I understand that with a traditional fireplace, most of the heat is lost through the chimney and you have to be very close to it to feel much heat. A wood stove or insert performs much better. However, I’m curious how people stayed warm enough in a house. It would seem that everywhere besides being near the fireplace would be freezing. I guess fireplaces were mostly meant to locally heat people near the fireplace, and not so much that the fireplace is a central heat source. That would explain why people often had a fireplace in every room. Just light the fireplace that you will be near for most of the time, etc. rather than heat the whole house. Just curious since you often hear “warm by the fireplace”.
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In the southwest, a lot of the older homes were adobe (the mud bricks). Adobe is a great insulator and also can radiate heat when it’s warm enough.
A friend in high school lived in an adobe home – they’d burn wood for a few hours and then let the fire die a couple of hours before bed. The house was still warm those two hours and depending on the night, at least tolerable when you got up.
A lot of older houses out here were designed around the airflow – because they were built long before Air Conditioning.
Enough homes were still headed by fire that there were “no burn nights” due to air quality issues”.
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