observations while on my morning walk

[caber]

Every morning I take my dog for a quick 3 mile walk. I usually go around 5am when it's dark. Yesterday I went at 7. Since it was cold and I had made a nice fire before I left, I decided to poll the area for wood burning. We're out in rural Maryland, in the mountains. Mix of old - 50's to 70s, older - 1900's and new houses. Lots of trees, most people have acreage.

I counted 33 houses.

15 had chimneys, 18 did not.

Two houses (including ours) had 2 chimneys.

None of the homes built in the past 5 years had chimneys.

6 homes had fires burning. One home had 2 fires going (not ours).

2 houses were belching smoke.

2 had a small amount of smoke.

2 only had visible heat rising.

I was expecting a high percentage of homes to have chimneys given the area. And it was very surprising to note that none of the new homes have them.

 

[cgeiger]

Fwiw, my dad built all the houses in my neighborhood over a period of several years. I wound up living in a few of them as we cycled through building, moving and selling. The house my family and I live in is actually one of the earlier homes my father built and it has an outstanding masonry fireplace. After that house and it's twin down the street, he stopped building fireplaces in the rest unless building for a customer who requested one. I live in the foothills of the blueridge in Northern VA and it's common to see woodburners out here so I was somewhat surprised and asked him why he didn't put any more in. He said it was because they just sucked the heat right out of the building whenever you had a fire and were an extra maintenance headache. Of the newer homes built in the new little subdivisions, I see mostly heatilators where gas is not available and gas everywhere else. It's rare for me to see an actual masonry fireplace or woodstove in one of the newer homes.

Of the homes in my little neighborhood of farmettes we have 2 woodburning stoves on masonry and 2 fireplaces. One of the latter, mine, has an F500 burning 24x7. :D

 

[karri0n]

Good observations. Did the smoke belchers have any visible creosote on/near the caps?

 

[caber]

One does not have a cap. It's just a straight pipe that runs maybe 15 feet straight up from the roof. Hard to see the top with all the smoke.

The other house has a new Jotul. It was put in by the old owners at the beginning of 2008 and barely used - cost them over 4k according to the chimney sweep. The new owners who moved in in November told me they brought their own seasoned firewood with them. I couldn't figure out why it smoked to much until one morning I was walking and I saw him go out to his wood pile, pull out several big rounds, split them and carry them inside. When I came back by, it was smoking away. Unfortunately, the house is too far back to get a good look at the cap.

 

[TKeller]

It seems if you go back enough years almost all homes in my county had a fireplace installed. My parents home built in 1969 had a heatilator fireplace with probably a 15ft chimney. Put out some heat but really was inefficient wasting the heat right out the flue. Almost all the fireplaces in the area are also inactive. Most that have an insert etc are of the old smoke dragon era. And if they are burning all have lazy blue smoke belching out the chimney whilst burning wood bought or collected just this year. A popular thing going right now is buying odd cutoffs from nearby pallet factories that are stacked on a pallet, shrink wrapped and sold cheap. However the wood is not seasoned and is mostly gum, sycamore, elm etc. with very little oak. Seems like the locals would benefit greatly by reading this forum although most would not change much. Tony

 

[n3pro]

Our house built in 1995 had no chimney, had to have one put in. In this development there are two houses in each phase with fireplaces, most none. Driving around now being conscience of the who wood smoke thing I now notice chimneys and the smoke exiting also. I noticed one house by my parents who was quite smokey every time I drive by and had a chimney cap, last week I saw the chimney cap is gone and still smoking. One house not to far way always smokes but it seems more like steam cause its white and only last about a foot away.

Don't know if it's just the price of fuel that many people are burning wood or just the fact I never cared before so never say but see a lot of wood piles and chimneys now.

 

[jadm]

Where I live they do not build fireplace at all in the newer homes. Don't know when this started though and not sure of the reasons. Probably air quality issues.

Our house and those in our neighborhood were built in the early '60's and all have masonry fireplaces. Only a few are in use. Many cover them up or convert them to gas fireplaces.

 

[argus66]

i look at these things a lot as well, im a mailman so i do a lot of walking around neighborhoods, my favorite is seeing the people who just cut down a tree in nov. and are burning the wood now unsplit. one guy on my rt was doing this and just had a bad chimney fire 2 weeks ago almost burnt down the house. i tried to warn him a month ago and he just looked at me like i had 2 heads... oh well....

 

[caber]

I would imagine that fireplaces and chimney are pricey add-ons that do not add enough sales value to a home. A builder/developer is going to only put enough money into the house as he has to in order to sell it. So unless it's a custom job, chimney is out.