Are Rumford Fireplaces Efficient

And the heat they fill a room with is many times that of our modern fireplaces.

Are rumford fireplaces efficient. Highly efficient thermal comfort can be delivered because radiant heaters focus thermal energy and therefore thermal comfort directly on the occupants rather than controlling room temperature as do other heating systems. In fact the opposite is true. The more direct line of sight objects in the room had with the fire the more they would be heated. Rumford wrote two papers detailing his improvements on fireplaces in 1796 and 1798.

Fortunately new energy efficient fireplace designs are helping wood burning fireplaces achieve efficiency ratings of 75 or more. The rumford fireplace. Rumford fireplaces are taller and shallower than the typical fireplace and have a narrower chimney opening to increase updraft. Rumford fireplaces draw smoke up and out the chimney better than any other design.

But most are energy hogs converting only 15 of wood s energy into useful heat. Rumford fireplaces provide an efficient means of delivering thermal comfort directly to people and surfaces such as floors and walls without having to condition the entire space. No wonder rumfords are more efficient. By keeping the fireback straight and rounding the breast to get streamlined air flow instead of turbulence we can build rumford fireplaces with openings almost a foot taller than regular fireplaces and with throats less than half the size of a modern fireplace.

A traditional wood burning fireplace adds warmth and romantic ambiance to a home s interior. They were a revolution in fireplace design burning wood far more efficiently and exhausting much more effectively. He was well known and widely read in his lifetime and almost immediately in the 1790s his rumford fireplace became state of the art worldwide. Subsequent testing of rumford s designs has shown that their efficiency would qualify them as clean burning stoves.

Well for starters the rumford fireplace can be built taller and is more efficient and cleaner burning. What attracts many people to a rumford fireplace besides its aesthetics is its efficiency in radiating heat into the room and drawing smoke and pollutants out. Rumford redesigned a few elements on the fireplace to make it work the way he wanted. First from his studies on the 3 types of heat he determined that fireplaces warm a room through radiant heat.