My Google-fu turned up this interesting report:
" So I drove to Litchfield today to get our grate and fireback. Gas was $30 and shipping would have been $60. The almost 2 hour drive was a little tedious (I hate Hartford more every time I'm forced to drive through it) but the $30 savings was nice.
It's kind of late to test them out and it's really not cold or even cool in the house. But, I want to play with them.
First of all, we got the heavy duty fireback and holy hell that bastard is heavy. It weighs about 80 pounds. My boyfriend spends a lot of his life carrying heavy stuff and even he needed the hand truck to get it from the garage. The grate is also heavy but not nearly as bad. I was able to carry it.
I built the fire the way they recommend (firelighter or paper then kindling, then small logs, then big logs). They say it needs to burn for a bit to get a good ember bed going but it's only been about 15 minutes and I can already see an ember bed forming.
One huge thing I noticed is that it smoked a lot when I started it and every last bit of smoke when up the chimney. I was even able to close the flue to halfway and all the smoke STILL goes up the chimney. Even if the heat output isn't improved, the smoke going up the chimney is enough to make it worth the money.
I also realized that it's time to call the chimney sweep again.
I can definitely see how it might do what they claim it will. The ember bed that is forming is completely unblocked, as opposed to when I used the flat grate I just put in the basement. In addition, the fire is reaching to the top of the grate but the top wood is not burning. It's actually only slightly warm. The only wood that's burning is the stuff right on the bottom. With my flat grate, all 6 pieces of wood that are on there right now would be fully engulfed and burning at the same time, throwing the heat right up the chimney and wasting the wood.
Ok, the initial huge burn has simmered down, which they said would happen.
I'll post back later with an update. This is fun. I really hope it works as claimed because it's way cooler looking than the flat grate and I want to get some of the gothic attachments for it but if it doesn't work, I have to go back to the boring grate."
"The fire has been going for almost 2.5 hours.
When I built it, I used kindling topped with 3 very skinny logs topped with 2 thicker logs left over from our last fire (charred and half burned).
About 45 minutes ago, my boyfriend added 2 more thicker logs.
The very skinny logs and half burned logs have just now finished burning. The two added logs haven't even started to burn yet. There's a really nice bed of coals.
After 2 hours of burning and a puny amount of wood, the heat from the coals reached about 5' away from the hearth. We usually don't get that until hour 6 or 7 and almost a whole rack of wood. The burn is incredibly slow.
We noticed before, with the flat grate that the embers would fly up the chimney with the smoke. With the unburned wood on top, all the embers are falling down into the coal pile, making the heat output better and reducing my boyfriend's anxiety about setting fire to the roof.
We are both exhausted and want to go to bed but we're enjoying the fire too much. I never realized just how pretty the burning coals are but now that they're all exposed, I can barely take my eyes off them. It's like looking at the stars away from city lights for the first time.
We wont get to burn for more than a few hours until Sunday so I wont know until probably Sunday night how it's going to work after an entire day of burning. Watch the weather be beautiful on Sunday, making burning pointless."
"Ok, last update.
I built a fire at 7:30 this morning. It's still going. The ember bed is huge and the heat is awesome. I typically sit about 15'-20' from the fireplace and I can actually feel warmth from it. Even though this room is huge, with a cathedral ceiling and a loft, the fire has raised the temperature on the thermostat by 2°. That NEVER happened with the old grate. It's 40° outside. The thermostat is set to 60° and the actual temp is 62°. I can't wait to see how warm it gets when the newly glazed storm windows go back in.
About 10 minutes ago, I was poking at the ember bed, trying to spread it around a bit and the heat was so intense that I couldn't poke more than once before having to move away and blow on my hand. My dog Ginger doesn't sleep on the hearth any more (awww ) but she still stands in front of the fire (although she stands about 5' in front of the front of the hearth instead of right on top of it).
"It definitely does save wood while giving higher heat output. We had the fire going nonstop for 19 hours. We gained 5° and only used a little less than half a rack of wood. For burning that long, we used to use more wood with less heat output with the old grate. Oh, and the heat would have still kicked on a couple times an hour.
My boyfriend insists he's seen 2° increases from the old grate but I never noticed it. We've started keeping the bedroom door open because the heat wasn't kicking on so the bedroom was getting bitterly cold. Climbing into those ice cold sheets nearly made me cry. I ALMOST put on pajamas.
When we went to bed at 2am, the fire was still going and had 2 half-burned logs left. I got up with the dogs at 4:30 to find a nice ember bed still going strong. When I got up at 9:45 am, it looked like it had all burned down but when I shifted the ash, I found a small ember bed still throwing lots of heat. I started up another fire in no time at all thanks to that leftover pile of embers. The storm windows are starting to go back in today. It's really nice to be able to sit here in sweatpants and a t-shirt and be able to do my homework in comfort. Not once yesterday did my hands get so cold that I couldn't type.
Oh, I forgot to mention, I didn't have to get up every half hour."
