Fireplaces

[Tundra]

I've only had a few minor experiences with fireplaces.

How much of your house can they make so that at least it's not totally freezing? Do chimneys going up through walls of the rooms above really help at all?
According to a site on Victorian servants, they considered that a room where water would not freeze to be warm enough for servants to sleep in.

I'm trying to figure out where they should go and if I should have fireplaces in my dollhouse rooms for realism purposes.

My little house has a a kitchen stove and a small parlour fireplace in the downstairs part of the house. Would the scullery be freezing, if the door from the kitchen is open?

Second floor there's the grandfather's bedroom, a sewing room and a main bedroom (where two adult sisters (one a widow one a spinster) and a baby sleep). I'm considering putting a fire of some sort in the sewing room as that's where the mother is a lot of the day, and the oldest son studies there and the spinster plans her lessons there.

And above that are two childrens' bedrooms with very little space.

How cold would the bedrooms be? Their whole house is really quite small, and the ceilings/floors would be wood. The house itself would be brick or stone, not sure really.

How much heat would rise into the children's bedrooms, and if the fire in the sewing/study was going and the bedroom doors were open, would it warm the grandfather's room and main room?



In my big house, I've got issues of where chimneys will go. Two rooms back to back can share a chimney, right? And what about the rooms above a fireplace, that will also have a fireplace. Can they share a chimney?

I've only had a fire in the house once when it's winter. It was a stone cottage we were having a holiday in. The kitchen, with its door closed, was very cold, even though the fire was in the next room, but the bedroom coming off the room with the fire was fine. And I don't know if the kitchen was warmer than it would be if there was no fire.

I'm not even sure why this matters, I think I'm just thinking about realism.

[IrelandBrady]

Our house was built in 1921, it has a fireplace in the front room with the chimney going up an outside wall. At one time there was a woodburning stove in the kitchen and a small woodburning stove (for heat) in the dining room. The chimney for those two rooms goes up the center of the house, starting in the basement where there is still visible a sealed opening for a small woodburning stove, up through the main level and upper level and out the center of the roof.

As for heating bedrooms during cold weather, it would depend on how much income the family had I would suppose. My Mom grew up in So.Dakota in a home my Grampa built. They were farmers with 12 kids to support. They had a large woodburning stove in the kitchen that served to heat the entire home. On really cold nights Gramma would heat up bricks on the stove, wrap then in old blankets and place them under the covers to warm up the kids feet. Since there were so many kids, they shared beds (girls in the girls room, boys in the boys room) so after awhile once the warmth of the bricks had worn off, snuggle up body warmth took over.

[AXJ]

How much of your house can they make so that at least it's not totally freezing?

Really depends on how the house is designed and how cold it is out. Where I live, before electric heat, houses were mostly designed to not be stifling during the summer, with high ceilings and big windows, but this meant they leaked heat like nobody's business in the winter. Both my parents and grandparents told stories about the whole family sleeping in the den around the woodstove on the coldest nights.

By the way, woodstoves are far more efficient at heating a space than fireplaces. I have no idea when they were invented, however.

Do chimneys going up through walls of the rooms above really help at all?

My uncle Jim heats his house with a woodstove in all but the dead of winter. It's located in his basement and has multiple chimneys for the purpose of better heating several rooms. However these are metal chimneys; brick/stone ones would be far less transmissive of heat. I'm sure there would still be some transmission, but I think you'd get far more heat just rising up through the floor.

My little house has a a kitchen stove and a small parlour fireplace in the downstairs part of the house. Would the scullery be freezing, if the door from the kitchen is open?

Second floor there's the grandfather's bedroom, a sewing room and a main bedroom (where two adult sisters (one a widow one a spinster) and a baby sleep). I'm considering putting a fire of some sort in the sewing room as that's where the mother is a lot of the day, and the oldest son studies there and the spinster plans her lessons there.

Remember, any room with a fireplace is a source of heat leak when there's not a fire in the fireplace. Also, a fireplace will really only (barely) heat the room it's in (and maybe add some heat to the room above). Fireplaces are very thermally inefficient.

Also, remember that unless they're wealthy and live where they've got good access to inexpensive wood & someone to do a lot of chopping, they're probably only going to keep one fire going during the day, which would also be the one fire they keep alive all the time. You'd be amazed at how much chopped wood is required to keep a halfway decent sized fire going for a day a night.

So, I'd think daytime activities would generally get moved into whatever room contains the homefire during the cold months. I would expect that to be the den/family room rather than a sewing room, usually, but I guess it's possible that would be different in different families...

And above that are two childrens' bedrooms with very little space.

How cold would the bedrooms be? Their whole house is really quite small, and the ceilings/floors would be wood. The house itself would be brick or stone, not sure really.

How much heat would rise into the children's bedrooms, and if the fire in the sewing/study was going and the bedroom doors were open, would it warm the grandfather's room and main room?

The heat would rise through the floors and probably heat the childrens' rooms; I doubt it'd be freezing unless their room had big windows or the ceiling was poorly insulated. However that small amount of heat would dissipate quickly and probably wouldn't reach the adjacent rooms, I wouldn't think, unless it wasn't very cold in the first place.

I suspect any room that wouldn't benefit from that might have a small fireplace of its own, where one could carry a few coals from the main fireplace to kindle their own little fire at bedtime.

In my big house, I've got issues of where chimneys will go. Two rooms back to back can share a chimney, right? And what about the rooms above a fireplace, that will also have a fireplace. Can they share a chimney?

Yes, they can, although a chimney typically has to either be metal (and therefore automatically sectioned) or if it's brick/stone, it'll have to be thicker, as the streams from downstairs and upstairs have to be seperated within the chimney up to the roof, IIRC, to prevent any smoke from flowing into the upstairs room if there's not a fire going up there.

Hope this helps....