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Fireplaces in houses


l_touch

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Pretty sure this has been discussed before, but I don't see any reason why not. Personally I'd kinda like the ability to build wood burning stoves out of metal or stone that I can then place inside a house to warm the place up and cook inside during winter and heavy storms. Or drag a charcoal grill into the house and stand it on a piece of sheet metal so and coals that fall out don't burn the house down.

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Being able to craft a stove out of an empty 40-gallon drum, and attach a chimney pipe to it, shouldn't be too difficult. The problem would be rigging up the chimney pipe out a window or something without setting the house on fire.

 

That said, being able to craft a more permanent out stove, such as a brick barbecue, or the afore mentioned metal-drum grill, would be a nice step up from a campfire. Perhaps it cooks the food a little better/quicker, is less likely to be seen by zombies at a distance, or stays alight easier during the rain? Some kind of buff to make it more appealing than something temporary.

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I install furnaces and air conditioners for a living, and installing a pipe or two for ventilation isn't really that difficult. We do it all the time with gas furnaces. It's kind of annoying, but it's relatively easy.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Pretty sure this has been discussed before, but I don't see any reason why not. Personally I'd kinda like the ability to build wood burning stoves out of metal or stone that I can then place inside a house to warm the place up and cook inside during winter and heavy storms. Or drag a charcoal grill into the house and stand it on a piece of sheet metal so and coals that fall out don't burn the house down.

Something more reliable than the campfire (and less inclined to burn down everything) would be a great addition to the game. I think a controlled fireplace in the house that you can fuel like the campfire would be awesome.

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Just out of curiosity - since temperature out there (at least in game) drops below some level, aren't houses built with fireplace?!?

 

Being able to craft a stove out of an empty 40-gallon drum, and attach a chimney pipe to it, shouldn't be too difficult. The problem would be rigging up the chimney pipe out a window or something without setting the house on fire.

The main part wouldn't be too hard (if you know the basics of how to do it in order for it to get the fumes out of the house, not leave them in). Also the most important part is the pipe that take out the fumes, since it's essentially one that give the most of the heat - if you make it short and go straight out, you will loose all of the heat from the burning process.

 

At least to the best of my knowledge ;-)

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Most American houses are in fact not built with fireplaces. We've all got gas furnaces and electricity that warms our houses for us. If we ever lose those utilities we're pretty much screwed when winter comes around because most houses would have no way to be heated internally without some improvisation and reconstruction.

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Most American houses are in fact not built with fireplaces. We've all got gas furnaces and electricity that warms our houses for us. If we ever lose those utilities we're pretty much screwed when winter comes around because most houses would have no way to be heated internally without some improvisation and reconstruction.

No wander I was unable to find a furnace in any of the houses. In that case it's time for "tuning/pimping" the safehouse down ;-)

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Man I want them to implement fireplaces and of course tiled oven (Kachelöfen in german, but there is no real translation).

They can't hold heat for days and use barely any fuel in comparison to normal fireplaces.

 

Also it would make the houses look nicer and spend some warmth in the badly isolated american colonial houses.

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Well, while I'm thinking on it... Would be awesome if you could include some kind of charcoal grill as a lootable item when searching houses and warehouses. If you want to take it inside, you can take some sheet metal and some cinder blocks and use it to construct an indoor safe(ish) grill. Remove the grill's legs. Place some sheet metal on the ground, cinder blocks, more sheet metal on top of the cinder blocks, and a wall of sheet metal from the ground up past the base of cinder blocks reaching to the lip of the grill.

 

You could likely burn wood inside the house using that no problem (ish). Granted, not about to test this out myself, but if you're cold and desperate and need a way to cook food without going outside and building a signal fire for every zed in a ten block radius then you'd probably risk it.

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Personally, I don't like this idea, mostly because I turned my oven on to cook items, then 10 In-game minutes later, I see a fire. Idiotically, I put all my important supplies in one place, and that got burned to h3ll. I quit, this being my first playthrough, I had 24 days and just couldn't bear the fact that I had to move, because everything near has already been scavenged.

 

But for the community, I like this idea, as it could bear warmth for those who don't like to put clothes on, giving extra weight, and in the winter, it gets heck-a freezing. Also, when the power is out, you can possibly find a grill of some sort and make a makeshift oven- so long it doesn't burn down your house immediately,

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Any of the homes that are "off grid", like the farm houses or cabins would have a wood burning stove to heat and cook in the home. Some would even have smoke houses for the preserving of meat.

 

Any of the fireplaces in the more urban settings are often just gas or pellet burning fire places with ornamental logs, meant more for pleasure viewing than heat and cooking - and often only found in high-middle class or higher income homes. These require electricity to function for the pilot lite.

 

The problems involved with jury rigging a stove or heat source with a metal cannister are plentiful, if you don't properly insulate it sets things around it on fire, especially the floor. If you don't properly set up the air intake and smoke venting with a properly insulated chimney smoke will fill the room suffocating those within with smoke inhilation and even possibly set the chimney on fire. Even already existing wood burning stoves and large brick fire places that you could roast something on a spit or cook hanging it over the fire, if the chimney is not properly cared for by cleaning the soot out, it can set the place on fire.

 

If anything, unless you have the proper skill to pull it off like say the level 4 rain barrel, you're more likely to set fire to things indoors than just piling some dirt/sand in a 3x3 space, even better if its on concrete and has open space above it like a 2 story warehouse area, placing a campfire in the center like a fire pit and not making the fire too big is a far safer proposition.

 

So yes, people in the US would have fireplaces and wood stoves but only in particular cases. Many of the small houses, trailers, and businesses would just have gas or electric heating. Some rare places even have geo-thermal and solar-thermal, more often than not those are heating systems that can found in newer homes in the more rural, well-to-do homes.

 

But this is a game, not real life, so I hope what is done is what is possible within the constraints of development and probably more than a few of these realities can be abstracted with some homes just having a better minimum heat level value perhaps for the purposes of not freezing to death in the winter. That and blankets. Love me some blankets on a cold day.

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Well, while I'm thinking on it... Would be awesome if you could include some kind of charcoal grill as a lootable item when searching houses and warehouses. If you want to take it inside, you can take some sheet metal and some cinder blocks and use it to construct an indoor safe(ish) grill. Remove the grill's legs. Place some sheet metal on the ground, cinder blocks, more sheet metal on top of the cinder blocks, and a wall of sheet metal from the ground up past the base of cinder blocks reaching to the lip of the grill.

 

You could likely burn wood inside the house using that no problem (ish). Granted, not about to test this out myself, but if you're cold and desperate and need a way to cook food without going outside and building a signal fire for every zed in a ten block radius then you'd probably risk it.

That doesn't sound much better than the typical "Let's bring the barbecue inside and kill ourselves" attempts people try when the power goes out. =/ There always seems to be someone that tries this and dies each  winter.

Not just a matter of keeping the house from burning down, it's also removing the resulting gases.

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There's a reason why I added the sheet metal in alongside the cinder blocks. Metal absorbs and redistributes heat very easily, so anything coming into contact with it isn't getting the full brunt of the heat coming off the fire. The sheet metal would absorb the heat and spread it along the full length of its body, keeping any one point from absorbing enough heat to set anything adjacent on fire. I'd still tear up the carpet and remove anything nearby that's flammable, though. Would probably invest a little bit of effort into replacing the flooring of the room the fire is in with bricks or carved rocks or some other sort of flame resistant material. As far as carbon dioxide and monoxide gases, I'd just knock a small hole in the wall near the fire to let in air or possibly lead a metal pipe up to the fire through the wall. Or crack open a window or two just a smidge.

 

But regardless of how you do it, eventually we will need to build some kind of fireproof oven or stove that can be kept indoors. It makes very little sense to be forced to go outside every single time you need to cook something when the power goes out. Even if we have to knock walls down and build an entire fireplace/oven from the ground up, it should happen. People will need contained, indoor fire.

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You take proper steps to prevent the fire and the fire will never occur in the first place, man. It would probably work if you removed everything flammable from the room like furniture or carpeting and built in multiple layers of protection. That's is why I recommended a metal grill encased in a box of sheet metal and set on top of cinder blocks. That design allows for multiple points to dissipate the heat upwards and away from the ground. The flame would have to be really huge to set fire to the surroundings with all of those fail safes in place.

 

After that the only thing you'd really need to do is ensure the room is properly ventilated so the waste gases would be circulated and fresh air brought in continually.

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I'm not talking about fire risk -- normal grills are already perfectly capable of abating that. I'm only talking about the release of of exhaust from burning fuel. You're not going to get enough of a release just by  putting a "small" hole in a wall or opening a window. People do this and they die, as is. =/

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Having proper ventilation shouldn't be too difficult. You just gotta make sure there's proper air flow going to and leaving from the location room of the fire. That way fresh air is coming in while flue gases are leaving out at the same time. You might have to channel it in and out in a specific way like with a chimney and an air intake pipe, though. Managing proper flow of air isn't that hard, though some of the hack jobs I see while working on gas furnaces makes me think otherwise sometimes.

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Having proper ventilation shouldn't be too difficult. You just gotta make sure there's proper air flow going to and leaving from the location room of the fire. That way fresh air is coming in while flue gases are leaving out at the same time. You might have to channel it in and out in a specific way like with a chimney and an air intake pipe, though. Managing proper flow of air isn't that hard, though some of the hack jobs I see while working on gas furnaces makes me think otherwise sometimes.

A lot of effort for something not all that needed.

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Having proper ventilation shouldn't be too difficult. You just gotta make sure there's proper air flow going to and leaving from the location room of the fire. That way fresh air is coming in while flue gases are leaving out at the same time. You might have to channel it in and out in a specific way like with a chimney and an air intake pipe, though. Managing proper flow of air isn't that hard, though some of the hack jobs I see while working on gas furnaces makes me think otherwise sometimes.

 

But the fact is, you original idea was to cut a hole in a wall or crack a window- thus, you're dead before you try a ventilation system anyways if you actually tried this =D

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I didn't even care about "proper" ventilation beforehand. I had thought it would be one of those game play versus realism things where it fell on the side of game play because otherwise dealing with it would be too complicated in game.

 

But apparently everyone else disagrees with me on the matter and I've already said everything I could possibly want to say in defense of the idea, so I guess I'm defeated here.

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