To those who haven’t spent any Winter time in Melbourne you wouldn’t understand the bitter cold that fills this place for four months of the year, I especially work long hours and face a commute each day to work, my wife Tracy works a couple of days a week & when you factor in our little three year old we are like most Australian families who are very time poor.
When considering what heater we would like it ultimately came down to three things for us:
*The look of the heater in our home, was it ascetically pleasing
* The functionality & the output of heat eg. Would it heat our home comfortably?
* Convenience
In our home before we added our Gas fireplace we already had ducted heating, we found after our first winter in the house that although the ducted worked well we were missing that fireplace to stand close to on a cold winter night and get that warm cosy feeling-something the ducted wasn’t able to do for us, then the question was do we add a gas or wood heater to our home, living down South the option for Gas was really a no brainer as I couldn’t see me coming home at night to source fire wood rather the convenience of just clicking a button for instant heat won us over.
Installation of our fireplace was a bit tricky in that we were faced with another decision, the first being to enclose the fireplace and build a artificial wall off the main existing wall in the living room or do we place the fire flush on the living room wall with the fire box in the garage, ultimately we opted to have the fire box in the garage & we have just enclosed that now and it actually works ok because our installer built in a shelf so that now has worked as a good place for all our shoes etc. In terms of what the fireplace has added well it’s always nice to have friends and family around and still to this day people comment on our fireplace, not only has it become a convenient source of heat for our family it’s also become a taking point to anyone who visits our home & just recently when looking to sell our home a real estate agent made me aware that it’s also a good point of difference against other homes in our area.
After having our fireplace for coming on four years we have nothing but good things to say, we have only had it serviced the once which might be a bit slack our our behalf but the thing has never missed a beat & it’s lovely to live in Melbourne a still don a pair of shorts at night time in Winter.
I have always wanted a wood fire and after looking on line, we decided to go with a local family business. Instore I was delighted to see burning units and such a huge range of fireplaces on display. After discussing our needs and having all the technical questions answered by the friendly proficient staff, we were confident to arrange in house consultation, on site we confirmed what size unit we required and installation cost.
We purchased Pacific Energy Alderlea it is the perfect addition to our home. The antique white enamel finish adds to our Hamptons style theme and also fitted perfectly into our existing our outdated inefficient brick fireplace. Having tiled floors and very high exposed raked rafters, this unit gives beautiful natural heat. Our home is always warm and nothing more soothing than watching as the fire burns, we load our unit up before going to bed and still lovely and warm in the morning with its 10+hour burn time, it has proven to be very economical to run and also completed the look we wanted.
We would highly recommend this local family business (I will be back I loved the look of the culture stone for my next project.)
