By removing the brass, glass screen from my fireplace, will heat escape in the winter through my fireplace.?

Public Comments

1. Yes. The flue will act as a vacuum sucking the air up and through the chimney.
2. The glass doors have another important role. They stop downdrafts your damper misses. Leave them on is your best choice. Replace them if you want, but keep some sort of doors there.
3. In a word: Absolutely. One exception is if you can close the flue (usually a lever or clain inside the fireplace).
4. The fire will feel warm if you're next to it but the rest of the house will cool considerably. You will have a net loss of heat. If you are lucky, you might have an air pipe from the outside to help the fire breathe, but that's pretty rare. There would still be a heat loss in the house, though. I am looking into small woodstoves that I can hook up in the fireplace so that I can have a warm room without the airflow. Woodstoves allow you to keep the airflow at the right level to feed the fire and no more, conserving energy.
5. Not if you close the Damper.
6. When you light a fire, it will suck air from the rest of the house (the warm air you paid to heat). This air isn't used for the fire, it just goes along for the ride.
7. Yes. And closing the damper isn't enough to stop the heat loss.