Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's Josh and for this week's select, I've
Speaker 1: chosen our warm and Cozy twenty sixteen episode on Fireplaces,
Speaker 1: just in time for Christmas. I hope you have your
Speaker 1: wastle handy or some eggnog or a nice glass of
Speaker 1: water if that's what suits you, and I'd like you
Speaker 1: to settle in with a cozy blanket and listen to
Speaker 1: this crackling episode of Stuff you Should Know. Happy Holidays,
Speaker 1: Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerome the Jayres. So this
Speaker 1: is stuff you should Know.
Speaker 2: Jerry got a piece of mail the other day that
Speaker 2: said Jerome. Oh yeah, yeah, like real mail though, right, Jerry. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know how that happened.
Speaker 1: Oh like mail, not like fan mail.
Speaker 2: Oh little Jerry just said confirmed.
Speaker 1: Weird.
Speaker 2: We've been doing a lot of this Jerry translating lately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really weird. That's bizarre. I mean, I sold
Speaker 1: your address to a mailing list, but I've never been
Speaker 1: reimbursed for it.
Speaker 2: So, uh, how are you, sir?
Speaker 1: Great?
Speaker 2: We are fresh off our live shows in Boston, mass
Speaker 2: MA and h Washington, DC, and big thanks to everyone
Speaker 2: that came out. Those were a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. And thanks to the Brightest Young Things
Speaker 1: for having us to the Benson Ball with Tig Nataro.
Speaker 2: And yeah that it was wonderful we got to meet Tick.
Speaker 2: She was just as nice and nonplussed as I would
Speaker 2: have hoped exactly. She didn't make a fuss. No, nor
Speaker 2: should she. Wait, I mean that in a good way. Wait.
Speaker 1: Is it non plus the opposite of what you think
Speaker 1: it means?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think non plus means like you're you're agitated, means
Speaker 1: you're plussed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd learned things all the time on this show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2: Your favorite part of my job.
Speaker 1: And most specifically, the most recent thing I've learned, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is that fire, the use of fire, the technological application
Speaker 1: of fire, that's as far as I'm going actually predates humanity.
Speaker 1: That it was Homo erectus who was the first upright
Speaker 1: hominid who controlled fire, and it was as long ago
Speaker 1: as a million years there's evidence of the use the
Speaker 1: controlled use of fire by humans as as much as
Speaker 1: a million years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it says here in this article that you found
Speaker 2: that in China there are hears of clay, silt and
Speaker 2: limestone from like a half a million years ago, and
Speaker 2: you know signs like you said in Africa over a
Speaker 2: million years ago that people and these are in caves,
Speaker 2: so essentially indoor fireplace. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But and if you are an anthropologist, you are
Speaker 1: familiar with the term hearth, but that's usually used to
Speaker 1: describe something that doesn't really resemble the hearth that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about today. Usually it was like just a shallow depression.
Speaker 1: Maybe it did have some limestone or some clay or
Speaker 1: something else to keep it from catching fire, but nothing
Speaker 1: like the fireplaces we know of today. The ones we
Speaker 1: see and say there's a fireplace, they're actually about seven
Speaker 1: hundred ish years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the history of the chimney isn't
Speaker 2: super clear. But by the fourteenth century, and of course Europe,
Speaker 2: when you had a little dough, you could then afford
Speaker 2: the nice chimney or maybe just any chimney.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, yeah, people started to afford chimneys quite a bit.
Speaker 1: There was a especially in say jolly old London, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of chimneys that sprung up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they weren't happy about it.
Speaker 1: A lot of problems that arose, as we'll see later on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's kind of interesting to see the fireplace
Speaker 1: hasn't really changed much in like seven hundred years. And
Speaker 1: then you step back and you're like, no, actually, that's
Speaker 1: kind of evident when you think about the fireplace and
Speaker 1: how ridiculously inefficient it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of changed. I don't know, it depends what.
Speaker 2: It depends what your definition have changed.
Speaker 1: A hole in the wall with a hole above it
Speaker 1: that's tall and narrow and leads to the outside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, within that there have been a lot of changing.
Speaker 1: Sure, Sure, but the overall general design has been relatively
Speaker 1: unchanged for seven hundred years. It's like toilet paper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not as straight as they used to be.
Speaker 2: Ben Franklin was someone who did a lot of complaining
Speaker 2: in life. He did about when you know, he was
Speaker 2: just kind of a person who would look around the
Speaker 2: world in his everyday surroundings and say, why do people
Speaker 2: do it like this? That's stupid. I've been Franklin. There's
Speaker 2: better ways. Listen to me, right, take a peek under
Speaker 2: my silken robe.
Speaker 1: Sure, he very famously wrote that on the back of
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence.
Speaker 2: But fireplaces used to get under his skin, apparently because
Speaker 2: the design, and we're going to talk about this, the
Speaker 2: traditional fireplace is fairly wasteful.
Speaker 1: Oh, tremendously so.
Speaker 2: And it can even make your room colder, yes, which
Speaker 2: is counterintuitive. Yeah, it's like non plussed. Yeah, I look
Speaker 2: that up. By the way, so non plus I'm correct.
Speaker 2: The non plus means you're agitated. Well, it means it
Speaker 2: means that you are surprised and confused to the point
Speaker 2: that you are unsure how to react. So not necessarily agitating.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you're definitely not just like laid back.
Speaker 2: No, so tick. Natara was not nonplussed. She was not
Speaker 2: confused on how to react. She reacted the exact way,
Speaker 2: which is hin. Nice to know that.
Speaker 1: Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's just chill, right and very sweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I didn't expect like some big show trust me from
Speaker 2: anybody that meets us. Well, no, so I just want
Speaker 2: to put that out there. I wouldn't want to sound
Speaker 2: like I was disappointed.
Speaker 1: She didn't like throw those snap crackers and start tap dancing.
Speaker 2: No, I got exactly what I wanted, which was a
Speaker 2: very nice lady who gave me a big hug in
Speaker 2: a photo. I think that's come across. Yeah, I just
Speaker 2: I'm sensitive to that stuff. Once I started opening my
Speaker 2: mouth digging that hole. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Here's a little more rope.
Speaker 2: Anyway, let me give you a stat here.
Speaker 1: Wait first, I think everyone wants to hear about how
Speaker 1: you felt when you met tig Nataro.
Speaker 2: I was super excited. Can you tell how was she?
Speaker 2: So here's a little stat for you. The National Association
Speaker 2: of Homebuilders did a survey, and I guess this is recent.
Speaker 2: It doesn't name the year, but it sounds recent. People
Speaker 2: still want their fireplaces to the tune of seventy seven
Speaker 2: percent of home buyers say, and that's I guess in
Speaker 2: the US, Yeah, like even in I mean that's accounting
Speaker 2: for the hot places as well. Sure you know, so
Speaker 2: I would imagine in the cold places it's probably more
Speaker 2: like one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, remember I don't remember what episode it was,
Speaker 1: but we talked about how in New York it's very
Speaker 1: ghost these days to have a fireplace that you use
Speaker 1: because it's so waste.
Speaker 2: Not does ghosh mean what I think it means now
Speaker 2: in doubting everything.
Speaker 1: It means super laid back and non plus.
Speaker 2: Oh so like New Yorkers like, oh, you have a fireplace.
Speaker 1: Yes, how not green, right, which I mean they're correct.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ungreenness associated with fireplace brownness. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, especially as far as like air pollution goes
Speaker 1: air quality. Yeah, there's a lot of problems. Sure, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of problems that come out of it. Like
Speaker 1: for example, I guess if we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: this for a second, if you are a kid and
Speaker 1: you have I don't know, respiratory diseases, yeah, you're far
Speaker 1: likely to be living in a house where your folks
Speaker 1: burn wood. So if you're a kid or an elderly person,
Speaker 1: respiratory distress can be broad on because smoke's going to
Speaker 1: get in the room no matter how great the fireplace.
Speaker 2: Is, right, Or if you're let's say, if you already
Speaker 2: have asthma or something, you're not doing yourself any favors
Speaker 2: right by letting that smoke in the particles particulate matter
Speaker 2: creep in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also I mean like house fires. There's like
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand house fires in the United States every
Speaker 1: year that result in like ten people's deaths.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from directly from fireplaces.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. But no matter who you talk to, for
Speaker 1: the most part, they people say, still worth it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm gonna die of like black lung, and my
Speaker 1: house may burn down before I get a chance to.
Speaker 1: But I really love fires in the winter, and I'm
Speaker 1: willing to take that risk.
Speaker 2: So you know my deal or do you?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: We live in a house that was built in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty five. Oh yeah, yeah, and we're renovating it still forever.
Speaker 2: And we have the fire place that is not used
Speaker 2: and it's not able to be used, I know, unless
Speaker 2: we pay like some pretty good doe to get it
Speaker 2: retrofitted and the chimney worked on. And I for years
Speaker 2: have been leaving just little sticky notes and I'll write
Speaker 2: it in crayon on the bathroom wall and just little
Speaker 2: things like hey, m how about that fireplace? And she says,
Speaker 2: quit writing on the walls. We're not getting a fireplace
Speaker 2: just yet. But maybe you've been there for like ten years.
Speaker 2: Is when does our life? When do we start living
Speaker 2: our life? Is my question? With a fireplace, have.
Speaker 1: You considered trading something she wants for the fireplace.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work like that.
Speaker 1: And have you considered begging?
Speaker 2: That didn't work either? Oh?
Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, I do I wait until
Speaker 2: she goes out of town and they just do it yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but doing a trouble.
Speaker 1: Terrible way, so that somebody, a professionalist to come in
Speaker 1: and go behind you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you have no choice. You're like, I
Speaker 2: gotta get the fireplace guy in here.
Speaker 1: Now, there's a giant hole in the wall.
Speaker 2: Long story short, though, we still don't have a fireplace.
Speaker 2: And I'm still despite all the negatives, and I try
Speaker 2: to lead a green life, but I just I want
Speaker 2: that wood burning thing. I don't want. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: the substitutes. But and that's great if you're into that,
Speaker 2: because they are better in many many ways. Sure, But
Speaker 2: I just love that wood crackle, the smell. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: want that particulate matter yelling my lungs.
Speaker 1: You and seventy seven percent of us homeowners yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: most people do say, I'm willing to look past the
Speaker 1: problems for a wood burning fireplace, But like you say,
Speaker 1: there are there are all there's alternatives right, But we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about all of it here.
Speaker 2: Should we talk about the parts?
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about this is. This is when I
Speaker 1: say like there was very little change to the design
Speaker 1: over seven hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: It's true, man, Yeah, I didn't realize some of these
Speaker 2: parts existed. So I did learn quite a bit in this.
Speaker 2: I thought it was pretty much the firebox and the
Speaker 2: flu that ran up the chimney. Sure, and that's it, right,
Speaker 2: But there's more to it than that.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, these are I think these are the improvements
Speaker 1: that came over time.
Speaker 2: So you do have that hearth that you mentioned that's
Speaker 2: going to be built out of something fireproof. You don't
Speaker 2: want a wood to hearth, so that'd be bad. It's
Speaker 2: probably rock or brick. And that's where Yeah, that's where
Speaker 2: you sit and drink your bourbon while you warm your back.
Speaker 1: It's like an apron on the floor that extends out
Speaker 1: from the fireplace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it can be even with the floor, as
Speaker 2: is the case now or the one I grew up with.
Speaker 2: I grew up with one of those mac Daddy huge
Speaker 2: rock stone fireplaces.
Speaker 1: Those ones are like, man.
Speaker 2: And you could sit on the thing. They're the best.
Speaker 1: They are the best, but they're also like just kid killers.
Speaker 1: They look like you know, well not if you don't
Speaker 1: climb in it. Oh okay, which I never did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is pretty nice.
Speaker 2: What else you got?
Speaker 1: Well, so, you know, like the hearth extends out, but
Speaker 1: if you look usually up the walls along either side
Speaker 1: of the hole in the wall, and then above above it,
Speaker 1: that's called the surround. It's usually made of something either
Speaker 1: that's the same as the hearth, same material as the hearth,
Speaker 1: or some other fireproof thing like tile or brick or stone, right,
Speaker 1: And that's just to basically prevent that fire from licking
Speaker 1: out of the firebox and setting the house on fire.
Speaker 2: So straw no good, no as a material. You have
Speaker 2: your firebox, that is just what you think it is.
Speaker 2: That's the square typically, although they are shaped a little differently. Now,
Speaker 2: that's just where that holds your.
Speaker 1: Fire, right, and it's where the smoke starts to collect. Yes,
Speaker 1: what you're sending this stuff up to behind behind the
Speaker 1: fire box is actually called the smoke chamber, and there's
Speaker 1: a there's a transition area in between the firebox, which
Speaker 1: is where you actually have the fire, and the smoke chamber,
Speaker 1: which is above and slightly behind it, and there's it's
Speaker 1: called the throat. It's the opening that that connects those
Speaker 1: two things. Yeah, and the smoke chamber smoke box I
Speaker 1: think I've been calling it. It actually connects the firebox
Speaker 1: to the FLU and it's got some pretty cool stuff going.
Speaker 1: And this is like where where some improvements were made
Speaker 1: to the design.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the flu is surrounded by the chimney also
Speaker 2: again not straw, right, it's gonna be bricked almost always.
Speaker 1: In the back rear of the smoke chamber, there's a
Speaker 1: smoke shelf.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's concave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if you if you look at a fireplace,
Speaker 1: you just think it just goes straight up.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, some of the old designs did well, they
Speaker 2: were stupid. Yeah, that's how it's changed some.
Speaker 1: Right, So if you go if you look at the
Speaker 1: back of the fireplace, if you could stick your head
Speaker 1: up into the firebox, you don't want to do that
Speaker 1: when there's no fire, you don't.
Speaker 2: Want to do it. Period.
Speaker 1: You'll see that there's actually a shelf.
Speaker 2: Yeah there, and it's angled forward too. In front of that.
Speaker 2: Like I said, it used to be just sort of
Speaker 2: a cube and it went straight up. Now it's sort
Speaker 2: of zigzags, yeah, back and forth a little bit its
Speaker 2: way to the flu that's right.
Speaker 1: So the whole point of that shelf and the zigzag
Speaker 1: is so that when rain comes in, it doesn't get
Speaker 1: into the fire. Yeah, it's almost basically a protective overhang.
Speaker 1: And it also keeps particulates like soot and stuff from
Speaker 1: falling into the firebox too.
Speaker 2: Correct that smoke shelf underneath it, you're going to have
Speaker 2: the damper, and that is that covering that it's movable,
Speaker 2: and that separates the firebox from the place above it,
Speaker 2: and that keeps that's you know, when you don't have
Speaker 2: your fire, that's when you close. We used to say
Speaker 2: close the flu and we didn't use the word damper
Speaker 2: in my house.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but that's technically what it is,
Speaker 2: just the damper and you get your their different mechanisms.
Speaker 2: But ours had a little little islet circle thing that
Speaker 2: you would stick. We used our fire poker and we
Speaker 2: would just unhook it and then close the damper and
Speaker 2: that when your fire is not burning. You want to
Speaker 2: keep that thing open when it's burning. Obviously, Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're going to find out really quickly. Yeah, if it's closed.
Speaker 1: It's like an epiglottis for the fireplace. Sure, you know,
Speaker 1: and let's got a throat, why not? Sure what else
Speaker 1: we have? Sometimes there's a chimney damper at the very
Speaker 1: top of the flu Yeah, and you could close too,
Speaker 1: it's unnecessary, oh you think.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: But then at the very top of the chimney there's
Speaker 1: something called spark or restor, which is usually like some
Speaker 1: sort of mesh grate that will allow like gas and
Speaker 1: air out, but we'll keep little embers and stuff from
Speaker 1: going out onto your roof and setting your house on fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially like paper tends to float up and out
Speaker 2: the chimney cap. It serves the same purpose. And that
Speaker 2: a lot of times is one and the same, Like
Speaker 2: the chimney cap and the spark arrest are all one piece.
Speaker 2: A lot a lot of times is that it I
Speaker 2: haven't heard of this ash dump. That sounds pretty neat though.
Speaker 2: Sure it's basically I guess, a hatch in the floor
Speaker 2: where you can just sweep the ashes. I guess that
Speaker 2: sounds like in the olden days when your house was
Speaker 2: built on you know, to bricks, and it would just
Speaker 2: drop into a bucket below, as would your poop. Sure,
Speaker 2: there were different buckets under your house that collected things.
Speaker 1: You wanted to make sure you knew which bucket you
Speaker 1: were grabbing at any given time. I didn't want a surprise.
Speaker 2: And then finally got your little door. It's either you know,
Speaker 2: glass or metal, or it might just be a screen.
Speaker 2: We never had in mind growing up. We never had
Speaker 2: the glass door scene. Sure, just the screen.
Speaker 1: We had one of those in my high school house
Speaker 1: and it was a we had a gas fireplace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was fine, Sure, but I was like, this is
Speaker 1: not wood.
Speaker 2: All right, Well let's take a break and we'll talk
Speaker 2: about wood after this.
Speaker 1: So we're back, Chuck, and we're gonna talk. This would
Speaker 1: not be an apt episode if we didn't talk about
Speaker 1: basically the physics of how a fireplace works. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: there are some physics involved. Yeah, pretty impressive ones, if
Speaker 1: you ask me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love this article said lighting a fire inside
Speaker 2: your living room and it kind of hits home of like,
Speaker 2: how kind of crazy that is?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And so there are two challenges one not setting your
Speaker 2: house on fire to keep the smoke from entering the room. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, never really thought about it, and everything we
Speaker 2: just talked about basically was to prevent the first part
Speaker 2: catching your house on fire, the surround the hearth, all
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 1: But then if you get a little more into the
Speaker 1: guts of the fireplace, that's to keep the smoke from
Speaker 1: filling up in the room. And when you look around
Speaker 1: your house, you will find that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: different places for air to get in. And that's actually
Speaker 1: quite necessary for a fireplace.
Speaker 2: It's quite necessary for living and breathing.
Speaker 1: Sure, for breathing, it's important for that too, But to
Speaker 1: keep a fire going in to keep the smoke from
Speaker 1: going filling up your living room, huh, which again you'll
Speaker 1: find out very quickly if you don't have your damper open,
Speaker 1: which I have before. Sure, if you have air coming
Speaker 1: into your house, then you can keep the air, the
Speaker 1: smoke from the fire going up the way it's supposed to.
Speaker 1: And that happens simply because he tends to rise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. You know, one of the places I
Speaker 2: get a nice flow of air and my house is
Speaker 2: from closed windows.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you got thin windows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have it. We've only readone a few of
Speaker 2: the windows. That's on my like must do list is
Speaker 2: to get all the windows replaced. Yeah, but it ain't cheap. No,
Speaker 2: but you're gonna earn that money back, you know, over
Speaker 2: time with efficiencies. But yeah, I have those old windows,
Speaker 2: like it can be fully shut and you can stand
Speaker 2: and your hair will blow right, you know, Like where's
Speaker 2: this coming from? It's going through the glass. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: feels like.
Speaker 1: It's defying the laws of physics.
Speaker 2: It's freezing near my windows.
Speaker 1: I remember, you mean I had a house like that
Speaker 1: and it was I mean the wavy, vaguely wavy kind
Speaker 1: of windows. Yeah, those were thin.
Speaker 2: It's kind of neat though, to think that twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: and I'm living like a settler basically. Yeah, in parts
Speaker 2: of my shrining your own butter. So, yeah, you want
Speaker 2: to talk about the different kinds of heat. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: you've got conduction, convection, and radiation, and fireplaces use convection
Speaker 2: and radiation, but not conduction, hopefully not conduction.
Speaker 1: No conduction means your house is catching fire.
Speaker 2: I means you're literally touching something hot.
Speaker 1: Correct, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But conveection, of course, is when that hot air
Speaker 2: circulating to cooler areas of your home in this case,
Speaker 2: and the radiation is just literally feeling that flame warmth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's in the case of the fireplace, it's infrared
Speaker 1: and visible light electromagnetic radiation. Basically, there is actually some
Speaker 1: radio waves in some microwaves produced by a fire, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. Yeah, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: you're feeling infrared radiation and you're seeing visible light rate right, Yes,
Speaker 1: So when you're warming yourself by a fire, you're you're
Speaker 1: being radiated. Thermal radiation is being emitted from the fireplace.
Speaker 1: But there's also convection, yeah, big time and yeah, big times, right.
Speaker 1: Convection actually makes up most of the way that heat
Speaker 1: is moved through a fire, and because you want to
Speaker 1: keep the smoke out of your house, you're also actually
Speaker 1: keeping those convection currents from going into your house as well,
Speaker 1: meaning as Ben Franklin point out, because remember he was
Speaker 1: a huge complainer that most of the heat from a
Speaker 1: fire is just purposefully being funneled out of the house
Speaker 1: up through the flu in the chimney.
Speaker 2: I think it drove him nuts a little bit looking
Speaker 2: through some of these quotes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he really spent a lot of time like
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to make fireplace better. You
Speaker 1: got to understand though, too, like when he was alive.
Speaker 1: These weren't just for like charm, No, No, they were
Speaker 1: to stay alive. Yeah, and the idea that you were
Speaker 1: wasting all this fuel I think probably part of it
Speaker 1: also is the inefficiency probably drove him nuts.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean he's dead, right, Like, you've got
Speaker 2: so much heat just going right up the chimney, and
Speaker 2: not only that when you get that draft, because the
Speaker 2: fire needs the oxygen, right, So that's another reason it's
Speaker 2: pulling this air in, But it's also pulling in You've
Speaker 2: got your thermostat on and your heat going.
Speaker 1: Sure, it's pulling.
Speaker 2: Some of that warmer air in and up and out
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Right, and even air that it's warming through convection, like
Speaker 1: that's being irradiated out of the fireplace. Yeah, it's being
Speaker 1: sucked in. And as a result again that when that
Speaker 1: air is sucked into the fire and has pushed up
Speaker 1: the flu through the chimney, it's got to be replaced.
Speaker 1: It's creating what's called a negative pressurization, right, Yes, and
Speaker 1: that means that air wants to come in and replace
Speaker 1: the air that's being sucked out and up the chimney.
Speaker 1: So cold there from outside is being drawn in, which
Speaker 1: is how like you said before windows, Right, sure, but
Speaker 1: the fire can actually make your house even colder because
Speaker 1: it's pushing the warm air out through the fireplace and
Speaker 1: sucking in cold air from the outside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not it says here, here's a stat
Speaker 2: that said that a traditional fireplace can draw four to
Speaker 2: ten times as much air from the room that it
Speaker 2: needs to actually burn that fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something like five hundred cubic leaders of air a minute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So compare that to like the smart fireplace aka
Speaker 2: the woodburning stove.
Speaker 1: Aka the TV with the fire burning on it.
Speaker 2: Right, I love a woodburning stove. Man, those are great.
Speaker 1: Do I've never really been into those. Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: no problems with them.
Speaker 2: It's not a it doesn't. It's not good for every home.
Speaker 1: Aren't they incredibly dangerous? Like they get super hot? Right,
Speaker 1: they're really hot, So like if you fell onto one
Speaker 1: or something, you'd be in big trouble. Right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't put the skateboard next to it, okay, the banana
Speaker 1: peel okay, step one. But and you know you're not
Speaker 1: going to have like a super modern house with a
Speaker 1: wood burning stove, Like it's a little more charming in
Speaker 1: your cabin or something. Actually, I was looking through I
Speaker 1: think a Popular Mechanics or something. I had different types
Speaker 1: of stoves with stoves, and there are some that are
Speaker 1: kind of mod Oh.
Speaker 2: Well that's cool. Yeah, so they're trying to bring it
Speaker 2: into the future. Yes, well, they're remarkably efficient. How much
Speaker 2: did you say, five hundred.
Speaker 1: Five hundred cubic leaders I believe of air a minute
Speaker 1: is sucked into a fireplace the average fireplace.
Speaker 2: And only twenty for a wood burning stove.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty efficient.
Speaker 2: So they're super hot, you can cook onto, you can
Speaker 2: boil your water and do all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: Sure you know, s don't touch it. No.
Speaker 2: I think the Rendazo's had one in their place in Connecticut.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, and I think it supposedly worked super well,
Speaker 2: like it'll heat a room and then some yeah you know.
Speaker 1: Well, and the reason why is because it's it's like
Speaker 1: a contained fireplace, but it's not.
Speaker 2: Just wide open.
Speaker 1: It's out in the open.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but I mean you shut the door to it.
Speaker 1: Right, You shut the door to it, so you're saving
Speaker 1: the warm air around it from being sucked in, right, correct.
Speaker 1: And then it's also removed from the interior of the
Speaker 1: wall so that it can heat on all sides.
Speaker 2: It's right up there, so you can fall on it.
Speaker 1: Sure, and then the flu itself can go up and
Speaker 1: then out of the room so that the hot gas
Speaker 1: that's being carried out can heat the air in the
Speaker 1: room around it.
Speaker 2: So you've got that stove pipe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got a lot of a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways the air is being warmed in your house by
Speaker 1: a wood stove.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna look into these new ones.
Speaker 1: There's new ones. There's also like very there's some famous
Speaker 1: ones that are like mid century design that are super
Speaker 1: mid sweetish ones, and then there's like there's ones that
Speaker 1: look kind of like the traditional ones, but they're they're
Speaker 1: newly built and like they're improved designs.
Speaker 2: Remember the old seventies fireplaces that were uh like orange
Speaker 2: metal that would sit.
Speaker 1: On the Swedish one I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Oh really, it's based on that old old seventies.
Speaker 1: Look, No, that's the one I'm talking about, is the seventies.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, Yeah, there's newer ones too, gotcha, But that
Speaker 1: the iconic orange one. Yeah that's yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like my friend, one friend in high school, Chris Bouten,
Speaker 2: had the most seventies house is there, right? Oh dude,
Speaker 2: it was wonderful. Yeah, Like it was the Orange fireplace surround,
Speaker 2: like built in a terrarium set to deal with plants
Speaker 2: and rocks and things. I think there might have been
Speaker 2: a little fake waterfall, was there. Oh I'm sure there
Speaker 2: was macrome at some point, but it was just it
Speaker 2: had one of those sunken living rooms. Oh, I like those,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, and looking back now like it's super cool,
Speaker 2: like mod house like people now would be like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, it's preserved in time. It's the greatest thing ever. Right,
Speaker 2: Like his hit a water but of course, but one
Speaker 2: of his walls, his entire wall was like a blown
Speaker 2: up photograph of like a Hawaiian sunset.
Speaker 1: Oh, we had a couple of those in our in
Speaker 1: our house. Not not a Hawaiian sunset, but we had
Speaker 1: like a forest with a waterfall going through it, and
Speaker 1: then in our kitchen a forest mural no no water.
Speaker 2: That's very ice storm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've not seen that movie, but I can imagine because
Speaker 1: that was seventies, right, seventies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean like key parties are happening and people
Speaker 2: are drinking eggnog around the Orange lacquer to fireplace. It's
Speaker 2: a wonderful time.
Speaker 1: But let's say you have just the regular, regular old
Speaker 1: fireplace to start.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to drink.
Speaker 1: You come across it, you say, what, what the heck
Speaker 1: is this thing? What do I do?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: The first thing you do is you log on to
Speaker 1: the internet and go to how stuff Works and look
Speaker 1: up how to operate a fireplace? Because how stuff works
Speaker 1: has you covered? Man?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the only thing I could say this
Speaker 2: would probably be good for is if you've never literally
Speaker 2: never started a fire. But it seems like common knowledge
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some details in there that I don't know.
Speaker 1: Like hardwoods, right, you don't want to burn pine or
Speaker 1: any soft wood. Okay, you want your hardwoods like hickory,
Speaker 1: ash oak, ye kind of stuff, and you want it seasoned.
Speaker 1: That's the key.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You can't go cut down a tree in your
Speaker 2: yard and chop it up and burn it the next
Speaker 2: week because it will smoke and you'll see literally, I
Speaker 2: mean when I go camping, we get rooked all the
Speaker 2: time on firewood purchases. Oh yeah, and we sit down
Speaker 2: for the evening, throw the wood on there, and you
Speaker 2: just start hearing the sizzle and you see the water
Speaker 2: just literally boiling out of it, and we're just like,
Speaker 2: oh man, well, well okay, that roadside guy, I'm going
Speaker 2: to go back.
Speaker 1: Here's here's how you got to test it right there
Speaker 1: in front of the guy and watch him squirm. Take
Speaker 1: two logs, yeah, and you knock them together, and what
Speaker 1: you're looking for is a hollow sound, no thud, hollow sound.
Speaker 1: Then you know it's season.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But he would go like, city boy, you know
Speaker 2: this is North Georgia, lob lolly pine. You don't know
Speaker 2: what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: You'd say, well, pines of soft food. I want hardwoods.
Speaker 1: Where's the hardwoods? I went to college.
Speaker 2: Get off my property and leave the boiled peanuts.
Speaker 1: You'd say, I'm going to take half of the boiled
Speaker 1: peanuts for my time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like we always get wet wood. But
Speaker 2: at least six months you want that wood drying out.
Speaker 2: They say a full year. What you're looking for is
Speaker 2: twenty percent moisture level by the time you're burning it. Right.
Speaker 1: You could also put in a moisture level, temperature or
Speaker 1: moisture indicator in the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go that you buy in the big city.
Speaker 1: But you're right. You look at the ends of the
Speaker 1: wood too, and you'll see that it's cracked and split.
Speaker 1: It's usually dark like gray. It just looked, it looks aged.
Speaker 1: But the dead giveaway is the hollow thud sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna I didn't know that, so I'm gonna
Speaker 2: try that.
Speaker 1: The hollow thud or I'm sorry, the hollow sound, not
Speaker 1: the thud. Right, Yeah, that's what you're looking for. So
Speaker 1: you take your fire, or you take your wood, you
Speaker 1: put it on your fire grate. Although so this is
Speaker 1: a component of the fireplace, it's not an actual part
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The fire grade is like this iron stand. It's a
Speaker 1: great There's really no other way to describe it, although
Speaker 1: some fire officionados suggest that you should use what are
Speaker 1: called and irons. Yeah, I like grates, which are well
Speaker 1: an and iron is basically a great missing the great
Speaker 1: part in the middle. It's basically these two stands, a
Speaker 1: pair of stands that go in the fireplace, and it
Speaker 1: holds the logs.
Speaker 2: Aloft, yes, until they burn through.
Speaker 1: The grate does the same thing, except it keeps burning
Speaker 1: like embers on the grid. A little more. The reason
Speaker 1: why people are like and irons are great is because,
Speaker 1: however you have it a great or an and iron.
Speaker 1: You want to keep a bed of embers going, yeah,
Speaker 1: because that is going to eventually become hot enough that
Speaker 1: you could throw anything on there and it'll start to
Speaker 1: catch fire.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: So when you take your split logs, you put them
Speaker 1: on your grate or your and irons, put a little
Speaker 1: kindling beneath them, which is like thinner wood that will
Speaker 1: catch fire easily. Light it on fire. Oh I forgot first,
Speaker 1: you want to pour about half a liter of kerosene
Speaker 1: on this noke sure that it starts.
Speaker 2: You do not?
Speaker 1: Oh did I misspeak?
Speaker 2: That is just a joke. Kids. You don't ever want
Speaker 2: to use any sort of lighter fluid, first of glass,
Speaker 2: or anything like that to start an indoor fire.
Speaker 1: Kids, you should not be starting a fire in the
Speaker 1: first place, so stop right now. Yes, this is for
Speaker 1: grown ups, that's right. But you do want to use
Speaker 1: something like, I don't know, newspaper, just a piece of
Speaker 1: paper to light the kindling. But no, you don't want
Speaker 1: to use any sort of accelerant.
Speaker 2: Well, people don't get newspapers anymore, so you can just
Speaker 2: light your kindle or your iPad right, throw that in there.
Speaker 1: Sure, instead it'll ill start, but that kindeling is gonna catch,
Speaker 1: and if your wood is seasoned, it'll catch too. And
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden you got a fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you may want to adjust that damper a little
Speaker 2: bit just to keep your air flowed how you want
Speaker 2: it right.
Speaker 1: And then and again when you are when you're when
Speaker 1: you have a fire going, one of the two main
Speaker 1: things you're trying to do in addition to not burn
Speaker 1: down your house is to keep the smoke from coming
Speaker 1: back in the room. And sometimes that's easier said than done,
Speaker 1: because every house has something called a neutral pressure plane. Okay,
Speaker 1: So above the neutral pressure plane, the air is pressurized,
Speaker 1: so it wants to push air out, and below it
Speaker 1: air is the The pressure inside the house is lower,
Speaker 1: so air wants to be sucked in. So as long
Speaker 1: as you're your fireplace, your chimney above that neutral pressure plane,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be okay, the air is gonna want to
Speaker 1: go in. If it so happens that the air around
Speaker 1: your fireplace is a higher pressure, then the air is
Speaker 1: actually going to be pushed down the chimney, into the
Speaker 1: firebox and out into the room, which is no good.
Speaker 1: But You can solve it pretty easily by just opening
Speaker 1: a window and allowing air to come in or go out.
Speaker 2: Depending or have eight ninety year old windows.
Speaker 1: Right where you don't have to worry about it at
Speaker 1: all to do any because the air just flows through freely.
Speaker 2: So if you want to you know, we're talking about
Speaker 2: how inefficient they are. If you want to improve that efficiency,
Speaker 2: there are a couple of cool things you can do.
Speaker 2: One is called a tubular grate, and that is exactly
Speaker 2: what you think it is. Instead of just a great
Speaker 2: made of solid iron at the bottom, it is a
Speaker 2: bit of a cage. It looks like sort of like
Speaker 2: the motorcycle exhaust pipes and things, so you know, it's
Speaker 2: just there tubular. So it's going to draw in the
Speaker 2: cool air in the bottom of the tubes, and then
Speaker 2: it's going to rise and then loop back around and
Speaker 2: shoot out the top of the tubes into your room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it should work in theory, but remember if
Speaker 1: your fireplace is working properly, it's sucking air from the
Speaker 1: room into the fire to fuel it and then shooting
Speaker 1: it out the chimney. So this air that's being warmed
Speaker 1: could be sucked right back into the fire, that's right.
Speaker 1: But if you have it so that the tubular grate
Speaker 1: is enclosed by some doors, but the ends of the
Speaker 1: grate can go out into the room, Bam, you're set.
Speaker 2: Oh is that a thing? Yeah, I haven't seen that.
Speaker 2: There's another thing called a well, this is what when
Speaker 2: Emily's parents have moved to Georgia now, but when they
Speaker 2: lived in Ohio, they had one of these recirculators that
Speaker 2: was a fan. Basically, you would turn on a switch
Speaker 2: and it would literally blow heat from kind of underneath
Speaker 2: the grate back out into the room. And it worked
Speaker 2: really well, but it always seemed to blow a little
Speaker 2: stink out with it. Stink, you know, fire stink.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean you couldn't see smoke pouring out of it
Speaker 2: or anything, but.
Speaker 1: It was still affecting your respiratory.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it didn't affect me so much, but
Speaker 2: I could tell what it was happening. Like every recirculator
Speaker 2: I've ever seen or been around has kind of had
Speaker 2: the same deal. To me. Yeah, whether it's gas only
Speaker 2: or whatever, it always just seems to have this. But
Speaker 2: you know, I'm very sensitive to odors anyway, so maybe
Speaker 2: that has something to do with that, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm a super smeller, all right, a super smeller.
Speaker 1: What do you smell right now?
Speaker 2: I smell nol like three three rooms over.
Speaker 1: Wow, you are a super smeller because we are hermetically
Speaker 1: sealed in here.
Speaker 2: Not true. And then those glass doors you talked about,
Speaker 2: it's another way to increase efficiency. But you're also going
Speaker 2: to literally just cut down on the heat that gets
Speaker 2: into the room as much as fifty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not a lot that you can do to
Speaker 1: have a dramatic impact on the efficiency of the fire.
Speaker 1: For the most part, it's going to lose more heat
Speaker 1: than it puts out. You just want to hope that
Speaker 1: you're you can warm your the room you're in right
Speaker 1: the fire enough so that you don't mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or if you're just after the esthetic, then yeah,
Speaker 2: good for you.
Speaker 1: You mean. And I lived in a place where we
Speaker 1: had a fireplace for a couple of years.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: We were hooked on it, yeah, hooked on its yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, and we could get that that room
Speaker 1: like hot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, toasty.
Speaker 1: If you keep a fire going long enough, that's the key. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just have to waste more woid than you can imagine.
Speaker 2: All right, well we'll take another little quickie break here
Speaker 2: and we'll come back and talk about some more options
Speaker 2: and a very depressing history of child labor. All right, Josh,
Speaker 2: we've been talking about wood a lot, because it's clearly
Speaker 2: the superior fireplace.
Speaker 1: Seriously, but you.
Speaker 2: Can you can get the old gas fake log fireplace
Speaker 2: these days. My mom made the switch. It's fake logs
Speaker 2: pretty good these days.
Speaker 1: So wait a minute, Wait a minute. She had a
Speaker 1: wood burning fireplace and had a gas insert put in.
Speaker 2: Yes, wow, okay, So because she had a like I
Speaker 2: had growing up to the gas starter, so you would
Speaker 2: light the gas, throw the wood on, get it going,
Speaker 2: turn the gas off, gotcha. So she just retrofitted it.
Speaker 2: Actually I did it my brother, into full gas with
Speaker 2: the fake logs. That they look good these days. You know,
Speaker 2: you can arrange them in yourself in a way that
Speaker 2: looks aesthetically pleasing.
Speaker 1: Right, they don't come in that mound that's shaped to
Speaker 1: look like three logs laying on top of each other.
Speaker 2: No, it's come a long way, I'll say that.
Speaker 1: Don't They have beds of embers now too, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: all that they catch the little flickery glow yep, what
Speaker 1: is it.
Speaker 2: They've come a long way with trying to simulate that.
Speaker 1: Look, pika, pika, pika.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: It's like the Japanese word for that, like the little
Speaker 1: tinkling glow. I don't know I'm saying it wrong, but
Speaker 1: it's a throwback. I said it wrong on some other
Speaker 1: episode years back.
Speaker 2: Oh you talking about pretty pretty?
Speaker 1: No, yeah, but that's something different. Yeah, we'll have to
Speaker 1: go back and find it. They We'll just say this
Speaker 1: whole part out.
Speaker 2: So the gas logs covering the gas vent, you're going
Speaker 2: to burn that fire behind glass, it's going to give
Speaker 2: off radiant and convected heat. You're probably gonna have a air
Speaker 2: not recycler what I call it exchanger air exchanger. They
Speaker 2: are working as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of the reasons it's so much more
Speaker 1: efficient is because it doesn't require any air from inside
Speaker 1: your room. Yeah, it draws air through a pipe from
Speaker 1: the outdoors because it requires much less, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's not going to take any of that warmed air
Speaker 1: that it's warming for itself to burn. It's just going
Speaker 1: to say you keep it. I'm gas. I'm super efficient.
Speaker 1: I love you in ways that wood could never imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: Wood is dirty and bumbling, And why do you love
Speaker 1: wood so much more than me? I'm gas.
Speaker 2: So if you're getting a new house, you're probably gonna
Speaker 2: have a gas fireplace. If you're getting a fireplace added
Speaker 2: to a home, it's probably going to be a gas fireplace.
Speaker 2: Sure that's the direction they're steering you these days. Yeah,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I would guess because gas.
Speaker 1: I would guess you're you're going to pay significantly more
Speaker 1: for a wood burning fireplace to be built into your
Speaker 1: new house than a gas one. You think, yeah, probably
Speaker 1: just because so I'll bet there's relatively few, especially down
Speaker 1: below the Mason Dixon line, relatively few builders who know
Speaker 1: how to put in a wood burning fireplace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to find a builder from nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: Three, basically. Yeah, and he's gonna want to give you
Speaker 1: one of those orange modern jobs that you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is cool, but no, I want like the real thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, this is real. So they're very efficient
Speaker 2: to these gas fireplaces. Sure, the gas burns cleanly. They
Speaker 2: even have them that are event free. But people also say,
Speaker 2: you know, what if your house is not like Chucks,
Speaker 2: and it is actually pretty tight call it and sealed up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: then they can actually deplete oxygen or moisture can build up.
Speaker 2: So the jury's still out somewhat on these gas fires.
Speaker 1: I say the jury is in. Yeah, and I'm the jury,
Speaker 1: and I say, event free fireplace is a stupid idea.
Speaker 1: It's pumping carbon dioxide into your house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a that's never good. You would think, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can get an ethanol fireplace.
Speaker 1: This one seems like Okay, you've seen them before, right,
Speaker 1: like if you go to a Marriotte courtyard or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, they'll have like the chair situated around
Speaker 1: a table with a fireplace in the middle of the table.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, it's nuts. Yeah, it's just blurting ethanol.
Speaker 2: The flame is actually cold.
Speaker 1: It's basically like right, it's basically like a sterno fireplace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know if you want to light your fon due
Speaker 1: pod or something like that from beneath. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: same thing, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, virtually, and then you can get the woe unto
Speaker 2: you if you opt for the electric fireplace.
Speaker 1: Well, there's some now where you can get like an
Speaker 1: entertainment center. Yeah, with like a TV and then beneath
Speaker 1: it a fake electric fireplace. Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 2: So an electric fireplace has no fire. It is a
Speaker 2: heater and it you know, it simulates the look of
Speaker 2: a fire if you're four years old in squinting, if
Speaker 2: you're a squinty four year old, right, but you know,
Speaker 2: we don't want to yuck someone's youm So if that's
Speaker 2: your bag, then more power to you. It's just not
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: I have to take issue though with this article. It
Speaker 1: says that it's emission free. It's a mission free on
Speaker 1: the user end, right, still electricity, which means it's producing
Speaker 1: emissions at the cold fire power plant that's producing that electricity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is.
Speaker 1: Don't be fooled if you're like, oh, it's a mission.
Speaker 2: Free Nope, no, oh we're gonna yuck that yum. Safety wise,
Speaker 2: gotta watch out for those sparks. If you've got carpet
Speaker 2: around or hardwoods, I reckon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, keep your bag of oily rags away from the fireplace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a big one.
Speaker 2: Don't put you might want to fire extinguisher, but don't
Speaker 2: put it in the fireplace, right itself.
Speaker 1: Carbon monoxide investing in a carbon monoxide detector is worthwhile.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be like a smart carbon monoxide detector,
Speaker 1: although get one of those if you want. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: if you're using a wood burning fireplace, at the very
Speaker 1: least get yourself a cheap but decent carbon monoxide detector. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get smoke Detector's not quite enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you have to have those now. Isn't
Speaker 2: that the new code?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't read the zoning codes in
Speaker 1: a while. Building codes.
Speaker 2: You should take a look. This is one of those
Speaker 2: kind of once a year things. If you know what
Speaker 2: you're doing, you can at least get a flashlight and
Speaker 2: kind of look everything over if there's anything obvious, like
Speaker 2: if your flute cap is no longer on your chimney
Speaker 2: hurricane hit. Yeah, if they're big cracks or anything.
Speaker 1: So what's wrong with yours? Cracks? Like your house would
Speaker 1: catch on fire.
Speaker 2: All I know is the guy did a lot of like.
Speaker 1: Maybe he just wasn't feeling it that day.
Speaker 2: No, you didn't put on a good show. He came
Speaker 2: over because he is in Their specialty is old houses
Speaker 2: and old fireplaces. So I thought this guy's going to
Speaker 2: be like, oh great, this is what I do. He
Speaker 2: acted like he didn't want to do the job right,
Speaker 2: But that's not a lot of work. Man. You're gonna
Speaker 2: have to fix your chimney on the inside and it's
Speaker 2: cracked here. And he got this, and he got that.
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, it's that's what you advertised. You
Speaker 2: fix old situations.
Speaker 1: Right, have you? You should bring somebody else out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't like that guy. Yeah, you're gonna bring
Speaker 2: out someone with some little moxie.
Speaker 1: But you do. Even if you think that your fireplace
Speaker 1: is doing great, it pays to pay somebody to come
Speaker 1: out and look at it inside.
Speaker 2: Like, is it too much to ask for a little
Speaker 2: energy from your fireplace guy, a little wow factor?
Speaker 1: Maybe?
Speaker 2: Yes, you're correct. You do need a pro every now
Speaker 2: and then to come out there. Called chimney sweeps. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and kreosot is something if you look up creoso cr
Speaker 2: e soote online, it sort of looks like black lava
Speaker 2: built up on the inside of your chimney.
Speaker 1: Right and it itself could catch fire. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: have a chimney fire in which case, and it sounds
Speaker 1: a little counterintuitive, like, well, there's fire going through it
Speaker 1: all the time. Fire going through it is much different
Speaker 1: from fire, like your chimney being on fire itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: And if your chimney's on fire, your house can catch
Speaker 1: fire fairly easy, especially if you have cracks in there,
Speaker 1: because it goes and all of a sudden some pressure
Speaker 1: treated two by four, where it's like, oh.
Speaker 2: You don't want to burn that pressure treated to by
Speaker 2: four by the way, as would Yeah. I don't think
Speaker 2: we mentioned that. One thing you can burn though, which
Speaker 2: I wouldn't use. But it's a called a chimney sweep
Speaker 2: log or a creosote log, and it's just a special log.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like a dura flame. It's a prefab log,
Speaker 2: it's a chemical log, but it's supposed to break down
Speaker 2: that creosote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just I don't know.
Speaker 2: Something about that made me my radar went off like
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's the best way to do things. Yeah,
Speaker 2: don't have any proof, but I hear chemical log that
Speaker 2: knocks that creosote loose, and it just didn't sound like
Speaker 2: the smart approach.
Speaker 1: Well, even the the Chimney Safety Institute of America says no, no, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: those things kind of work, but you want like actual
Speaker 1: scrubbing of the interior of your chimney, yes, which is
Speaker 1: what chimney sweeps did.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, if you want you want moxie in your chimney sweep,
Speaker 1: you go to somebody's parents and say, I want to
Speaker 1: buy your four year old boy and make my chimney
Speaker 1: sweep slave.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean earlier we teased and promised the child
Speaker 2: labor horror show. And that's pretty much what things were
Speaker 2: like in jolly old England after sixteen sixty six, second September, sorry,
Speaker 2: fifth September technically. Yeah, the Great Fire of London changed
Speaker 2: a lot of things, and one of them was chimneys
Speaker 2: were a little bit narrow and they had a lot
Speaker 2: more rules as far as how clean you had to
Speaker 2: keep them. And so, like you said, what you would
Speaker 2: do is you would can't put an adult up there. No,
Speaker 2: not really, but you can't put a five year old
Speaker 2: boy or four.
Speaker 1: I think is the youngest I saw them doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you would literally buy child from a poor person, right,
Speaker 2: stick this boy up in there. They were your quote
Speaker 2: unquote apprentice, which basically was child.
Speaker 1: Slave, unpaid child labor zero dollars right, and actually chimney
Speaker 1: sweeping at the time, So after the Great Fire of
Speaker 1: London in sixteen sixty six. I believe it was mandated
Speaker 1: by the Queen or Parliament or somebody that everybody needed
Speaker 1: their chimneys like kept up with. So chimney sweeps became
Speaker 1: a thing, but they actually swept chimneys free. It was
Speaker 1: a free service. The way that chimney sweeps made their
Speaker 1: money was from the soot that they gathered. They would
Speaker 1: sell it as fertilizer.
Speaker 2: Oh authorugh, you're gonna say sponsorships, Like they would show
Speaker 2: up like their Chevy Tahoe dracket or something.
Speaker 1: It is like nothing gets your chimney clean, like son
Speaker 1: of a gun by stp.
Speaker 2: So they would stick these kids in there. Sometimes they
Speaker 2: would literally light a fire under their butt to make
Speaker 2: them work faster. The kids would shimmy and distort their
Speaker 2: body to shimmy in this little eighteen inch wide chimney
Speaker 2: and ship loose this creosote and soot that would then
Speaker 2: because they're working above their head, would fall all over them.
Speaker 2: They would take a bath once a week, maybe once
Speaker 2: every month, maybe once every two or three months, depending
Speaker 2: on who you're asking. Yeah, so these children are literally
Speaker 2: not I mean, if they survived this experience at all.
Speaker 2: They're not going to live past middle age.
Speaker 1: Right, So what you just described was a good day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were all sorts of other horrible maladies that could
Speaker 1: come about deformation of their skeletons. Because these kids are
Speaker 1: like four, five, six, eight, ten, twelve years old, they're
Speaker 1: trying to grow, they're still developing, but they're spending like
Speaker 1: hours upon hours every day in these cramped chimneys. So
Speaker 1: they're bones, especially the bones in their ankles and knees,
Speaker 1: tended to grow in a deformed way.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: There's something the first industrial length cancer ever identified is
Speaker 1: called chimney sweeps cancer.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: People call it scrotal carcinoma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where the.
Speaker 1: Scrotum was irritated by soot and it would produce warts,
Speaker 1: and these warts, if they went untreated, would turn into
Speaker 1: a carcinoma, which eventually if it was if it wasn't
Speaker 1: cut out, would the tumor would grow into the testes
Speaker 1: and then into the abdomen. And it was a very
Speaker 1: very painful way to die. Kids like twelve years of
Speaker 1: age were dying of scrotal cancer from this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get up pre dawn, you work till the nighttime. Hours,
Speaker 2: three hundred and sixty four days a year. The one
Speaker 2: day that these kids would get off was May Day,
Speaker 2: International Labor Day. They would sleep then. You know we
Speaker 2: said they collected that ash and soot and sold it.
Speaker 2: They would store all the stuff in sacks and the
Speaker 2: kids would then sleep in those rooms, still ingesting all
Speaker 2: this stuff in the air, and quite often they would
Speaker 2: literally get stuck and die in these chimneys.
Speaker 1: Here here's the part where I started to hyperventilate just
Speaker 1: thinking about this.
Speaker 2: From claustrophobia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's like this thing called positional asphyxia. There's actually
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting Vice article called like a Brief History
Speaker 1: of people getting stuck in chimneys, and they actually illustrate
Speaker 1: how positional asphyxia happens using the Grinch. As he's going
Speaker 1: down the chimney, his feet start to get above his
Speaker 1: head and all of a sudden he's stuck. You can't
Speaker 1: get out of that position. This would happen to real
Speaker 1: live English boys and American too, apparently, who would get
Speaker 1: stuck in the chimneys that they were cleaning out and
Speaker 1: would die there because they would asphixiate their abdomen couldn't
Speaker 1: take in breaths any longer.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It happened a lot, and actually, finally it happened enough
Speaker 1: times that Parliament started to get involved. They first got
Speaker 1: involved in seventeen eighty eight with the Chimney Sweeps Act
Speaker 1: and they said, you know what, this is crazy. You
Speaker 1: guys are buying four year old kid. You can't do that.
Speaker 1: Chimney sweeps can be no younger than eight.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was their first stab at reform, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and obviously this is child labor was a lot
Speaker 2: different back then as far as how we thought about
Speaker 2: when kids should work.
Speaker 1: Right, but or the idea of childhood hadn't even come
Speaker 1: about yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but even so, even for a time where it
Speaker 2: was believed that children should put forth an effort and
Speaker 2: work like four and five year old kids, it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Sure. Right. They also added though, that if you are
Speaker 1: a master of a chimney sweep, you have to make
Speaker 1: sure that they are allowed to go to church on Sundays.
Speaker 1: That was the other part of the seventeen eighty eight Act. Right.
Speaker 1: Then in the eighteen forty Act they up the age
Speaker 1: to twenty one, which was significant, but apparently it wasn't
Speaker 1: really enforced until eighteen seventy five when this one kid
Speaker 1: died and he was basically the straw that broke the
Speaker 1: camel's back for the public.
Speaker 2: Yeah. His name was George Brewster, and he worked for
Speaker 2: a gentleman by the name of William Weyer. And I
Speaker 2: say gentlemen, what I mean is a scumbag. And he
Speaker 2: was cleaning a hospital, chimney Fullborn Hospital, and he got
Speaker 2: stuck and the great efforts were made to rescue him.
Speaker 2: They actually pulled down a wall to try and get
Speaker 2: to him. He died and Wires actually found guilty of manslaughter.
Speaker 2: And his death was really a big awareness jolt for everybody,
Speaker 2: and it became part of the campaign and that was
Speaker 2: pretty much the end of using kids. You know. He
Speaker 2: was apparently the last child to die in a chimney
Speaker 2: in England.
Speaker 1: In England, I guess in the US they kept using
Speaker 1: him for a while.
Speaker 2: So shameful really.
Speaker 1: Now, if you see a chimney sweep tell a four
Speaker 1: year old to go up in the chimney, you called
Speaker 1: police because that is illegal these days, no matter where
Speaker 1: you live. Yeah, okay, let's all agree to that.
Speaker 2: Agreed.
Speaker 1: You got anything else? No fireplaces? Just in time for
Speaker 1: the fall.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's in November here in Atlanta and in
Speaker 2: the mid eighties, so right, ready to get that fireplace going?
Speaker 1: That's right. If you want to know more about fireplaces,
Speaker 1: including how to light and fire, you can go find
Speaker 1: that out by typing fireplace in the search bart house
Speaker 1: stuff forks. And since I said search bar, it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail, I'm gonna call.
Speaker 2: This grammar Police. Hey, guys, regular listener for quite some time,
Speaker 2: I finally become angered or inspired enough to write in
Speaker 2: about something. I use the sandwich technique proposed by Chuck recently,
Speaker 2: By the way, and I was listening to an older
Speaker 2: episode Does a Body Replace Itself? In You guys were
Speaker 2: talking about emails from the Grammar Police. Grammar only has
Speaker 2: strict rules to those who decided that it needed strict rules.
Speaker 2: As a society, we have a rather dramatic ebb and
Speaker 2: flow of grammar rules. There's no one entity decide to
Speaker 2: decide upon the rules, and therefore there's no real right
Speaker 2: or wrong. You can almost consider it like a fashion
Speaker 2: in a way. We can all generally agree that double
Speaker 2: negatives are wrong, much like we can all agree that
Speaker 2: socks and sandals are wrong. And yet some will still
Speaker 2: use them or wear them without a problem. As long
Speaker 2: as we can understand each other and the quote incorrect
Speaker 2: end quote. Grammar does not take away from the meaning
Speaker 2: of your words, and it should not matter. There are
Speaker 2: different times in which proper grammar is necessary and scrutinized,
Speaker 2: and then there are times when it frankly does not matter.
Speaker 2: There is a huge debate in the grammar world, the
Speaker 2: few but mighty, she points out, about whether we should
Speaker 2: be prescriptivists or descriptivists when it comes to the rules
Speaker 2: of grammar. It's a constantly evolving topic and arguably grammar
Speaker 2: is a constantly evolving entity. Just thought i'd share my
Speaker 2: thoughts in hopes that you wouldn't get down on yourselves
Speaker 2: from the grammar police. And yes, feel free to pick
Speaker 2: apart my email for grammar errors. Nice happy face. That
Speaker 2: is from Colleen Zaker, an English teacher and grammar enthusiasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Colleen. We appreciate that big time. We
Speaker 1: always love to hear support from people who are like,
Speaker 1: don't listen to that. Yeah, yeah, if you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch of this, like Colleen did, is it
Speaker 1: Colleen sure? Who cares? Actually I don't know goes either way.
Speaker 2: Whatever, yeah, she said, you can call me whatever.
Speaker 1: Sure. If you want to get in touch of this,
Speaker 1: like Cauliflower did, you can tweet to us at s
Speaker 1: y sk podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email to stuff Podcasts at houstuffforks dot com and has
Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the web, stuff
Speaker 1: youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 2: You Know. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,