Our Fireplace - Pen Y Llechwedd - The Builder's Wife

One of the first things we noticed that our home lacked was a fireplace. I still cannot fathom how the original family keep warm in our old Queenslander. Queenslanders are notoriously cold and drafty and a fireplace can do so to not only heat a room but make it feel warm. One of the first jobs for The Builder, was to find a way to create a space in our living room to house a fire. We had had a combustion fire in our last home, and I must admit I wasn’t a fan of the mess, so the next option was a gas fire. All the warmth and ambience without the fuss.

To create the space to house the fireplace, we needed to build out from the wall a space big enough to hold the fireplace and the flue, but we also had to make it look like it was a part of the home. In the first year, we quickly blew our budget on everything but out gas fire, but as we had the space built, were looking for a compromise to keep the feel in the room.

A trip to Early Settler found us the mantle and the insert, exactly as it is now. On sale for half price, we picked up the entire unit for only $450. Happily it sat for another 12 months with pine cones in the grate. During this time, we were using our reverse cycle heaters to keep us warm with little fuss. There is nothing quite like walking in the door of a cold house and flicking a switch to heat the room in 30 minutes or so. Long gone were the days of chopping wood.

It was around this time last year, we began thinking again about a gas fireplace. We priced a few and were looking at $6k without installation. This was a big cost for us to justify, so again we let it slip, after all the air conditioning were doing a great job on their own. A Saturday morning shopping adventure to the Restoration Station gave us the best solution we could have hoped for.

Walking into the showroom on a cold and rainy morning we were greeted by several roaring fires, none of which had a fire guard around them. This immediately peaked my interest, and on further inspection we found this unique system using a reservoir of mentholated spirits to create a clean cool fire. It gave all the ambience without the smell, or the bother of a timber fire, or the expense of the gas fire and is perfect for our kind of use.

This was an easy install into what we had already purchased, all done within an hour or two on a Saturday morning and happily burning by lunch time. We now have an open fire feel, with all the ambience and no fuss. We still use or air conditioners to keep us warm on those really cold days and nights, and while the running costs are reasonable, it still outweighs the expense of the gas fire for us.