Home Improvement Solution

Archive for February, 2009

A fireplace is a structure within conventional homes that provides heat and serves as an element of architectural style, as they are usually built into walls. In many homes, older and newer, the fireplace is a showcase for social gatherings.

Although most fireplaces are similarly constructed and share common features, the basic fireplace is comprised of a central foundation of cement, along with a hearth, a firebox and unique facing, ash dump and cleanout doors, a lintel and lintel bar, a breast, a damper, a smoke chamber, a throat, a flue, a chimney chase, a crown, a cap or shroud, and a spark arrestor. The structure of the fireplace was incorporated in the designs of homes for decades, even centuries. Today, however, since the fireplace has been replaced by central heating, the presence of fireplaces, where they still exist, seems to be to carry on tradition.
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