Cooking In Your Fireplace

So you’ve been looking at cookstoves and are absolutely smitten with the idea of having one. How could you not be? The ability to cook your food in the same place that gives you heat without adding on any additional energy expenses is invaluable, especially in emergency situations. That, combined with the time-tested trustworthiness of many stove manufacturers, means you’ll be relying on it year-round for many years. Without question, a cookstove is a great investment. There’s just one problem:

You’ve got a fireplace, and nowhere to put a cookstove.

Some manufacturers offer zero-clearance stoves (and we even offer advice on how to do that yourself here), but that’s little consolation if you lack the space for even the basic dimensions of a cookstove. And there’s just no way for you to cook on your fireplace, which is built (albeit beautifully) into the wall of your home.

…Or is there?

Obadiah’s Woodstoves & Alternative Energy has been aware of the issues surrounding many fireplace installations for years, and we’ve come up with a solution: The Fireplace Conversion System. But before we get into the cooking features, there are a few other important issues this system resolves that you should know about.

An active fireplace can draw more heat than it gives off, leaving you with a room that is strangely colder than if you had never started a fire at all. This happens because a fire draws oxygen for combustion from the room, pulling it up and out the chimney. As this happens, the air that is drawn out of the room will be rapidly replaced by colder air, leaving you to huddle close to the fireplace just to get the little bit of radiant heat it puts out. A common answer to this problem is installing a glass barrier in front of the fireplace, which reduces the air being drawn in. However, no matter what you do, you can never completely stop air from being pulled out of the room without killing your fire.

This is where our Fireplace Conversion System comes in. Rather than installing a whole new surround and chimney, a process that would typically cost thousands of dollars, you just send Obadiah’s your fireplace’s measurements and we custom build a unit for you that will easily slide into your existing fireplace. The idea is to make the installation so painless that anyone can do it without having to hire a professional: All you need are a few tools, some patience, and a little bit of common sense. The unit works to improve your heating capabilities by absorbing most of the fire’s heat into the box, which it then redirects back out towards the room instead of allowing it to escape out the chimney. Maybe you appreciate your fireplace mostly for the ambience it offers, but with this system installed, you will actually be able to count on it for heat during an emergency. That, we feel, is something you can’t put a price on.

The bonus to our Fireplace Conversion System, as we mentioned earlier, is the option to use it for cooking. The unit can be installed with a crane arm, allowing you to add a Dutch Oven and cook stews, roasts, casseroles, or anything else you can fit inside. The arm folds back into the firebox to stay out of your way when not in use, and when you need it, you simply rotate it out, hang your oven on it, and rotate it back in. Simple as that. In addition to the crane arm, you can also insert a height-adjustable grilling grate. This essentially turns your fireplace into a traditional grill on which you can cook steak, burgers, hot dogs, and all manner of meat. Check out the video below to see the cooking system in action:

Obadiah’s has been a dealer for fireplaces and wood heating systems for many, many years. In all that time doing business, we’ve always done our best to listen to what people need from their heating system and tried to help them achieve it. Our Fireplace Conversion System is really just the next step in that customer service: By allowing you to finally get real heat out of your fireplace while offering the ability to cook proper meals, this system turns your fireplace into an invaluable resource that you can rely on, no matter what.

– Obadiah’s Woodstoves & Alternative Energy.

Click here to see more about the Fireplace Conversion System