Direct Vent Fireplace Not Heating Your House

We often get customers in our store who will state that their Direct Vent fireplace doesn’t heat and has cold coming in around the unit.

Before they go any further, I probably know their situation. They probably live in a development built by a large builder. Result, they have a builder’s grade decorative unit that is not intended to heat. Their fireplace is “Decorative”. Even worse, however, is that the bump out, where the unit is often situated, is not even insulated let alone dry-walled to seal up the chase. Depending on the pressure of the house relative to the outside pressure, cold air is leaking in, or heated air is leaking out.

Today, most track homes are built with either a builder’s grade pre-fab wood fireplace, or a builder’s grade Direct Vent gas fireplace. They look decent, and are easy for the builder to have installed by a sub-contractor. What you are not getting, however, is a quality product and a unit that heats.

The fireplace is one of the least understood amenities of a home. Realtors, consider the fireplace as the focal point of a room, or even the house, and builders are eager to oblige. But an open fireplace is extremely wasteful allowing heated air to escape up the chimney f24 hours a day. Using the fireplace is even worse. A good fire can pull 600 to 800 cfms of household air out of the house, more than can be replaced through cracks around our windows and doors leading to depressurization of the household. When this situation happens, the homeowners often smells creosote if burning wood, but nothing if they are using gas logs. Yet, the situation still exists.

In a depressurized house, your furnace will not work properly spilling toxic fumes into the area.