Getting heat out of the fireplace

[Fried Chicken]

Friends overseas ask me what America is like. I don't think I've found a better summation than "we have fireplaces designed to NOT heat the home".
Here's mine:


Now I'm looking at options to rectify this since I removed the fake logs and natural gas rod, and there are options abound at all sorts of different pricepoints.
I don't want an insert.

These guys make a tube design that IMO marries a decent aesthetic w/the promise of high heat output. The price is about half without the ugly blower and manifold. It's still a hefty chunk of change, and the it has vudu vibes about it. There are other offerings online, all seemingly from different levels of professional redneck.

More traditional, affordable with more aesthetics but with potentially less heat are these vertical stacks along with a giant pane of metal in the back.

Anyone with experience using these products?

 

[SS396driver]

First I would have professional look at your fireplace and flue . If it’s one of the newer zero clearance gas units it’s not suited for burning wood

 

[SS396driver]

I should add that if your good to go with wood then a good quality set of glass doors . Keeps the fireplace from sucking out all the heated air from the room . Fireplaces are nice but as it goes out no heat produced and now it’s sucking huge amounts of heated air out of the house

 

[Fried Chicken]

First I would have professional look at your fireplace and flue . If it’s one of the newer zero clearance gas units it’s not suited for burning wood

No issues there, it's a masonry fireplace built in 1996

I should add that if your good to go with wood then a good quality set of glass doors . Keeps the fireplace from sucking out all the heated air from the room . Fireplaces are nice but as it goes out no heat produced and now it’s sucking huge amounts of heated air out of the house

It's not a problem. We don't have serious heating needs in Texas, and I'm mostly interested in having a nice crackling fireplace. That said, I'm still not interested in merely heating the chimney.

 

[SS396driver]

You said no insert so your left with having only a few options . My parents had one of those half circle pipe things in the fireplace in the 70s . Worked ok but they did changed to glass doors and the heat was much more effective in that room . The nice things about a good quality set is you can close them while the fire is burning so you have a quasi insert . And you can leave them open to have a nice crackling fire then close them when you leave the room or go to bed . An open fireplace will draw a lot of heat out of the house after the fire dies .

 

[Fried Chicken]

You said no insert so your left with having only a few options . My parents had one of those half circle pipe things in the fireplace in the 70s . Worked ok but they did changed to glass doors and the heat was much more effective in that room . The nice things about a good quality set is you can close them while the fire is burning so you have a quasi insert . And you can leave them open to have a nice crackling fire then close them when you leave the room or go to bed . An open fireplace will draw a lot of heat out of the house after the fire dies .

I'll look into the glass doors. I thought they could only be installed along with an insert.
They would still benefit from one of the vertical firewood racks? I have heard the new glass doors are incredible for what they're capable of