Radiant Heating and Convection Heating are the two primary types of ways we heat our houses. FORCED AIR HEATINGConvection heating means moving hot air -- what we usually call a forced air heating system simply heats air and moves it around the house through a system of fans and ducts. Forced air...
Greg Costelloe from Costelloe & Company in Concord, Ontario, is one of those innovative fireplace experts that I love to talk to. In the first photo, he is showing me a standard direct vent gas fireplace insert. This is the kind of unit that you can build a fake fireplace around, or you can...
Gabe from Toronto wants to know if he can get a conversion kit to switch his propane BBQ to natural gas.The answer is NO.Unfortunately the propane hose and the natural gas hose has the same size threads so it is possible to simply screw one type onto a BBQ made for the other type. But that is qu...
Not all gas fireplaces develop a greyish haze on the glass window and sometimes a bit all over the inside of gas fireplaces, but many do. Most manufacturers that we contacted didn't know what the haze was but they assumed it had to do with breaking in the heated parts of the fireplace, and gener...
This question comes from Ura in Cochrane, Alberta.Whether you are looking at the flame of a gas burner or an oil burner, a soft, yellow/orange flame that is dancing slowly all around is a poor flame. There is a lot of material not being burned, but wasted up the chimney. Sharp blue flames are t...
One of our viewers caught our cameras in the renovation centre and asked a really good question. He has a sealed combustion gas fire place insert and has been told that both the fresh air coming in and the exhaust gasses going out have to go all the way up the chimney and out. He wanted to know...
Lani from Burnaby, B.C. writes: "We have a gas fireplace and the pilot light won't light. A gas company technician inspected the situation and told us the pilot light needs cleaning. Can we do this safely ourselves?"Why didn't he just clean it while he was inspecting it?But, yes you can clean i...
There are a number of appliances around the house that have user or trade adjustable temperatures and it is not always simple to get them right.Hot Water HeatersMost Hot Water heaters for domestic hot water are factory set to 66deg C. ( 150F ). This is actually hot enough to scald someone so legi...
Free standing gas fireplaces, gas fireplace inserts and in this segment from my TV show, a cross breed between the two put a very inefficient fireplace back into operation. Yes you need a chimney liner when you do something like this - that is the duct sticking out of the fireplace in the photo....
It is harder to down-size an old gas furnace than an oil furnace, but it can be made to operate more efficiently.-- Increase the fan speed to draw more heat out of the furnace.-- Increase the "fan-on" time before and after operation to draw more heat out of the furnace.-- Install an electronic pi...
