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Advantages of installing artificial logs in your home are numerous. In most cases, by doing so, the simple economics of it is convincing enough. The expense of purchasing wood soon surpasses the price of fireplace gas logs. Often, the price of a single cord of wood will purchase a fair-to middlen set of logs from a discount store. For the cost of three or four cords, depending on size and style, you can enjoy a fireplace set of true Mercedes quality. A buyer's plus is that the manufacturer often offers a life-time guarantee to the purchaser.
Storing the wood is often an indoor problem, if not, precautions are taken at no small expense of time, hard labor and money to keep it dry while stored outside. Also, keep in mind that the deliverer doesn't haul it inside, he just dumps it. It then becomes your chore.
Stacked logs, inside or outside, pose several other problems. Let's consider some of them: To prepare for a fire, the wood is hauled into the house, across the carpet to the hearth -- always leaving tell-tale trail of debris. And who cleans that up? lso, you'll pick up your share of splinters and scratches and usually soil your shirt or coat. Some of you have even tripped and fallen, hitting the ground hard with hurtful effects, unless we were fortunate enough Wherever you live, and depending on the location of the stored wood, some or all of the other distasteful and even sinister threats await you: You may be forgetting about all those sneakies, slitherers, stingers and biters, the crawlaphants living in the stack. Keep in mind spiders -- especially black widows -- cockroaches, mice, lizards, termites, ants and snakes. (The supposedly true story is told of a man living in far-out rural Arizona. He gathered an arm-load of wood and a rattlesnake struck his thumb. Fearing for his life, to avoid the spreading poison, he quickly raised his ax and chopped off his thumb.) A real problem with most of the wood-stack, resident critters is that they multiply and spread rapidly.
You who have enjoyed the homey warmth of a cozy, log fire have seen the damage that always occurs sooner or later from tumbling coals and flying sparks. The carpet, hearth decor, clothes and flesh suffer the consequences. It will always happen. Sparks rising into the air from the chimney are a hazard for your home, your neighbor's home, and many are the times they have caused forest fires or wildfires. If the house burns, the possibility is a greater threat. Each year, house fires started by burning wood in fireplaces reduce thousands of homes to heaps of ashes, taking with them your valuables, irreplaceable treasures, hopes and dreams, and the lives of men, women and children. In comparison, the probability of a fire started by gas logs is extremely minimal. Besides, when you're ready to enjoy burning logs in your fireplace, you simply turn on the gas and light it with a match -- instantly, you have a cozy and beautiful fire. Then, it can be instantly turned off when leaving the room, leaving the house or retiring for the night. No fuel continues to waste when one is gone.
Now, you are too smart, too old, or rightfully too lazy and have funner or more important things to do. So, a beautiful set of fireplace gas logs is for you.
The task of removing accumulated ashes is worry-laden. How the sooty dust flies, soiling you and your clothes, and it inevitably finds the carpet too.
Of great importance, intrinsic to QUALITY fireplace gas logs is their exceptional beauty. Keep in mind that the position and height of licks of flame can be distributed according to your sense of esthetics in a most pleasant, picturesque way. With a set of such sensible home furnishings, the desired amount of fire is arranged in front of the forward log. Higher, well-distributed licks of f lame are positioned out and around and through the center logs. The fire need never be too low, too high or too hot. You can hear the pleasant sound of the lapping flames, and warm to a delightful bed of glowing coals and embers which slope down and forward from the flame-engulfed logs. This furniture, a favorite of interior decorators and builders lends that special, comfortable touch.
Covering areas of the United States are vast underground oil reservoirs, which in addition to supplying oil, produce unimaginable cubic yards of natural gas. In many areas of the country it is by far the least expensive fuel available to millions of home owners. Within the fireplace, the use of natural gas becomes a conservator of our natural forested land, a protector of the environment. It would be interesting to know the extensive number of acres of timber that are destroyed annually by forest fires caused in some way by fireplaces. Natural gas used appropriately preserves the ecosystem of our planet by diminishing the unnecessary destruction of forest lands and wildlife. Rather than going up in smoke and ashes one way or another, the aged giants of pristine forests are preserved in areas set aside as wilderness, national parks and national monuments for succeeding generations to continually enjoy. Less smoke and harmful atmospheric gases torment the space around us. Choking lungs and stinging our eyes, the smog and smoke hanging over our world, dimming the horizons becomes a lesser problem.
In conclusion we must considered: the negative environmental impact; personal and national monetary cost; looming tragedy; labor and cost-saving economics -- and the enjoyment of instant, esthetic, interior decor. For millions of fireplace owners, especially those living in urban, suburban and wood-burning restricted areas, a superb set of fireplace gas logs is the logical answer.
Considering everything, they
are hard to beat.
Artificial logs for fireplaces have been around for a long time. There are two basic kinds: the vented and the unvented (vent-less). The "unvented" do not need to be placed in a fireplace. It is a true heater, unlike the "vented" log set which is designed to burn only in real fireplaces with the flue open. Moreover, the unvented are outlawed in many areas because of carbon monoxide fumes and oxygen depletion dangers. There are two types of vented fireplace gas logs: One, nearly obsolete, is a fired, ceramic, clay shaped into the semblance of a log complete with knots and with a scratched-in imitation of bark.
The second type is made from special molds. These can defy detection as artificial. A liquid latex or a synthetic substitute is applied in layers to an actual log. After the coating cures through drying, the coating is stripped from the log and it becomes the mold. The mold is filled with a thick mixture composed of all ceramic materials. Even the cement binder as well as fillers are volcanic ceramic material. Once the mixture is poured into the mold, steel rods are placed to reinforce it. Within several hours the material sets up, and the elastic mold is pealed off revealing a replica of amazing detail. The brands of upper quality logs, not found in the discount stores, defy detection as being artificial, even under the closest scrutiny. Until they are touched, the fake logs masquerade as the real thing with perfect impunity. One mold can reproduce several hundred clones before it wears out.
Of course, the selection of an ideal log to be part of a set is a
painstaking, time-consuming art. Important considerations in selection
include: diameter in proper proportion to length, selections with
picturesque knots, gouges and splits fashioned by natural forces and
the woodsman's ax. The most important consideration by far is the bark.
It must have deep grooved anatomy, rugged and well defined. Several
species of oak, willow, camphor and other trees lend themselves well.
Treat your self to what so many already
enjoy