Direct Venting vs. Conventional Venting

Direct Venting

• Direct venting uses a pipe at the back of the fireplace that exits the side of your home. A short horizontal pipe sucks air into the system and lets smoke escape. This closes the system so air from your room is not pulled into the fire. Direct-vented fireplaces have covers on the front to seal them. Heat from the fire radiates through the glass and is sometimes pushed into the room with a convection fan at the bottom of the unit.

Conventional Venting

• Conventional venting uses a vertical chimney to allow smoke to leave and provide oxygen to the fire. While you can connect several fuel-burning appliances to a single chimney, you cannot mix the appliances based on fuel type. For instance, a gas furnace and a wood-burning fireplace cannot use the same chimney.

Venting Choices

• The venting option you pick will depend on your appliance. Gas appliances are the only ones with a direct venting option. When setting up the unit, you will have the option to feed a metal liner through a conventional chimney or install a short direct vent through an adjacent wall. If you do not already have a chimney on your house, installing the direct vent will be simpler than constructing a metal chimney from the firebox to the roof. With wood-burning appliances, you must use conventional venting through a metal or masonry chimney.

Vent Pipe Options

• Masonry chimneys are the traditional form of venting for a wood-burning fireplace. However, this is only one conventional venting option. Metal chimneys and metal liners are used to exhaust the high-heat products of gas-burning appliances. Metal chimneys are known as type B vents. Generally, with gas appliances, you must always use metal exhaust vents. The only exception is with vented gas logs. These can use the existing masonry chimney in your home.