I have owned a grate wall of fire and fireback for about two months now, and I am pretty well pleased with my purchase. The fire is easy to light ( although I do cheat and use a gas firestarter), I have not had any problems with smoking,and it burns the wood thoroughly, leaving only a relatively fine ash. The vertical wood-stack makes for a very aesthetically pleasing fire, and although it is difficult to make a quantitative assessment, it does seem to generate more heat than a standard wood-burning fireplace, but certainly not in the same league with a wood stove. On a recent night with outside temperatures in the low 20's, with pretty strong winds, burning seasoned oak, the "grate wall" raised the temperature of a rather large room with high (20' +) ceilings by 3 degrees. This may seem rather insignificant, but to me, 70 degrees is a whole lot more comfortable than 67.
In summary, if you are looking for maximum heat output from a wood-fire, I would recommend looking elsewhere, but if you want the aesthetics of a wood fire, with some improvement in efficiency ,which is what our goal was, the grate wall is not a bad choice
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
I did a lot of research on this product before purchasing and wondered if it would solve our smoke in the house problem with our fireplace. We are 200% happy with this product. We were able to create a beautiful fire on the first try. I was concerned that a "vertical fire" would take away from the ambiance but just the opposite. We had a smoke problem with our fireplace. We replaced the flue, had it cleaned but still had a problem on occasion so we purchased the product hoping it would work as promised. We have had five fires now and NO SMOKE and today we have 40 mile an hour winds and we have a perfect fire going with no blow back into the house. It has worked exactly as promised, was very simple to stack the wood as instructed, the fire starts quickly and burns very efficiently. We did not have the money this year to put in a wood burning stove. With this grate we have been able to keep our large family room very comfortable even with the heat turned down significantly. I highly recommend this product to anyone with a fireplace that throws smoke back into their home or looking to have a grate that really will help warm your home. And I love the way the fire looks and the way the ambers glow....much better than any other grate we have EVER had.
Best Deals for M-Series Grate Wall of Fire - 21"W x 15"H
This is a fantastic idea! How many times have you felt an immediate difference in the amount of heat coming from your fireplace when you move a log away from the front of the fire to expose the coals? And if you have experience building fires, you know that adding logs to the perimeter of a fire helps reflect heat back into the combustion region and is sometimes helpful to get a sluggish fire going. Unfortunately, the heat output drops immediately when the radiation path is blocked by the log. This concept addresses both those issues and more. The glowing embers are always at the bottom of a fire, and with this concept, they do radiate heat into the room. The back wall of the fireplace (and the logs on the top) reflect heat back into the combustion region, so the fire burns strongly with minimal futzing. Something else the inventors don't even mention on their website (where these products are less expensive) is that adding logs to the top of the fire also pre-heats the logs and helps to drive moisture out. Wonderful system. I wish the products weren't so expensive, though. Especially the Reflective Fire-Back. Their 1" thick 15" x 21" reflective fire-back is $407 on their web-site, while a piece of steel 12" by 24" by 1" thick from Metals Depot (dot com) is only $147 (shipping is free). Difficult to understand the need for a 2.5x markup for a flat piece of steel. The actual markup is probably higher, as they almost certainly get the steel wholesale or even as scrap. this is the only reason this product gets 4 stars instead of 5. Fortunately, I did not need to worry about the reflective fire-back.
If you have any doubts about whether or not this product will make a big enough difference to justify the expense, you may be able to do what I did. I *almost* purchased the T5 Grate Wall of Fire fire grate and the 3/8" reflective back plate ($354 'value'). I just couldn't justify the expense. Instead I walked away from the computer, went to the kitchen and made a cup of coffee. When I came back into the room I went to the fireplace, tipped my fire grate up (fire and all using welding gloves, of course) and pushed it up tight against the back wall. Then I threw half a dozen small pieces of wood on top of the coals. The heat output was immediately obvious. My normal fire grate is similar to the Panacea Products Corp Blk Cast Iron Grate 15430, only it is 24" long. I think you can get something like it at Lowe's for about $20. As I said, I was fortunate that I do not need to worry about the brick and mortar of my fireplace. Your mileage may vary, of course, and you should be very careful if you don't have good fire-brick or if your chimney is damaged. You could probably stack fire-brick along the back wall or purchase a piece of steel from an online metals supplier. A 12" x 24" piece of steel 3/8" thick will cost about $45. (vice $200). The legs on my grate are tapered out, so with the grate firmly up against the back wall there is no danger of the grate tipping forward. You might want to stack up a couple pieces of fire brick (or even just pavers) under the upper legs if there is any chance of your grate tipping back.
As I said, this is a great idea. If the grate and the reflective back was about half the price, I would almost certainly have bought one.
Honest reviews on M-Series Grate Wall of Fire - 21"W x 15"H
Bought this and the fireback to fix an occasionally smoking fireplace. I am really pleased with how it works.
Fixed the smoking problem, except for one time when the fire (flame) went out while we were eating (not watching the fire). There were not many coals at this point and the smoke from the log went into the room. I assume not enough heat was being generated to keep sufficient flow up the chimney. Other than this one time it has performed well.
The logs burn well and the flame is visually pleasing and even.
Tending the fire is easier and more successful than with a regular grate.
After a while there is a stack of coals 6" or 7" high against the back of the fire place. This insures that new logs burn well plus insures that everything is burned completely. No unburned bits the next morning.
Considering the stack of coals, I think that the seperately ordered fireback is an essential companion for the grate to prevent damage to the back of the fireplace.
I cannot say that it heats better or worse than a regular grate. The stack of coals does radiate heat into the room.
Grate Wall of Fire has a nice and informative web site.
