Fireplace Grates

Many people often overlook the importance of the fireplace grate. However, it is one of the most valuable parts of your woodburning fireplace that you can have. There are several items we will look at dealing with the grate, from the purpose of how it helps your wood burn better to how to clean them.

Fireplace grates go back a long time when people first realized the importance of having their fires burn stronger and more completely. Fireplace grates are made from several different materials these days and can be anything from a regular steel or cast iron material to a decorative pressed metal grate.

Fireplace grates serve mainly one purpose in your fireplace:  to allow for more complete burning of your wood.  While there are several other benefits to having a fireplace grate, allowing your fire to burn more completely with less intervention from you means you can enjoy the heat and pleasures of a fire more often with less work.

Fireplace grates hold the wood off of the hearth floor.  This allows for the hearth stones or bricks to last longer as they aren't exposed to as extreme temperatures as they would be if the wood was directly on the floor.

By holding the wood off of the floor in your hearth, as the fire begins, it allows air flow to begin circulating from underneath the logs.  This allows for more complete combustion over time of your logs.  Also, this is another reason that as the ashes accumulate underneath the grate, you should remove some of them or push them aside with your poker to allow the airflow to return.

As it was mentioned above, fireplace grates allow for better airflow and therefore better combustion of the wood in your hearth.  Since the wood burns better and there is more airflow, the products of combustion that are flowing up your flue pipe will decrease.

While there is no guarantee that you won't have to clean your flue or chimney (you should at least once a year), having a cleaner and hotter burning fire does decrease the soot and other products that can cause creosote to build up.

One of the problems with wood that causes creosote buildup is the use of green wood that has a higher moisture content.  If the moisture content is higher, that moisture is "boiled" out of the wood when you burn it, thus trapping carbon and other soot particles in it.  When it travels up yoru chimney or flue pipe it begins to cool.  The moisture then condensates or sticks to the walls of the chimney or flue pipe, causing more products to stick.  This creates creosote.