Last year, when we moved into this old house, I had the fireplace inspected and was told it was not safe to use. (It's 115 years old.) We blocked off the chimney with a piece of thin metal, and installed a propane gas ventless log system. It works very well, although the cost was more than I thought it would be - about $1200 for the logs, the installation and the tank of propane. (We rent the tank for $100 a year - it's 100 gallons, I think.) Anyone else tried this?
Did you cap off the chimney at the same time? A friend of mine did something similar to that, and squirrels got in the top where it was warm, and from there got into the rest of the house and did a ton of damage.
Is a fireplace inspection something that needs to be done periodically, or was it done when you were buying the house? We don't use ours right now because of the two toddlers in the house, but we would eventually like to and I'm wondering if we'll need to have it inspected prior to firing it up.
I haven't had a fireplace, but it sounds like a good way to handle an unsafe one. I agree with whoever said it's good to block off both top AND bottom of the chimney, though!
I never realize that they were that exspensive to buy. I love the look of these and feel that they would be much easier to use and keep clean. But if that is how much they cost it looks like I won't be getting one anytime to soon. But what you have done sounds lovely to me.
We had a bird build a nest in the top of the chimney here right over where our gas logs vented out through the chimney. After our first winter, we got a chimney sweeper in. He installed a cap to keep the critters out. Squirrels really can tear things up.
