Cohousing-L Mailing List: fireplaces

[audrey (audrey]

we at winslow cohousing have a fireplace in our common house, it has glass 
doors, and it has a heat recovery venting system to add more heat to the room. 
We have a tile hearth,  which isn't really deep. We have not had issues with 
it, probably because of the glass doors.    we have plenty of wood, harvested 
from trees on our property, as they have been thinned, or come down in storms.  
(we have 5 acres total, an acre+ in woods)  We do not have any other wood 
fireplaces in the community, by design,  some people do have gas stoves for 
spots of warmth and "fire" in their individual units.     The wood fireplace 
adds a homey ambience to the common house in the dark of winter, , but I bet 
there are fires in the fireplace less than once a week. 

the wood is stored outside, under a tarp maybe 100 feet from the building.  We 
have a maintenance schedule that gets the chimney cleaned regularly. 

--audrey
winslow cohousing
bainbridge island, wa