I have a rather large N-Scale layout and have had several homes with fireplaces, all were equiped with gas fired logs and had glass doors, some opened and some did not and I had no issues with dust or ashes.
The only issue was static electricity and had a humidifier to take care of that.
If there was any effect on my layout I did not detect it.
Thanks for all the replies. Your concerns are exactly the things I wanted to hear. It's a nice house but I'll pass on this one and continue the search.
The furnace and water heater in my basement seem to provide plenty of heat - the baseboard radiators are currently shut down until new walls go up, yet it still is staying nice and warm down there - BEFORE new walls have gone in with insulation. A fireplace would be overkill. I do have a fireplace in the living room, but don't use it.
DO have any chimney thoroughly inspected by a professional before using it. It only takes one gap in the lining to expose insulation and/or wood framing.
My plan is to actually install a gas insert which will actually heat the room, those use their own pipe which goes up the chimney, plus the incoming gas connection is right below the area.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
You could always make a steam loco cab model in 1:1 and then put that around the fireplace, altering the fireplace accordingly to look like a firebox.
Then, you could put all the levers and nobs that are on the prototype into your dummy cab and wire all those controls to your DCC system. WOWIE! THAT would be quite the simulator.
I'm beginning to realize that Windows 10 and sound decoders have a lot in common. There are so many things you have to change in order to get them to work the way you want.
SeeYou190Other than ambience/romance, is there any real reason to have a fireplace?
No better way to keep all that metalized and dye-laden Christmas wrapping and packaging out of the waste stream and landfills!
Other than ambience/romance, is there any real reason to have a fire place?
.
They are options in nearly all floor plans down here, but they are rarely selected.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Nothing sounds good to me about a downstairs fireplace and masonary wall.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Recently I accompanied professional fireplace inspectors and cleaners into all 47 units of a condo development, so fireplaces were on floors one and two. They took a dim view of amateur efforts to seal off a fireplace because even if unused for fires the flue and fireplace chamber still play a role in having a home breath. One fully sealed fireplace where the owners told us had seen no fire for decade plus -- the dirt and soot in the flue was mushy and damp due to lack of air movement going up the flue. I didn't ask but it sounds like the flue and chimney might need changing/sealing if you seal the fireplace itself. Closing a damper is not airtight and they did close dampers (leaving them open invites critter invasions).
There is evidently a fine line between how tightly to insulate against heat loss and making a house too airtight.
A properly running fireplace should not contribute soot or dirt into a room. Our own fireplace (not at the condo mentioned above) has a "free heat machine" meaning hollow grates with two vents to the room holding the wood, and a motor with thermostat in one vent pushes the warmed (but never smokey) air through the entire grate back into the room, heated but never exposed to the fire itself just its heat
One thing that does strike me is that if you use the basement fireplace that very dry heat could tend to increase the variations in humidity level your basement sees from season to season, which is not great for benchwork or roadbed. Of course furnace heat and electric heat are also dry in nature. You could actually find yourself wanting to run a humidifier in winter.
Dave Nelson
I'm not sure from your post if you plan to use the fireplace or not. My basement fireplace saw little to no use,so when I built the layout I made sure the damper was closed,the doors were shut tight,and treated it like any other wall.It's had a layout of some sort in front of it for seven years with no problems.
Good luck with your house hunting - whatever you decide.
Mike
I have a fireplace insert. It's loverly. It has a blower and I love how it heats the home.
That's upstairs, in our living room. There's ash everywhere. From emptying the ash to gently blowing on embers to get a neglected fire roaring again...there's ash everywhere.
Little back-drafts will wisp smoke into your room time after time when you open the door to feed the beast. In time, the room will darken.
Back at out last place, my computer and layout were just a few feet away from a free-standing steel fire-monster. It wasn't huge, but it made being downstairs unbearable at times. But, that's where I had to play and teach. We heated the upstairs by blowing basement air throughout the house using a slow-speed furnace fan system.
Fireplaces are great for ambience, but unless they have outside air supply for the firebox, they're just drawing it from the room in front of them. That air, in turn, is replaced by gaps around doors, through open windows, through plug sockets on the wall, even through the sill plate and up through your floor. If you have a properly designed firebox with outside air supply, through the side walls, you can burn with impunity and still have the 'heatilator' convector/blower to blast you out of the house inside of a couple of hours.
But, as I said, I have done the layout-near-fireplace thing, and it's just too much.
My first house had a pretty well designed fire place. It had a "Heatilator" which was steel ductwork that would capture some of the heat and return it into the room. Another plus was an ash-dump, a little trap door that you shoveled the ashes into and they fell into a clean-out box in the basement.
You still had to carry the ashes out but there was less airborne dust. A basement fireplace would probably not have an ash dump like this. My neighbor's fireplace was on a common wall to the garage. His ash clean-out was in the attached garage and kept the mess out there.
OvermodNo way you could ever build a practical fire in the thing without smoking yourself out.
There is a science to good fireplace design. A combustion chamber and smoke-shelf are important. There are lots of amateur-built fireplaces around, and still many un-lined chimneys!
Good Luck, Ed
"Fireplace", hmmmmm... I had to look that one up. It does not sound like something I would want.
"Basement" on the other hand, sounds absolutely amazing!
Well, I never had a dust or soot problem with an open fireplace in any of the houses I owned, but that may be due to better closing dampers and clean flues. Local regulations are quite tight here.
Happy times!
Ulrich (aka The Tin Man)
"You´re never too old for a happy childhood!"
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Tinplate ToddlerMay I ask why?
Most American fireplaces don't have particularly tight-fitting dampers, and are likely to produce a range of draft, dust, and infiltration problems beyond the range that already plague 'basement' layout rooms. The trouble with thermal and draft excursions from actually using an open fireplace, or even one with a typical insert, in the physical layout room will be far greater still.
Mind you, I'm certainly not advocating not having a workable fireplace somewhere else in the house -- just NOT in the train room, unless you want all sorts of maintenance issues you wouldn't have with proper 'space conditioning' with proper care for dust and other IAQ. I've never lived in a house without a workable woodburning fireplace, and I wouldn't want to start. (Just expect very tight weatherseal on the layout room doors and walls, and some negative pressure differential when you crack the door open so a minimum of dust gets in...)
Now, I suspect what he has is similar to the 'fireplace' in a '60s house I worked on in Doylestown, PA -- a big open brick affair about 2 feet deep with a pathetic little rectangular flue all the way up at the top. No way you could ever build a practical fire in the thing without smoking yourself out. I got the brickmasons to enclose most of the front, with a structural beam about halfway up across the opening, bending a support iron to an esthetic curve for a shallow arched top. This still took a few seconds with a hot smokeless source to prime the draft, but it was worth all the effort to see the homeowners finally enjoying a bright, hot wood fire after all those years...
This reminds me of the tap room at the University Cottage Club in Princeton, which has a fireplace with a 120' 12"x12" flue. No one had ever successfully lit a fire in it for the whole of recorded club history, but there were some famous tales of smokeouts when people tried. It took me three full twists of newsprint to get all the air in that long flue moving properly, but once it did I could probably have fired porcelain in there. For one brief evening we had a roaring fire. (To my knowledge no one has since had the patience to get it working again...)
Our air-tight wood burner has an ashpan that requires emptying about twice a week. I have a large, metal pan that I place below the clean-out door to collect any fine ash that falls out when I remove the ash pan.
No matter how carefully I pull the pan out there is always spillage that falls to the floor or becomes airborne. This is very fine particulate. Once airborne it will settle on any horizontal surface within twenty-feet of the wood stove.
Before I place the pan back into the stove I have to clean out the ash that falls behind and beside the enclosure otherwise the ash pan will not fit all the way back into the stove. This creates more airborne dust.
I could burn coal but it runs about $220/ton around here and my fire wood is free, other than the labor to cut, split and stack it. The stove has a catalytic converter that would have to be removed before burning coal. The stove came with a set of coal grates if needed.
We love our stove and wouldn't give it up. I calculate that it supplies roughly 60 to 70% of our heating source. The remainder of the home is electric baseboard heat.
I DO burn coal in some of the stoves in my outbuildings and, of course, the caboose!
Depot_mood by Edmund, on Flickr
Cheers, Ed
gmpullmanAs overmod points out, keeping it will introduce lots of soot and dust which will be a never-ending source of maintenance for the layout.
May I ask why?
Unless you burn coal in that fireplace, keeping it and even using it won´t introduce soot and ashes to an unhealthy degree either for you or your layout - providing you clean it frequently. Keep the vents closed when the fireplace is not in use.
When I moved into my place back in 1984 there was a Franklin Stove in the basement where my layout now resides. Fortunately, the chimney was an add-on triple-wall metal type that was easily removed and the stove went into an outbuilding.
You have to decide, Is there enough room for the layout if the fireplace remained?
If it is simply an open fireplace the heat efficiency is not worth using it as a heat source. 80% of the heat goes up the stack.
If you keep it, I would invest in a good, air-tight insert. This is what I use (not in the basement, though) and it will generate enough heat without much loss up the stack. I fire up my wood stove in November and it stays hot until mid-March, sometimes later.
As overmod points out, keeping it will introduce lots of soot and dust which will be a never-ending source of maintenance for the layout.
How difficult would it be in bringing fuel to the fireplace and ashes out? Lots of trips up and down the stairs. More dirt and mud in the layout room.
Is there another heat source in the layout room/basement? You're certainly not going to want to build a fire an hour or so in advance of working or running the layout.
In general, I'd agree with Overmod, close it off. If you forget to close the damper you might find squirrels, birds or chipmunks nibbling away at your layout as well
Good luck, Ed
Another source of smoke, besides tobacco and smoke fluid in locomotives? None for me, thanks. Seal it and block it off.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Leave it as it is!
It depends on how old the set up is. Back in the day, fireplaces used the room air for combustion and no outside air was brought in, unless you opened a window, and the in and out use of a door.
We have a masonry fireplace in our living room, built by my grandfather in the mid 40's, and we don't use it, because it sucks all the air from the room, and does nothing to heat the room or the house.
Oh it's nice to see, and hear, but it has a "0" efficiency rating. It makes the house colder, as all the warm air goes up the chimney.
If yours is a more "current" year version, uses outside air for combustion, it probably has glass doors to make it all work right, and not affect the room, or the house, and it actually contributes to heating the room and house, it would be fine.
Mike.
My You Tube
Block it off, seal the flue with both insulation and a moisture barrier, make sure there is little thermal gain or loss due to the provision of the firebrick or whatever in the wall.
You do not want anything that will contribute to temperature excursions, admission of dust, or drafts in the train room. Naturally you won't want a toasty fire burning as you work...
I found a house I might buy, but the basement has a large fireplace that covers the entire rear wall. It seems like that might not be good, so I ask whether any of you have dealt with the same situation and how did it work out?