To wonder why so many houses have blocked up fireplaces?!

[FallingOver]

I just don't get it! I'm looking around for a new rental at the moment - moving to Sheffield in the summer - and I am flabbergasted at the amount of seemingly nice houses that have blocked up fireplaces. Some even have blocked up fireplaces with horrid electric heaters pasted on the walls! Gas fires I can just about understand (even if I think they're not quite the same), but the thought of a home without a nice warm fire blazing away on a cold winter's night... WHY?

Lol at the worry of keeping children away form the fire. Our house is solid fuel heated (water and radiators) so the fire is on 24/7. You buy a fire guard, I've not injured the children yet!

I am with the OP, I love fires and I don't really like houses without them. I grew up with open fires so I suppose I don't really see them as hard work. It is expensive to restore them though in houses where they have been blocked.

I'd be more worried about injuring myself on the fire tbh. And I would regularly burn myself.

The main obstacle is the labour involved, in comparison with leaving my central heating to do it's thing on a timer.

My modern house has good insulation and heating, so there's only two or three times a year the (gas) fire has to go on. Unfortunately the rest of the time it lets in the draft of satan's breath which makes that part of the living room freeze. It's like an inch of tundra hovering over the carpet. I'd block it up if I could.

Never heard that about flue regulations and we've had wood burners installed by reputable companies in two houses. Building inspector never said a word about moving the chimney either and is it a terraced Victorian house with chimney right up against neighbour's one. Honoured more in the breach perhaps.

Op yanbu installing a woodburner was best thing we ever did, I love it. Not so sure about open fire though, risks of fire/small kids etc too great.

they can be unblocked pretty easily

We used to get horrible condensation in our house caused by blocked chimneys, sealed windows etc. The house was a bubble. We unblocked the chimney now not a spot of condensation because the house is well ventilated

Jeepers, all this concern about small children and open fires. How do you think humans survived for the thousands of years before central heating/gas fires?

My grandparents blocked theirs up. Laying a fire, cleaning the grate, getting it swept was too much hassle, they got a gas fire put in instead. Much easier for them.

We however have a lovely open fire in our 1970s house. We do use it but it has no draw on it so the room fills with smoke unless you leave a window open .

Mostly we stop the draught when not in use with a chimney balloon and fire solid homemade guard with draught excluding tape round the inside.

solid homemade fireguard

If the kids are about when it is lit we stay in the room with them but don't use a kiddy guard as it is a rare occurance.

How humans survived before central heating was with a higher rate of injuries, house fires etc. Was talking about this with DS's GGPs and they remember a fire in a terrace being a normal occurrence, especially loft-space fires. And burns were more common on children too. The species will continue if a minority die due to fires afterall.

Yes I would have a fire if there was no gas central heating, the risk of illness due to cold would be higher than the risk of injury from fire. That doesn't mean that I think its a good idea for me right now.

I have an open fire and it's lovely, but also very inefficient and a hassle (can easily take half an hour to get it going properly). They don't make much sense these days in practical terms, but multifuel stoves are brilliant and much more useful.

They block them because of the draughts. Draughty = expensive to heat. Open fires are not very energy efficient either, wood burners are better.

LLs often don't want tenants lighting fires in case they do it wrong and burn the place down as well...

I'm with you though, I love open fires!

One way humanity survived was to confine small children to high chairs for much of the day:( if you read accounts if early 20th c working class life you'll see that horrific injuries from burns were commonplace occupancies for small children, and in small houses with large numbers of children, confinement was a popular option. Your argument reminds me a bit if the 'how do women manage in the third world eh?' line by advocates of natural birth. The answer is they manage by dying in huge numbers! Humanity survives because it doesn't care about such 'wastage'. When it comes to my own children, perhaps you won't mind if I try to minimise this kind of natural selection!!!

Occupancies? I meant occurrences- autocorrect on one of its little adventures into idiocy!

It is possible to have central heating and an open fire. We just make a fire when it's extra cold, I love doing it. Chimneys were blocked up because open fires went out of fashion, pure and simple. Same reason people chucked out beautiful Victorian original features in the 60s.

OP
How old are you? I am in my 40 s and to me, it is a relatively recent idea to unblock the fireplaces that, as someone said, were blocked in the 1960 s and 70 s when central heating was intridoduced.

Clean air act killed real fires in coal mining communities.

Sorry, short post, dd crying. She is ill with flu.

Also, presumably landlords don't want the hassle of trusting renters to manage an open fire properly?

Impecunious, I grew up in a house with an open fire, everyone I knew had an open fire lighting pretty much every day, and I genuinely never heard of any child falling into a fire, or getting burnt (nor was I or anyone I know confined to a high chair for much of the day). I don't think having an open fire is in any way neglectful or endangering for children, tbh.

Jamie I'm in my 30s, and it had occurred to me that the mania for blocking up fires is a generational thing - as someone noted up thread, perhaps more common in the 60s/70s when central heating was relatively new.

I don't want to get flamed (see what I did there), but there is a line of thought that central heating/lack of ventilation perhaps caused by blocking up fireplaces and a modern obsession with very warm homes has led to increased instances of ailments like asthma and allergies, both of which have rocketed up since the 60s and 70s.

"It seems to me like open fires might be an increasingly cost-efficient way of heating homes"

And very energy inefficient as most of the heat goes up the chimney. A woodburner is far better.

You seem to have a very romantic idea of open fires. The reality has already been pointed out by many posters on here. MIL lives in a village where most people worked down the pits. As a result there is no mains gas in the village as there was already a preferred source of fuel and most people heated their homes via an open fire with a back boiler. MIL used to have to redecorate her front room every year because open fires are mucky. She got tired of always having to rake out the ashes every morning and do the fire every day so she eventually had the fireplace closed up and converted to oil central heating.

As far as I can see the only major disadvantage to closing up a fireplace is the condensation it can cause.

One very good reason for having a real fire where we live is the number of power cuts that we experience.

Okay, I suppose we could have a gas fire, but like OP, do prefer real.

My parents have neither and just have to freeze on the (rare) occasions they have a power cut.

Due to the pea souper fog/smog in London area, a smokless zone was law in 1963, I think it was. Mum and dad's gas fire was so hot and convenient . Before he had to go outside to the coal bunker, letting all the cold into house, to get a shovel of coal to bring in through the kitchen and then living room, and if left too late, wouldn't burn.
Every morning it was scraping out ashes and carrying them out to throw in the garden. Then start from scratch again in the freezing cold. Thank goodness I never needed to do all that.
We had no heating in any other rooms.

digerd: could your father not close the back door and use a coal bucket so as to make the trips to the bunker less frequent?

Bunbaker is right, in my old house I had two open fires, a burner and no central heating and we used to white-wash the walls every year as part of the spring-clearning. But I loved it