Burn Smart™ goes beyond the product you buy

In addition to featuring eco-friendlier products, Burn Smart is about practicing better burning throughout the season. There is a variety of steps you can take to enhance the efficiency of your hearth product, while helping reduce your fuel consumption and your overall energy costs.

The following tips will provide you with several helpful suggestions on how to practice greener living—with your hearth and in your home.

Burn Smart Tips

  • Keeping your chimney clean provides a good draft, reducing the likelihood for dangerous gases to build up inside the home during fireplace operation.
  • Zone heating, the practice of heating only the rooms in your home that are in use, can save you hundreds of dollars in energy costs each year. These areas can be heated using a stove or fireplace.
  • Today’s gas-burning fireplaces can have the same efficiency ratings as central furnaces. Inquire about the efficiency rating to find an energy-friendly model for your home.
  • Specially built to use only outside air for combustion, today’s advanced direct-vent gas models are efficient heater-rated gas appliances.
  • Keeping the fireplace damper closed when the fireplace is not in use prevents up to 8% of heated air from going up the chimney.
  • Properly dried hardwoods—hickory, oak, maple and ash—are the most efficient fuel for a wood-burning stove or fireplace.