We have a chimney that handles a fireplace to one side and a wood stove to the other. I would say that wood stove gets used more, but the fireplace used to be popular when we had more pro-fireplace family members visiting; we just can't be bothered to tend the fireplace without company when we spend most of our time in the front, while the fireplace is in the back. A brick hearth protects the wood floor in the back, and the floor around the wood stove is tile. If you're a fireplace person, go for it ... if you're more looking for supplemental heat, consider a wood stove.

Does anyone in your family have asthma? My dd did but we didn’t know it until we instilled a wood burning fireplace many, many years ago.

wood is lovely but I would never and did not ever do it again.

We converted our wood burning fireplace to a gas insert because wood burning creates a lot of dust and the wood is a cozy place for bugs, including termites. If you install a wood burning fireplace, you will be required to have a hearth of inflammable product, like brick, stone or tiles so that should protect your floors. A fireplace screen will keep sparks from flying out of the fireplace. Consider either an electric insert or an insert that uses propane.

Where would you hang the stockings at Christmas if you didn’t have a fireplace?

We’ve had a fireplace in every home. Our current home has 2. I like the look. An occasional fire is nice. It’s great to have when there’s a power outage. I would consider getting an insert if you go with a fireplace. It will minimize smoke, spark and heat loss issues.

Also, fireplaces do not generate much heat and yearly maintenance of the chimney is required.

I would opine that your climate and level of hou$$e helps decide if you should have a masonry-built fireplace, that is if you have no preference either way. Living in Jamaica you probably don't need one, whereas a 7000sf northern house and a budget to match would be expected to have every checkbox ticked whether any of those acoutrements are utilized or not.

Don't worry about sparks, that's what hearth extensions, non-combustible surrounds, and screens are for.

We are doing a wood fireplace. And a gas one as well.

It isn't cheap, but we have lots of wood to burn. The unit we are installing can be closed while lit which decreases the air quality issues.

We installed a fireplace insert in our fireplace. It still burns wood and you can open the doors and have the full fireplace effect or close them and watch it through the glass. It threw off as much heat as any wood stove but still provided all the charm of a fireplace

Ours is a wood burning fireplace with a gas log. We have ng. We do love our fireplace although I’m sure it isn’t all that efficient. When it was being installed my builder did something that had to be done upon installation just in case we ever sold the house to someone that wanted to use the fireplace as a wood burning fireplace.

propane I guess would be an option for the op since she doesnt have ng. But what a pain.

We have a fireplace, an insert type and love it. In our climate we use it every night from mid November to mid March. If you go with wood you will likely need annual certified inspections for your insurance and for sure when you go to sell. As well, you need to consider where will you get your wood supply from, how much will it cost, where are you going to store it on your property. If you use a lot then you need to deal with wood rotation. Cut wood doesn't stay great for burning for ever. Then, where are you going to store the wood you will use, in let's say a week. We keep a week's worth in a wood box on our deck that we can access in the snow and refill it from the main wood shed. Inside your house is not great, wood comes with lots of bugs. Burning wood does increase the dust factor in the house. As well, do you have a safe place to store the ashes and a safe place to dispose of them? Don't forget about needing kindling too.

Where we live it is against code to have a wood burning fireplace and a powered range hood fan unless it is really low CFM's (I don't remember exactly the rating. ) So one needs to use just a recirculating range hood.

Loved our gas started, wood-burning fireplace in our last house. Used it a lot. Also loved our Dimplex (I am prejudiced but believe they are the best) electric fireplace insert-- it did not look cheesy to anyone who saw it (either that or they were incredibly well-mannered and hid it well...

If I were building from scratch in the north, I'd have a wood fireplace. If I were building/remodeling in the southern states, I'd have electric. Love that you can use the electric fireplace year round :).

Have you had a fireplace before? Did you use it a lot? If you're in the north, there are some completely gorgeous wood stoves with glass windows.... for that matter, propane/natural gas ones also. I don't think there is a perfect answer -- it is all in how you live and how you want to live.

Good luck :)

@LynneO just an FYI, if you're burning wood, the insert glass doors have to be open. :-)

I have a wood burning fireplace and it saved my butt this year when we had a power outage for 8 hours. In other homes, I never used it. In this one, I use it quite a bit because I have easy access to wood. Mine also has a built in fan, so that helps get the heat into the room. Obviously not when the power is out, but it is a really nice feature.

Well this was in our last house, but not at all. Ours also had a fan but the doors could be open or closed. It worked better as a heater with the doors closed. We used it for years in Vermont and it would heat the entire downstairs

At one point in my life I lived in a small log cabin and I heated it with wood in a fireplace insert. The aroma of the burning wood and seeing the flames added an ambiance to the cozy little cabin. I found by the end of the first winter the cleaning of the ash and the constant feeding it with wood got old. It seemed the times I needed to chop wood the temperature outside would be below 0º F.

My sister has a gas fireplace with remote control.

Lissa - you didn’t tell us where you are. In my state WA, one cannot get a wood burn FP in new construction & frequently burning them is banned due to air quality unless it’s the only heat source. . We had 2 wood burning FP in last home -new built in 1990 & never used them mostly due to my asthma & we didn’t want the house to smell of smoke or burned wood. We did convert both FP to gas & though they had fans & did push out heat, we used them mostly for the ambiance except once during a one time only weeklong power outage when we used the great room FP & slept in front of it. No fan then with no power. Many folks converted their wood burning FP to pellet stoves which is also a heat source but a total different look. Some homes had free standing pellet stoves. I’m curious where you live & / or why you’d even consider a wood burning FP with all of their negative environmental issues?

It all depends on where you live and your lifestyle IMO. We have 4 fireplaces in our primary residence, one wood burning, the other 3 are gas. In our shore house we have two, both gas. We are in NJ and we use them in the Fall and Winter.

We burned wood in our very first house. We were young and it was romantic to go out and cut wood (the wood was free) and split it and load it in the truck and drive it home and unload it and stack it and carry it inside and burn it and carry the ash outside. It wasn‘t romantic when we had a flu fire.

Later on, we had another house with a wood burning fireplace that our teenage son took care of, though we just used it as supplemental heat.

Would I burn wood again? NEVER. Not in a woodburning stove. Not in a fireplace. Nope. Not happening.

I have a fireplace with a fancy natural gas insert now. I press a button to turn it on and off. 😁

We converted our wood burner to propane....and we have a remote control. I love burning wood, but my husband has a life threatening reaction to certain types of rotting wood. Truly, the look and feel is the same, just no mess, heavy lifting or trips to the ER.

I should mention we will also have a propane FP.

but for reference, this is our wood burning FP. Great emissions with the glass closed. It’s a neat design. https://icc-rsf.com/fireplace/renaissance/rumford-1500/

someone in the past posted a FP from a European company that was a more modern shape, etc. I don’t remember the brand, but cool touch glass. Sealed. Low emissions. Wood Burning

Typically there are codes about non-flammable materials around a fireplace, including a hearth. That should help prevent sparks from burning your floors. That said, I once had a wood-burning fireplace in a previous home. We burned in it all of once in the 10 years we lived there. We much preferred using the gas fireplace insert that was in one of the other rooms and used that instead. I wouldn't want one again. I would, however, consider a back-yard wood fire pizza oven or back yard fireplace.

I have not outgrown my love of sitting by a fire. Definitely not for heat, and not all the time, but a couple of times every winter, and it's quiet down time. If I were alone in the house, it would be more often! The slight smoke smell (although ours is well vented) is a feature, not a bug.

We loved our wood burning fireplace in Florida-seldom needed the heat on during the six weeks of “winter”. But anytime the evening temp was below 70, I would build a fire! Now we live a thousand miles away and have five working fireplaces-one wood only, one wood with gas starter, and three gas log fireplaces. My favorite? The wood only!

I have lived in a house with a wood burning fireplace and one with a remote control gas fireplace. Although we only used the wood burning fireplace weekly and the gas fireplace 3-4 times a week, the wood burning fireplace was far more of a treat. In our new build we will be going wood burning even though it is more expensive. The gas fireplace always felt fake, without the smell and sound of a real fireplace. Interestingly, although I have moderate asthma, the wood burning fireplace was never an issue for me although the gas fireplace was if we kept the pilot on and I was sitting near it.

I grew up with a wood burning fireplace. It was nice, but the gas log that my parents eventually placed in it instead was much nicer. Looked real, didn't need hauled/chopped/stored wood, no smoke, no ash, etc. We used the gas log almost daily in the winter, as opposed to the wood burning fireplace, which only got used occasionally due to the general PITA it was.

If I were to have my druthers, I would put in a fireplace with a gas log. To avoid the expense of a chimney my second choice would be a heat n' glo phoenix tru view.

If I couldn't get gas, I would probably do electric over wood burning, but I would want the look to be modern/linear, not traditional, as I think the linear fireplaces look better as electric.