Winter is here, and along with colder temperatures, home heating costs have soared in recent years. Nothing is cozier than curling up next to a warm, sparkling fire in a fireplace on a chilly Bay Area evening. Besides adding ambience, a fireplace can heat your home, allowing you to forego turning on the furnace or plugging in the space heaters. Proper care and maintenance will allow you to enjoy the benefits of using your fireplace not only safely, but also economically.

Chimney Sweeping Log
Each time a wood fire is burned, tar and creosote are formed. Creosote is composed of unburned wood particles and condensed gases. With each fire, these highly flammable substances build up on the inside of the chimney and must be removed to prevent a fire inside the flue. If you use your fireplace often, you should have it cleaned professionally on a regular basis. It is also smart to occasionally burn a Chimney Sweeping Log, which contains a mixture of minerals that are dispersed during burning and adhere to the creosote. Over the next 14 days, the creosote becomes brittle and breaks away. The Chimney Sweep Log is one of the fastest, easiest and most cost-efficient ways to clean your chimney.

Earth Friendly Logs
Clean, dry, well-seasoned hardwoods, such as oak or maple, are the best woods to burn, as they produce less smoke and provide more heat energy than softer woods. The density of hardwoods also allows them to burn more slowly and evenly. An even cleaner and more earth-friendly alternative to wood is the Java Log, made from recycled coffee grounds. A Java Log produces 80 percent less carbon monoxide, creosote deposits and particle matter than a wood burning fire. Besides burning brighter, Java Logs produce 25 percent more heat energy than wood.

Another earth-friendly alternative is the Enviro Log, made from 100 percent recycled wax cardboard with no added petroleum products. Enviro Logs produce 80 percent less carbon monoxide and 86 percent less creosote than wood logs, but exert 50 percent more heat.

Fireplace Glass and Hearth Cleaner
A gummy residue often will build up on the glass doors of a fireplace or wood burning stove or on the surrounding masonry. A fireplace glass and hearth cleaner will remove this residue with an easy spray-on, wipe-off formula. These usually have an ultra cling, nonabrasive formula that makes cleaning vertical surfaces simple. Many nontoxic, nonflammable and noncorrosive formulations are available in the marketplace today. Cleaning regularly will also make it easier to remove any residue.

Winter Spare the Air Nights
The sister program to the Summer Spare the Air program, the Winter Spare the Air program notifies Bay Area residents when particulate levels are anticipated to be unhealthy. In winter, days with cold, still air can trap smoke in the air all the way down to ground level. While auto emissions are the biggest contributor of particulate matter in summer months, wood smoke is the largest pollution contributor in winter months. In wintertime, particulate matter 2.5 microns or smaller in size (PM2.5), can become a serious inhalation problem in the region. To protect public health, the Air District will issue an alert. When an alert is in effect, burning wood, fire logs, pellets, or other solid fuels in your fireplace, woodstove or other wood-burning device is illegal. When wood burning is allowed, residents must still burn cleanly using dry, seasoned firewood and not burn garbage, leaves or other material that would cause excessive smoke. Residents who exceed the excess visible smoke provision in the wood-burning rule could still be subject to an Air District citation or penalty.

You will notice that all logs and firewood that you purchase now are labeled with this wood-burning information. To confirm if it is OK to use your fireplace, call 1-877-4NO-BURN or visit www.sparetheair.org.

Julia Strzesieski is the marketing coordinator for Cole Hardware and can be reached at [email protected].