Speaker 1: and you knock them together, and what you're looking for
29:10
Speaker 1: is a hollow sound, no thud, hollow sound. Then you
29:15
Speaker 1: know it's season. Yeah, but he would go like city
29:18
Speaker 1: boy that you know this is North Georgia, lob lolly pine.
29:23
Speaker 1: You don't know what you're talking about. You'd say, well,
29:25
Speaker 1: pines the soft wood. I want hardwoods. Where's the hardwoods?
29:28
Speaker 1: I want to call it. Shoot off my property and
29:30
Speaker 1: leave the boiled peanuts. You'd say, I'm gonna take half
29:33
Speaker 1: of the boiled peanuts for my time. Yeah, I feel
29:38
Speaker 1: like we always get wet wood, but um, at least
29:40
Speaker 1: six months you want that wood drying out. They say
29:43
Speaker 1: a full year. What you're looking for is moisture level
29:47
Speaker 1: by the time you're burning it, right, you could also
29:49
Speaker 1: put in a moisture level temperature moisture indicator in the end. Yeah,
29:55
Speaker 1: there you go that you buy the big city. But
29:58
Speaker 1: you you look at the ends the wood too, and
30:01
Speaker 1: you'll see that it's cracked and split. It's usually dark
30:04
Speaker 1: like gray. It just looked it looks aged. But the
30:08
Speaker 1: the dead giveaways the hollow thud sound. I'm gonna I
30:12
Speaker 1: didn't know that, so I'm gonna try that the hollow
30:13
Speaker 1: thud or the I'm sorry, the hollow sound, not the thud. Right, Yeah,
30:18
Speaker 1: that's what you're looking for. So you take your fire,
30:20
Speaker 1: or you take your wood, you put it on your
30:22
Speaker 1: fire grate. Although so this is a component of the fireplace,
30:26
Speaker 1: it's not an actual like part of it. The fire
30:29
Speaker 1: grate is like this iron stand. It's a great. There's
30:33
Speaker 1: really no other way to describe it, although some fireficionados
30:37
Speaker 1: suggest that you should use what are called and irons,
30:41
Speaker 1: which are well, an and iron is basically a great,
30:44
Speaker 1: missing the great part in the middle. It's basically these
30:46
Speaker 1: two stands, a pair of stands that go in the fireplace,
30:49
Speaker 1: and it holds the logs aloft through. The great does
30:53
Speaker 1: the same thing, except um, it keeps burning like embers
30:58
Speaker 1: on the grade. A little more. The reason why people
31:01
Speaker 1: are like and irons are grays because, however, you have
31:04
Speaker 1: it a great, you're an and iron. You want to
31:06
Speaker 1: keep a bed of embers going because that is going
31:10
Speaker 1: to eventually become hot enough that you could throw anything
31:13
Speaker 1: on there and it'll start to catch fire. Um. So
31:17
Speaker 1: when you when you take your split logs, you put
31:19
Speaker 1: them on your grate, or your and irons. Put a
31:21
Speaker 1: little kindling beneath them, which is like thinner wood that
31:24
Speaker 1: will catch fire easily, light it on fire. Oh, I
31:28
Speaker 1: forgot first, you want to pour about a half a
31:31
Speaker 1: leader of kerosene on this that it starts. You do
31:35
Speaker 1: not misspeak. That is just a joke. Kids. You don't
31:39
Speaker 1: ever want to use any sort of lighter, fluid or
31:43
Speaker 1: anything like that to start indoor fire. Kids, you should
31:46
Speaker 1: not be starting a fire in the first place, so
31:48
Speaker 1: stop right now. This is for grown ups, that's right.
31:52
Speaker 1: But you do want to use something like, I don't know, newspaper,
31:55
Speaker 1: just a piece of paper to light the kindling. But no,
31:58
Speaker 1: you don't want to use any sort of acceller it. Well,
32:00
Speaker 1: people don't get newspapers anymore, so you can just uh
32:03
Speaker 1: light your kindle or your iPad right, throw that in
32:06
Speaker 1: there instead. It'll it'll start, But that kiddeling is gonna catch,
32:10
Speaker 1: and if your wood is season it'll catch too. And
32:13
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden you gotta fire. Yeah, you
32:15
Speaker 1: may want to adjust that damper a little bit just
32:18
Speaker 1: to keep your air flowed how you want it um
32:22
Speaker 1: and then and again when you're when you're when you
32:25
Speaker 1: have a fire going. One of the two main things
32:27
Speaker 1: you're trying to do in addition to not burn down
32:30
Speaker 1: your house is to keep the smoke from coming back
32:32
Speaker 1: in the room. And sometimes that's easier said than done,
32:36
Speaker 1: because every house has something called a neutral pressure plane. Okay,
32:41
Speaker 1: so above the neutral pressure plane, the air is pressurized
32:46
Speaker 1: so it wants to push air out, and below it
32:48
Speaker 1: air is the The pressure inside the house is lower,
32:52
Speaker 1: so air wants to be sucked in. So as long
32:55
Speaker 1: as your your fireplace, your chimney is above that neutral
32:59
Speaker 1: pre sure plane, you're gonna be okay, the air is
33:02
Speaker 1: gonna want to go in. Um if it so happens
33:06
Speaker 1: that the air around your fireplace is a higher pressure,
33:10
Speaker 1: then the air is actually going to be pushed down
33:12
Speaker 1: the chimney, into the firebox and out into the room,
33:16
Speaker 1: which is no good. But you can solve it pretty
33:18
Speaker 1: easily by just opening a window and allowing air to
33:21
Speaker 1: come in or go out, depending or have a ninety
33:25
Speaker 1: year old windows right where you don't have to worry
33:28
Speaker 1: about it at all to do because the air just
33:29
Speaker 1: flows through freely. So if you wanna you know, we're
33:33
Speaker 1: talking about how inefficient they are. If you want to
33:35
Speaker 1: improve that efficiency. There are a couple of cool things
33:37
Speaker 1: you can do. Uh. One is called a tubular grate,
33:40
Speaker 1: and that is exactly what you think it is. Instead
33:43
Speaker 1: of just a great um made of solid iron at
33:46
Speaker 1: the bottom, it is a bit of a cage. It
33:50
Speaker 1: looks like sort of like the motorcycle, uh, exhaust pipes
33:55
Speaker 1: and things. So, um, you know, it's just their tubular
33:59
Speaker 1: So it's gonna draw in the cool air in the
34:02
Speaker 1: bottom of the tubes, and then it's gonna rise and
34:05
Speaker 1: then loop back around and shoot out the top of
34:08
Speaker 1: the tubes into your room. Yeah, well it should work
34:10
Speaker 1: in theory. But remember if your fireplaces working properly, sucking
34:15
Speaker 1: air from the room into the fire to fuel it
34:18
Speaker 1: and then shooting it out the chimney. So this air
34:21
Speaker 1: that's being warmed could be sucked right back into the fire,
34:24
Speaker 1: that's right. But if you have it so that the
34:28
Speaker 1: the the tubular grate is enclosed by some doors, but
34:33
Speaker 1: the ends of the great can go out into the room, Bam,
34:36
Speaker 1: you're set. Oh is that a thing? Yeah, I haven't
34:39
Speaker 1: seen that. Uh. There's another thing called a well this
34:44
Speaker 1: is what when um Emily's parents have moved to Georgia now,
34:48
Speaker 1: but when they lived in Ohio, they had one of
34:50
Speaker 1: these recirculators that was a fan. Basically, you would turn
34:54
Speaker 1: on a switch and it would literally blow heat from
34:59
Speaker 1: kind of underneath the great back out into the room.
35:03
Speaker 1: And it worked really well, but it always seemed to
35:06
Speaker 1: blow a little stink out with it. Stink, you know,
35:12
Speaker 1: fire stink. Okay, yeah, I mean you couldn't see smoke
35:16
Speaker 1: pouring out of it or anything, but it was still
35:19
Speaker 1: affecting your respiratory. Well, I mean it didn't affect me
35:22
Speaker 1: so much, but I could tell it was happening. Like
35:25
Speaker 1: every recirculator I've ever seen or been around has kind
35:28
Speaker 1: of had the same deal to me, whether it's gas
35:33
Speaker 1: only or whatever, it always just seems to have this.
35:35
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm very sensitive to odors anyway, So
35:38
Speaker 1: maybe that's something to do with that. I don't know.
35:40
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm a super smeller. Are you a super smeller?
35:44
Speaker 1: What do you smell right now? I smell Knoll like
35:47
Speaker 1: three three rooms over. You are a super smeller because
35:52
Speaker 1: we are hermetically sealed in here? Not true? Uh? And
35:56
Speaker 1: then those glass doors you talked about, it's another way
35:58
Speaker 1: to increase efficiency, but you're awesome. So going to literally
36:02
Speaker 1: just cut down on the heat that gets into the
36:04
Speaker 1: room as much as Yeah, there's not a lot that
36:07
Speaker 1: you can do to have a dramatic impact on the
36:12
Speaker 1: efficiency of the fire. For the most part, it's going
36:15
Speaker 1: to lose more heat than it puts out. You just
36:19
Speaker 1: want to hope that you're you can warm your room,
36:23
Speaker 1: you're in the fire enough so that you don't mind,
36:28
Speaker 1: or if you're just after the aesthetic, then yeah, good
36:31
Speaker 1: for you. You mean. And I lived in a place
36:33
Speaker 1: where we had a fireplace for a couple of years.
36:35
Speaker 1: We were hooked on it, hooked on it, yeah, oh yeah,
36:40
Speaker 1: and we we could get that that room like hot
36:43
Speaker 1: y you know, if you keep the fire going long enough.
36:47
Speaker 1: That's the key. You just have to waste more than
36:49
Speaker 1: you can imagine. All right, Well, we'll take another little
36:52
Speaker 1: quickie break here and we'll come back and talk about
36:56
Speaker 1: some more options and very depressing history of child labor.
37:02
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. All right, Josh, we've been talking about would
37:27
Speaker 1: a lot because it's clearly the superior fireplace, seriously, but
37:34
Speaker 1: you can you can get the old gas fake log
37:38
Speaker 1: fireplace these days. My mom made the switch. It's fake
37:42
Speaker 1: logs look pretty good these days. So wait a minute,
37:44
Speaker 1: Wait a minute. She had a wood burning fireplace and
37:47
Speaker 1: had a gas insert put in. Yes, wow, okay, So
37:51
Speaker 1: because she had a like I had growing up to
37:53
Speaker 1: the gas starter. Um, so you would light the gas,
37:57
Speaker 1: throw the wood on, get it going, turn the gas off.
38:00
Speaker 1: Got so she just retrofitted it. Um actually I did
38:03
Speaker 1: it my brother into full gas with the fake logs that, um,
38:09
Speaker 1: they look good these days. You know you can arrange
38:12
Speaker 1: them in yourself in a way that looks aesthetically pleasing. Right,
38:16
Speaker 1: they don't come in that mound that shape to look
38:19
Speaker 1: like three logs laying on top of each other. No,
38:22
Speaker 1: that it's come a long way, I'll say that. Don't
38:24
Speaker 1: They have beds of embers now too and all that?
38:27
Speaker 1: But then it catch the little flickery glow. Yep, what
38:30
Speaker 1: is it? They've come a long way with trying to
38:32
Speaker 1: simulate that look. Pica pica pica. I don't know what
38:36
Speaker 1: that is. Uh, it's like the Japanese word for that,
38:41
Speaker 1: like the little tinkling glow. I don't know I'm saying
38:45
Speaker 1: it wrong, but it's a throwback. I said it wrong
38:48
Speaker 1: on some other episode years back. Are you talking about
38:50
Speaker 1: pretty pretty No, yeah, but that's something different. Yeah, I
38:56
Speaker 1: don't they go back and find it. They We'll just
38:58
Speaker 1: end it. This whole part out. Uh So the gas
39:02
Speaker 1: logs um covering the gas event. You're gonna burn that
39:06
Speaker 1: fire behind glass, it's gonna give off radiant and convicted heat.
39:10
Speaker 1: You're probably gonna have a air um not recycling what
39:16
Speaker 1: I call it exchanger air exchanger. They're working as well. Yeah,
39:20
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons it's so much more efficient
39:22
Speaker 1: is because it doesn't require any air from inside your room.
39:26
Speaker 1: It draws air through a pipe from the outdoors because
39:29
Speaker 1: it requires much less right, Um, so it's not going
39:33
Speaker 1: to take any of that warmed air that it's warming
39:38
Speaker 1: for itself to to burn. Is it's gonna say, you
39:41
Speaker 1: keep it. I'm gas. I'm super efficient. I love you
39:45
Speaker 1: in ways that wood could never imagine. Wood is dirty
39:50
Speaker 1: and bumbling, and why do you love wood so much
39:53
Speaker 1: more than me? I'm gas. So if you're getting an
40:00
Speaker 1: new house, you're probably gonna have a gas fireplace. If
40:04
Speaker 1: you're getting a fireplace added to a home, it's probably
40:08
Speaker 1: gonna be a gas fireplace. That's the direction they're steering
40:11
Speaker 1: you these days. Yeah, oh yeah, I would guess because gas.
40:14
Speaker 1: I would guess you're gonna pay significantly more for a
40:18
Speaker 1: wood burning fireplace to be built into your new house
40:21
Speaker 1: than a gas one. You think, yeah, probably just because
40:24
Speaker 1: so I'll bet there's relatively few, especially down below the
40:28
Speaker 1: Mason Dixon line, relatively few builders who know how to
40:31
Speaker 1: put in a wood burning fireplace. Yeah, you've got to
40:33
Speaker 1: find a builder from nineteen basically, and he's gonna want
40:37
Speaker 1: to give you one of those orange modern jobs that
40:40
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, this is cool, but no, I want
40:43
Speaker 1: like the real thing. Yeah, it's like, this is real.
40:47
Speaker 1: So they're very efficient to these gas fireplaces. The gas
40:51
Speaker 1: burns cleanly. Uh, they even have them that are event free. Um,
40:56
Speaker 1: but people also say, you know what if your house
40:59
Speaker 1: is not like Chucks and it is actually pretty tight
41:04
Speaker 1: sealed and sealed up, then uh, they can actually deplete
41:09
Speaker 1: oxygen or moisture can build up. So the jury is
41:13
Speaker 1: still out somewhat on these gas fireplaces. I say the
41:15
Speaker 1: jury is in and I'm the jury, and I say,
41:18
Speaker 1: event free fireplace is a stupid idea. It's pumping carbon
41:23
Speaker 1: dioxide into your house. That's not a that's never good.
41:28
Speaker 1: You would think, yeah, you can get an ethanol fireplace.
41:32
Speaker 1: This one seems like okay, you've seen him before, right,
41:35
Speaker 1: Like if you go to a Marriott courtyard or something
41:38
Speaker 1: like that, they'll have like the chair situated around a
41:40
Speaker 1: table with a fireplace in the middle of the table.
41:43
Speaker 1: It's nut. It's the flame is actually cold. It's basically
41:47
Speaker 1: like right, it's basically like a stern o fireplace. Yeah,
41:51
Speaker 1: you know you want to light your fun due pod
41:54
Speaker 1: or something like that from beneath it's the same thing.
41:57
Speaker 1: I think, virtually. Uh, And then you can get the
42:02
Speaker 1: uh woe unto you if you opt for the electric fireplace. Well,
42:07
Speaker 1: there's some now where you can get like an entertainment
42:10
Speaker 1: center with like a TV and then beneath it a
42:15
Speaker 1: fake electric fireplace. Yeah, it's cool. So an electric fireplaces
42:20
Speaker 1: has no fire. Um, it is a heater and it
42:25
Speaker 1: you know, it simulates the look of a fire if
42:29
Speaker 1: you're four years old and squinting, if you're squinty four
42:33
Speaker 1: year old. But you know, we don't want to yuck
42:36
Speaker 1: someone's yum. So if that's your bag, then more power
42:39
Speaker 1: to you. It's just not for me. I have to
42:41
Speaker 1: take issue though, with this article. It says that it's
42:43
Speaker 1: emission free. It's emission free on the user end, it's
42:47
Speaker 1: still electricity, which means producing emissions at the coal firepower
42:52
Speaker 1: plant that's producing that electricity. Don't be cool if you're like, oh,
42:56
Speaker 1: it's a mission free No, no, we're gonna yuck that yum. Uh.
43:02
Speaker 1: Safety wise, you gotta watch out for those sparks. If
43:06
Speaker 1: you got carpet around or hard woods, I reckon keep
43:09
Speaker 1: your bag of oily rags away from the fireplace, a
43:13
Speaker 1: big one. Don't put You might want to fire extinguisher,
43:16
Speaker 1: but don't put it in the fireplace right itself. Carbon
43:20
Speaker 1: monoxide investing in a carbon monoxide detector is worthwhile. It
43:25
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be like a smart carbon monoxide detector,
43:28
Speaker 1: although get one of those if you want. I'm just saying,
43:30
Speaker 1: if you're using a wood burning fireplace, at the very least,
43:33
Speaker 1: get yourself a cheap but decent carbon monoxide detector. Smoke
43:38
Speaker 1: detectors not quite enough, Yeah, I think I think you
43:41
Speaker 1: have to have those now. Didn't that the new code?
43:44
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't read the zoning codes in
43:47
Speaker 1: a while. Building codes. Uh, you should take a look.
43:51
Speaker 1: This is one of those kind of once a year things.
43:53
Speaker 1: If you know what you're doing, you can at least
43:56
Speaker 1: get a flashlight and kind of look everything over and
43:58
Speaker 1: see if there's anything obvious, like if your flute cap
44:01
Speaker 1: is no longer on your chimney hurricane hit. Yeah, if
44:04
Speaker 1: they're big cracks or anything, So what's wrong with yours?
44:08
Speaker 1: Cracks like your house would catch on fire. All I
44:11
Speaker 1: know is the guy did a lot of like uh uh,
44:16
Speaker 1: maybe he just wasn't feeling it that thing. No, he
44:19
Speaker 1: didn't put on a good show. Um. He he came
44:23
Speaker 1: over because he's in their specialty is old houses and
44:29
Speaker 1: old fireplaces. So I thought this guy is gonna be like, oh, great,
44:32
Speaker 1: this is what I do. He acted like he didn't
44:34
Speaker 1: want to do the job right. But that's not like
44:36
Speaker 1: that's a lot of work. Man. You're gonna have to
44:38
Speaker 1: fix your chimney on the inside and it's cracked here,
44:41
Speaker 1: and you got this, and he got that. I was like, yeah,
44:44
Speaker 1: it's that's what you advertise, is you fix old situations.
44:49
Speaker 1: Have you you should bring somebody else out. Yeah I
44:51
Speaker 1: didn't like that guy. Yah, you're gonna bring out someone
44:55
Speaker 1: with some little moxie, But you do. Even if you
44:58
Speaker 1: think that your fireplace is doing great, it pays to
45:03
Speaker 1: pay somebody to come out and look at it inside,
45:06
Speaker 1: Like is it too much to ask for a little
45:08
Speaker 1: energy from your fireplace guy a little while factor? Maybe yes,
45:14
Speaker 1: you're correct, you do need a pro every now and
45:16
Speaker 1: then to come out. And they're called chimney sweets. Yeah.
45:20
Speaker 1: Creosote is something if you look up creosote c R
45:24
Speaker 1: E O S O T E online. Uh, it sort
45:27
Speaker 1: of looks like black lava built up on the inside
45:31
Speaker 1: of your chimney, right, and it itself could catch fire
45:35
Speaker 1: and you have a chimney fire in which case, and
45:38
Speaker 1: it sounds a little counterintuitive, like, well, there's fire going
45:41
Speaker 1: through it all the time. Fire going through it is
45:43
Speaker 1: much different from fire like your chimney being on fire itself.
45:48
Speaker 1: And uh, if your chimneys on fire, your house can
45:51
Speaker 1: catch fire fairly easy, especially if you have cracks in there,
45:54
Speaker 1: because it goes and all of a sudden some pressure
45:57
Speaker 1: treated too by fours, Like oh, oh, you don't want
46:01
Speaker 1: to burn that pressure treated two by four by the way,
46:03
Speaker 1: as would I don't think we mentioned that. Uh. One
46:07
Speaker 1: thing you can burn though, which I wouldn't use but
46:09
Speaker 1: it's a called a chimney sweep log or a creosote log,
46:17
Speaker 1: and it's just a special log. It's sort of like
46:20
Speaker 1: a a dura flame. It's a prefab log. It's a
46:23
Speaker 1: chemical log, but it's supposed to break down that creosote.
46:28
Speaker 1: I just I don't know. Something about that made me
46:30
Speaker 1: My radar went off, like I don't know if that's
46:32
Speaker 1: the best way to do things. Yeah, I don't have
46:34
Speaker 1: any proof, but I hear chemical log that knocks that
46:38
Speaker 1: creosote loose, and it just didn't sound like the smart approach. Well,
46:42
Speaker 1: even them, the Chimney Safety Institute of America says no, no, Like, yeah,
46:48
Speaker 1: those things kind of work, but you want like actual
46:51
Speaker 1: scrubbing of the interior of your chimney, which is what
46:54
Speaker 1: chimney sweeps did. Yeah. Man, if you if you want
46:58
Speaker 1: Moxie and your chimney sweep, you go to somebody's parents
47:02
Speaker 1: and say, I want to buy your four year old
47:04
Speaker 1: boy and making my chimney sweep slave. Yeah. I mean
47:08
Speaker 1: earlier we teased and promised the child labor um horror show,
47:13
Speaker 1: and that's pretty much what things were like in Jolly
47:17
Speaker 1: Old England. After sixty second September to the sorry fifth September. Technically, yeah,
47:26
Speaker 1: the Great Fire of London changed a lot of things,
47:29
Speaker 1: and one of them was chimneys were a little bit
47:31
Speaker 1: narrow and they had a lot more rules as far
47:34
Speaker 1: as how clean you had to keep them. And so,
47:36
Speaker 1: like you said, what you would do is you would
47:39
Speaker 1: You can't put an adult up there, No, not really,
47:43
Speaker 1: but you can't put a five year old boy or four,
47:46
Speaker 1: I think is the youngest I saw them doing. Yeah,
47:49
Speaker 1: so you would literally buy child from a poor person,
47:53
Speaker 1: stick this boy up in there. They were your quote
47:56
Speaker 1: unquote apprentice, which basically was child slaves, unpaid child labor
48:03
Speaker 1: zero dollars and actually chimney sweeping at the time. So
48:07
Speaker 1: after the Great Fire of London in sixteen sixty six,
48:10
Speaker 1: I believe it was mandated by the Queen or Parliament
48:14
Speaker 1: or somebody that everybody needed their chimneys like kept up with.
48:19
Speaker 1: So chimney sweeps became a thing. But they actually swept
48:23
Speaker 1: chimneys free. It was a free service. The way that
48:25
Speaker 1: chimney sweeps made their money was from the soot that
48:28
Speaker 1: they gathered. They would sell it as fertilizer. Oh, I
48:31
Speaker 1: thought you're gonna say sponsorships, Like they would show up
48:35
Speaker 1: like they're Chevy tahoeck yet or something is like nothing
48:38
Speaker 1: gets your chimney clean, like son of a gum by
48:41
Speaker 1: stp so um. They would stick these kids in there.
48:45
Speaker 1: Sometimes they would literally light a fire under their butt
48:48
Speaker 1: to make them work faster. The kids would shimmy and
48:52
Speaker 1: distort their body to shimmy in this little eight in
48:55
Speaker 1: eighteen inch wide chimney and uh chip loose this creosote
49:01
Speaker 1: and soot that would then because they're working above their head,
49:04
Speaker 1: would follow all over them. They would take a bath
49:09
Speaker 1: once a week, maybe once every month, maybe once every
49:12
Speaker 1: two or three months, depending on who you're asking. So
49:16
Speaker 1: these children are literally not I mean, if they survived
49:20
Speaker 1: this experience at all, they're not going to live past
49:22
Speaker 1: middle age. Right, So what you just described was a
49:25
Speaker 1: good day. Yeah, there were all sorts of other horrible
49:30
Speaker 1: maladies that could come about the formation of their skeletons.
49:33
Speaker 1: Because these kids are like four or five, six, eight, ten,
49:36
Speaker 1: twelve years old, they're still developing, but they're spending like
49:41
Speaker 1: hours upon hours every day in these cramped chimneys. So
49:45
Speaker 1: their bones, especially the bones and their ankles and knees
49:49
Speaker 1: tended to grow in a deformed way. There's something the
49:53
Speaker 1: first industrial linked cancer ever identified. It is called chimney
49:57
Speaker 1: sweeps cancer. Other people call it scrotal carcinoma. Yeah, where
50:01
Speaker 1: the the um scrotum was irritated by soot and it
50:07
Speaker 1: would produce warts, and these wards, if they went untreated,
50:11
Speaker 1: would turn into a carcinoma, which eventually if it was
50:15
Speaker 1: if it wasn't cut out, would um. The tumor would
50:18
Speaker 1: grow into the testes and then into the abdomen. And
50:20
Speaker 1: it was a very very painful way to die. Kids
50:23
Speaker 1: like twelve years of age were dying of scrotal cancer
50:26
Speaker 1: from this. Yeah. You uh get up pre dawn. You
50:30
Speaker 1: worked till the nighttime hours, three hundred and sixty four
50:34
Speaker 1: days a year. Uh. The one day that these kids
50:37
Speaker 1: would get off was May Day, International Labor Day. Uh.
50:42
Speaker 1: They would sleep then. You know we said they collected
50:46
Speaker 1: that ash and soot and sold it. They would store
50:48
Speaker 1: all this stuff in sacks and the kids would then
50:50
Speaker 1: sleep in those rooms, still ingesting all this stuff in
50:53
Speaker 1: the air. Uh, and quite often they would literally get
50:57
Speaker 1: stuck and dye in these tim Here here's the part
50:59
Speaker 1: where I started a hyperventilate just thinking about this. From Yeah,
51:04
Speaker 1: there's like this thing called positional asphyxia. There's actually a
51:08
Speaker 1: pretty interesting Vice article called like a Brief History of
51:11
Speaker 1: people getting stuck in chimneys, and they actually illustrate how
51:15
Speaker 1: positional asphyxia happens using the Grinch. As he's going down
51:21
Speaker 1: the chimney, his feet start to get above his head
51:24
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden he's stuck. You can't get
51:26
Speaker 1: out of that position. This would happen to real live
51:29
Speaker 1: English boys and American too, apparently, who would get stuck
51:34
Speaker 1: in the chimneys that they were cleaning out and would
51:37
Speaker 1: die there because they would aspixate their their abdomen, couldn't
51:42
Speaker 1: couldn't take in breaths any longer. Right, Um. It happened
51:46
Speaker 1: a lot, and actually finally it happened enough times that
51:49
Speaker 1: Parliament started to get involved. They first got involved in
51:53
Speaker 1: with the Chimney Sweeps Act and they said, you know what,
51:55
Speaker 1: this is crazy. You guys are buying four year old kids.
51:58
Speaker 1: You can't do that. Emney sweeps can be no younger
52:01
Speaker 1: than eight. That was their first stab at at at
52:05
Speaker 1: at reform, right, and obviously this is child labor was
52:08
Speaker 1: a lot different back then as far as how we
52:11
Speaker 1: thought about when kids should work, right, but or the
52:14
Speaker 1: idea of childhood hadn't even come about yet. Yeah, but
52:17
Speaker 1: even so, even for a time where it was believed
52:20
Speaker 1: that children should put forth an effort and work like
52:23
Speaker 1: four and five year old kids, it's just ridiculous, sure right.
52:26
Speaker 1: They also added though, that if you are a master
52:29
Speaker 1: of a chimney sweep, you have to make sure that
52:32
Speaker 1: they are allowed to go to church on Sundays. That
52:35
Speaker 1: was the other part of the seventeen eighty eight Act, right.
52:37
Speaker 1: Then in the eighteen forty Act they up the aged
52:40
Speaker 1: twenty one, which was significant, but apparently it wasn't really
52:43
Speaker 1: enforced until eighteen seventy five when this this one kid
52:47
Speaker 1: died and he was basically the straw that broke the
52:50
Speaker 1: camel's back for the public. Yeah. His name was George Brewster,
52:53
Speaker 1: and he worked for a a gentleman by the name
52:57
Speaker 1: of William Wire. And I say, gentlemen, what I mean
52:59
Speaker 1: is a scumbag. Uh. And he was cleaning a hospital,
53:03
Speaker 1: Chimney Fullborn Hospital, and he got stuck and the great
53:06
Speaker 1: efforts were made to rescue him. Actually pulled down a
53:08
Speaker 1: wall to try and get to him. He died and
53:11
Speaker 1: Wire has actually found guilty of manslaughter. And his death
53:15
Speaker 1: was really a big awareness jolt for everybody, and it
53:19
Speaker 1: became part of the campaign. And um, that was pretty
53:22
Speaker 1: much the end of using kids. Uh you know, he
53:26
Speaker 1: was apparently the last child to die in a chimney
53:28
Speaker 1: in England, and England, I guess in the US they
53:31
Speaker 1: kept using him for a while. So shameful really is
53:35
Speaker 1: now if you see a chimney, sweet tell four year
53:38
Speaker 1: old to go up in the chimney. You called police
53:41
Speaker 1: because that is illegal these days. No better where you live. Okay,
53:45
Speaker 1: let's all agree to that. Do you got anything else?
53:49
Speaker 1: No fireplaces? Just in time for the fall? Well yeah,
53:55
Speaker 1: November here in Atlanta and in the mid eighties, so right,
53:58
Speaker 1: ready to get that fireplace one? That's right. If you
54:01
Speaker 1: want to know more about fireplaces, including how to light
54:04
Speaker 1: of fire, you can go find that up by typing
54:07
Speaker 1: fireplace in the search bar. How stuff works. And since
54:09
Speaker 1: I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm
54:13
Speaker 1: gonna call this grammar police. Hey, guys, regular listener. For
54:18
Speaker 1: quite some time I finally become angered or inspired enough
54:21
Speaker 1: to write in about something I use the sandwich technique
54:25
Speaker 1: proposed by Chuck recently. By the way, and I was
54:28
Speaker 1: listening to an older episode Does a Body Replace Itself?
54:32
Speaker 1: And you guys were talking about emails from the grammar police.
54:36
Speaker 1: Grammar only has strict rules to those who decided that
54:40
Speaker 1: it needed strict rules. As a society, we have a
54:43
Speaker 1: rather dramatic ebb and flow of grammar rules. There's no
54:46
Speaker 1: one entity decide to decide upon the rules, and therefore
54:49
Speaker 1: there's no real right or wrong. You can almost consider
54:53
Speaker 1: it like a fashion in a way. We can all
54:56
Speaker 1: generally agree that double negatives are wrong, much like we
54:59
Speaker 1: can all agree that socks and sandals are wrong, and
55:03
Speaker 1: yet some will still use them or wear them without
55:06
Speaker 1: a problem, as long as we can understand each other
55:08
Speaker 1: and the quote incorrect unquote. Grammar does not take away
55:12
Speaker 1: from the meaning of your words, and it should not matter.
55:14
Speaker 1: There are different times in which proper grammar is necessary
55:17
Speaker 1: and scrutinized, and then there are times when it frankly
55:20
Speaker 1: does not matter. Uh. There is a huge debate in
55:23
Speaker 1: the grammar world. UH, the few but mighty, she points out,
55:27
Speaker 1: about whether we should be prescriptivists or descriptivists when it
55:31
Speaker 1: comes to the rules of grammar. Uh, it's a constantly
55:33
Speaker 1: evolving topic and arguably grammar is a constantly evolving entity.
55:38
Speaker 1: I just thought i'd share my thoughts and hopes that
55:40
Speaker 1: you wouldn't get down on yourselves from the grammar police.
55:43
Speaker 1: And yes, feel free to pick apart my email for
55:45
Speaker 1: grammar errors. Happy face. That is from Colleen Zaker, an
55:50
Speaker 1: English teacher and grammar enthusiasts. Thanks a lot, Colleen, We
55:53
Speaker 1: appreciate that big time. We always love to hear support
55:57
Speaker 1: from people who are like, don't listen to the haters. Yeah. Ah.
56:01
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch of this, like
56:02
Speaker 1: Colleen did, is it Colleen? Sure? Uh? Who cares? Actually,
56:07
Speaker 1: I don't know. It goes either way or whatever. Yeah,
56:09
Speaker 1: she said, you can call me whatever. Uh. If you
56:12
Speaker 1: want to, uh, get in touch with us, like Cauliflower did,
56:16
Speaker 1: you can tweak to us at s Y s K podcast.
56:19
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
56:21
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
56:23
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at house Stiff First dot com and has
56:26
Speaker 1: always joined us over at home on the web. Stuff
56:28
Speaker 1: you should Know dot com for more on this and
56:36
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot
56:39
Speaker 1: com