you find yourself looking at new (ok older) SoCal houses with multiple "romantic" fire-places and try to figure out which ones would be easier to add an insert into to try to get some heat out of them.
Yep, we decided to take advantage of the seriously messed up housing market and swap an urban townhouse for a rural home about twice the size on let's say a couple to five acres one heck of a lot farther out in the stix. I've seen some of the heat bills from heat pumps on a few of these behemoths; one peaked at $1,600 per month in a very mild climate. Unfortunately this is the house that is on the short list. It has a couple of fireplaces that look to be purely eyewash.
If I end up owning this or a similar place, I will most certainly put at least one insert in. Is there anything I need to watch for to make it an easier process? Is there anything that I should absolutely avoid about a fire-place (that would make it very hard/expensive) to do an insert?
Most of these places have dying avocado trees, since the water costs more than the crops produce nowadays. Lot's of high btu wood for years to come.
Thanks!
Yep, we decided to take advantage of the seriously messed up housing market and swap an urban townhouse for a rural home about twice the size on let's say a couple to five acres one heck of a lot farther out in the stix. I've seen some of the heat bills from heat pumps on a few of these behemoths; one peaked at $1,600 per month in a very mild climate. Unfortunately this is the house that is on the short list. It has a couple of fireplaces that look to be purely eyewash.
If I end up owning this or a similar place, I will most certainly put at least one insert in. Is there anything I need to watch for to make it an easier process? Is there anything that I should absolutely avoid about a fire-place (that would make it very hard/expensive) to do an insert?
Most of these places have dying avocado trees, since the water costs more than the crops produce nowadays. Lot's of high btu wood for years to come.
Thanks!