What's vital to you? Your house environment for emotional support or saving the environment? If you intend to move to a new home or to build a home, you will draw a line thru a hearth as a requirement.

though folk love the heat, comforting crackling sounds, scents, and moving light a wood burning fire provides, fireplaces can emit polluted air into your house and into your area. Book lovers enjoy curling up next to a fire on a cool afternoon. Many new houses feature fireplaces in the main bedroom. According to the US Office of Energy, wood-burning fireplaces emit nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, organic gases, and particulate matter.

These contaminants may cause heavy health issues for youngsters, pregnant girls, and folks with respiration issues. Some urban towns have considered banning wood-burning fireplaces altogether to halt the flow of contaminants in the smog-filled air. Some California towns and counties have passed local ordinances to restrict the growing wood smoke problem. Mammoth Lakes, Squaw Valley, Cloverdale, Fresno, and many towns and counties in the Bay Area permit installation of only U.S.EPA authorized wood-fired appliances in all new construction. Since 1991, the Bay Area AQMD has issued advisories for a voluntary no-burn program on poor air quality nights, "Spare the Air Tonight.". To keep contaminants from entering your room air, you can install an authorized clean-burning fire insert and a glass screen.

Buy a carbon monoxide monitor and an oxygen-depletion sensor to guarantee safe air. The new fire systems keep pollutants from leaving your chimney.

Other concerns for you to contemplate include the source of heating for your house.

And if your heat comes out of a coal-burning electric plant, doesn't the burning coal produce poisons that pollute the air? If you are building a new home, give some thought to installing a Pellet Stove, the most productive and least polluting of the new stove designs. Almost all of these stoves s need electricity and burn compressed wood waste formed into pellets. Be kind to oneself and to the environment. Consider these ecological problems when you light up your fire.