Conscious Choice: Electric Fireplaces

March 2000 | Sensible Home

Electric Fireplaces

by James Dulley

Dear Jim: On a recent new-home tour, I saw a beautiful electric fireplace with flames that looked realistic. It gave off heat and even made a crackling log sound. Are these models very efficient to use? — Ron R.

Dear Ron: Fireplace kits with new electric logs are hard to distinguish from a real fire. Since they just plug into a standard wall outlet, you can have a crackling warm fire about ten minutes after you get it home. If you already have a fireplace, just buy the electric log/heater unit.

The hand-finished real wood, marble, stone, etc., fireplace surrounds and mantels rival the best gas log fireplaces. Since high heat is not a factor, attractive bookcases and shelves can be built in close to the opening. Some of the electric logs themselves are real wood, not fake ceramic or concrete.

What makes electric fireplaces ideal is that you can use them year-round. The electronics used to create the realistic flames consume less than 200 watts so it won’t increase the cooling load on your central air-conditioner.

In the winter, switch on the built-in electric heaters with blowers and thermostats that are built into most models. These produce heat with 100 percent efficiency just like any small electric room space heater.

As an engineer and former Star Wars toy designer for Kenner, I marvel at the simplicity of the methods used to produce the very realistic looking flames. Some models even allow you to vary the appearance of the flames from that of a raging fire to just relaxing lazy flickering flames.

One of the neatest designs is the Visiflame electric log. This design uses a smoked acrylic plastic movie-type screen in the back of the logs. Red and gold lights create the embers and also reflect off foil ribbons onto the smoked screen. A tiny adjustable blower makes the ribbons (flames) dance.

Other designs use a combination of various colored lights and rotating disks to vary and project the flickering flame image. Special screening creates a smoky appearance. To simulate the realistic wood-burning crackling sound, a spinning foil drum hits against a special plastic sounding material.

Another simple-to-install complete fireplace option is a gelled-alcohol fuel model. These burn cans of natural gel-fuel made from grapes. The cans are placed inside ceramic logs. They burn up to four hours and look real. Each sixteen-ounce can produces about 2,500 BTUs of heat per hour as it burns.

Unlike vent-free gas fireplaces, there are no codes banning gel-fuel units. The cans, up to four in a log, light instantly with a match. To extinguish the fire, there is a special hook that you use to slide a cover over the cans in the logs.

Write for (or instantly download from www.dulley.com) Update Bulletin No. 680, buyer’s guide of eleven electric and gel-fuel logs and fireplace kits, heat outputs, flame types and features. Please include $3 and a business-size SASE. James Dulley, Conscious Choice, 6906 Royalgreen Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45244

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