Where are all the fireplaces? Outdoor Fireplace Design Discuss Where are all the fireplaces? in the Outdoor Kitchens and Living Rooms forums; I'm really surprised that there aren't more fireplaces. It seems like a fairly easy progression from WFO to fireplace.. there ...

[blacknoir]

I'm really surprised that there aren't more fireplaces. It seems like a fairly easy progression from WFO to fireplace.. there are so many similarities after all.

I'm debating on either doing my WFO first and then my fireplace or attempting them both at the same time. The only problem I see is designing the fireplace. For those of you that have completed a WFO do you think doing a fireplace after would be easier? Should I wait and get some experience with a WFO first?

-Shay

[dmun]

I built a fireplace: you can see it in my build, linked below. I'm a great believer in the Rumford style of fireplace, tall, shallow, designed for vertical fires and radiant heat.

Forno Bravo sells a fireplace unit

You should also look at the Rumford.com site:

They talk frankly about the tendency for outdoor fireplaces to smoke, since they don't have the indoor/outdoor temperature differential that aids draft in indoor fireplaces. Read this carefully before planning your project.

[blacknoir]

I was thinking of doing a Rumford actually. Can I ask what you ended up going with for dimensions? I'm thinking of doing the 36" which should end up being a minimum of 5' wide and 1'10" deep.

[dmun]

I don't have time to dig up the drawings now, but you can get a pretty good estimate of the size by counting the 4 x 8 firebricks in this photo:

from this (dmun's 36" geodesic oven) page where there are a lot more photos, and a dimensioned drawing of the throat.

[blacknoir]

That works, thanks.

[Jonathontd]

My first oven had a fireplace and we found out that we rarely used it. We do live in the Pacific Northwest, so that is a consideration. Don't expect any fireplace to throw out heat for much distance.

Jonathon

[AlexaSM]

Hi.
I want to construct outdoor fireplace. Prompt, what minimal distance should be from houses up to fireplace?

[dmun]

There are codes for distance from the fireplace opening to anything combustible (I think it's twelve inches) and code that says that the opening of the chimney needs to be two feet away from anything within ten feet. Check with your building department if in doubt.

[rtnaw]

Building a rumford is great project. After my brother and I completed the pizza oven, we started work on rebuilding an old ineffective and extremely smoky fireplace. The old fireplace smoked so much that we could no longer use it. My Dad converted it to natural gas about 15 years ago.
After finding this site, reading Dmuns posts on his rumford build and checking out the rumford site we decided to rip the old fireplace apart and fit it with a new rumford. So, while the snow covered the pizza oven, we started constrution on the rumford. The build of the actual fireplace was easy, the hard part was the destruction of the old unit (cleaning all of the masonary dust was a pain). Used a sawzall to cut the bricks out and built a plastic enclosure to minimize the dust. We put a high output squirrel cage blower facing up the chimney to eject as much of the dust as we could when we were cutting the brickwork out.

[dmun]

You built your own curved throat like I did? That's ambitious! Looking good!

We had a question about this this week: Is there a diamond sawzall blade?