Chimineas, especially the ceramic varieties, look very charming. However, my experience with outdoor fire is that the heat diminishes quickly as one moves away from the source. What are people's actual experiences with them in fully open areas, especially in cold climates?
I'd seen things that looked like them, used for outdoor cooking, but the name wasn't familiar. But the font of all knowledge says "The chimenea of the past was used indoors for heating and cooking, ... With the advent of the modern home, chimeneas are now used outdoors mainly for entertainment". So I guess how useful they are doesn't matter anymore.
ReplyDeleteThe convected heat is going to follow the inverse square law, the heat you feel is inversely proportional to the square of your distance from the thing.
ReplyDeleteThe idea is to get a fire with white-hot coals so that the clay creates "radiant" heat, and I suspect getting radiant heat is an awful lot easier with the metal chimineas rather than the clay ones.
We had a clay one we picked up in Tiajuana on our 10x10 enclosed townhouse patio in Southern California. We burned those packaged fire logs in it. It gave off a decent amount of heat for our winter climate but was more for ambiance.
ReplyDeleteThe propane radiant outdoor heaters work, if you want a group of people standing around in the cold. These Chimineas are not as good, but prettier.
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