I have never heard that...Used properly they provide heat of course.

Look into energy efficient inserts.

I guess if you leave the chimney open all the time, but if you close it when you aren't burning anything, it should be totally fine. Personally, I would go gas fireplace though.

It took hours for my brick fire box and the surround brick walls to build up enough heat to warm a room. We were subject to wood burning restrictions - so you may want to investigate the rules in your area. Purchasing wood - I burned approximately a cord of wood a year - gets expensive and you need a dry place to store it. You will also need a chimney sweep and inspection yearly. The wood burning stoves are more efficient but does not have the same visual appeal for me.

I loved the smell of wood burning - hated the mess of hauling wood in and cleaning the ash. So I am replacing with a gas....

no, if you do which is normal a close out in the chimney. it is important for the rain too.

Unless you have an insert, you will lose more heat than you gain. When the fire is burning, it will draw warm air from the room and up the chimney that warm air goes! Even glass doors on the fireplace openings aren't very efficient - they help but not efficient as an air tight insert. It may feel like you're getting heat but warm air from the house is going up the chimney. We have supplemented our central heat with an insert for years and it doesn't take long to warm up the bricks. We have a saying in our house - the wood warms us twice - once when we stack and once when we burn it. Unless you're up for all the work, you may find the fireplace just being something to look at.

Usually the close out is low in the chimney, to make sure the warm air doesn't go up when you are not using the fire place.

Once the chimney is drawing properly, you close the damper a bit to slow down the fire and less air is sucked from the room. you don't need a roaring fire blazing hot air up your chimney, you just need to maintain enough heat to allow the chimney to continue drawing the smoke up.

Again, energy efficient inserts are the way to go, especially in a new build where it can be planned for instead of retrofitted. In some areas they are required by code.

Or, this is cool. Check local codes for clearance requirements.

Will all the heat get sucked up the chimney in your house? Maybe, maybe not. There are so many variables that go into that. In my current house, which has a two-story living room, I have a pre-fab 48" wood-burning fireplace and I don't feel the heat unless I'm right in front of it. In my old house, which had 8' ceilings, I had a masonry wood-burning fireplace and things got very toasty. Also, my old house, which was in the North, had a brick exterior and a heated and cooled unfinished basement which kept it much more comfortable year-round than this house with its wood siding, massive windows and crawl space foundation located in the Deep South. Like I said, there are many variables, but I'm a wood burning girl, that's for sure!

Thank you all for your input!! We have had gas, we have a pellet stove now, heats very well~ Our current pellet stove fits into our current "massive" non-working (prev. owners broke custom damper, cost 4k to replace) fireplace. I figure we could use the fireplace in our new house when we wanted and in future possibly put a pellet stove in it?? I know, seems like a lot of $$ to someday make a pellet insert.

Love our wood-burning fireplace and use it every chance we get. Was very excited to have that feature when we bought this house because our last home had a gas fireplace and we never once got to use it. The gas bill was so high in the winter just to heat the house, we didn't dare use the fireplace for fear of the added costs. Needless to say, we're very happy with the wood burning one and don't mind carrying in logs or having to store wood; it's worth it in our opinion. I've never heard of them sucking all the heat out of the house, but will tell you not to do something stupid that they did in ours, which is putting the thermostat and return vent on the wall directly across the fireplace. That will keep the heat from running as the fireplace warms up the room and make the other rooms on that level chilly. Don't do that and you should be fine. And the others are right, if it's freezing out and you're not running the fireplace, you can just close the flue until you use it again to keep extra cold air out.

If you are only going to use it a few times, do you really need a fireplace? I understand if you like the way it looks, but I'm through with fireplaces and wish builders would stop putting them in every home, even in S Florida and out in the desert where I live!

I'm in the UK and they are very common over here. They don't suck up the heat. How could they? You keep the door closed when you are not using it.

Even our victorian open fireplaces in our previous house didn't suck out heat. There was a grate at the back and you just close it when the fireplace is not being used.

We have decided to not have a fireplace. Sent the final change to designer! Living room will be more spacious, and the windows are in a better position. I'm looking to simplify my life~

I agree lj. They take up space and impede furniture placement. It just doesn't get cold enough to use them everywhere so it's silly that they are in every house.